MIAMI, United States.- The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) for Cuba denounced this week that at least six waves of repression have occurred on the island after the anti-government protests of July 11, 2021, when thousands of Cubans took to the streets in more than 50 locations in the country.
In a conference that included several recently exiled Cuban activists, the special rapporteur of the IACHR Stuardo Ralón assured that “the patterns of violation of human rights observed in Cuba, through the different repressive actions aimed at repressing dissident voices and Citizen claims for political and social changes are presented as part of a structural situation that is rooted in the very absence of democracy in the country.”
During the hybrid event, entitled “Cuba, one year after 11J”, the Guatemalan jurist insisted that the protests in Cuba “triggered immediate reactions by the State against the demonstrators”, opponents and dissident voices.
Ralón explained that the first wave of repression was marked by “the use of force and campaigns of intimidation and stigmatization,” and the second by “arbitrary arrests, mistreatment, and deplorable conditions of detention.”
The third wave of repression unleashed by the Havana regime, he added, “was the criminalization of protesters, judicial persecution and violations of due process. The fourth, the closure of democratic spaces through repressive and intimidating strategies aimed at discouraging new social demonstrations.”
According to the report, the fifth wave of repression constituted “the continuity of the deprivation of liberty, trials without guarantees of due process” and number six were the “legislative proposals aimed at limiting, monitoring and punishing dissident expressions and critics of the Government, as well as criminalize the actions of independent civil society organizations.”
The IACHR emphasized the complaints from Cuban civil society, which recorded “dozens of people injured as a result of the disproportionate use of force by the Police. Likewise, threats, intimidation, and stigmatizing official statements directed at protesters and those who supported the protests were reported.”
In the eventconceived “to promote dialogue and reflection on the situation of human rights in Cuba” one year after 11J, Soledad García Muñoz, special rapporteur on Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights, also participated.
García Muñoz drew attention to the “widespread increase in poverty in a context of economic crisis resulting from high inflation. The persistent precariousness and lack of basic and essential food on the Island is also of special concern.”
“We show a situation of malnutrition, of decreased frequency of meals in a large part of Cuban households, which disproportionately affects women, girls, boys, adolescents and which generates a negative impact on food security. and in the conditions of life and physical, emotional and intellectual development of Cuban men and women,” he stated.
Likewise, the rapporteur stressed that “in terms of health, we have been informed that the lack of medicines in many cases has generated the aggravation of illnesses or that many people used expired medicines for their treatment or resorted to informal markets to cover expenses. in essential health”.
Also participating in the IACHR event were Laritza Diversent, director of the Cubalex Legal Information Center, Yaxis Cires, director of Strategy for the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, activist Saily González, and independent journalist Orelvis Cabrera.
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