HAVANA, Cuba.- Due to the pressure and threats they are receiving for their support of the political prisoners of July 11 (11J) 2021, a total of twenty-three human rights NGOs and six MEPs came together to sign a release in support of the “Humanitarian Network to Help the Brave of 11J”.
The project was founded in December 2021 by Roxana García Lorenzo, Jonatan López and Pedro López, relatives of political prisoner Andy Dunier García Lorenzo, with the aim of supporting both political prisoners and their families with food, medicine and other basic supplies. .
“Among the beneficiaries are political prisoners and their families, including newborns, minors, single mothers, sick people and the elderly who were left completely helpless after the imprisonment of their loved ones. To date, more than 10% of people deprived of their liberty for political reasons have at some time received help from the project and more than 110 families have benefited,” the statement states.
Because of their activism, the promoters of the initiative have been harassed and pressured by the Cuban repressive organs. Jonatan López and his father, Pedro López, are under investigation for the alleged crimes of “disobedience” and “instigation to commit a crime”, respectively. Both, along with Roxana García, Andy’s sister, have been arrested or subjected to police surveillance on several occasions.
They have all received threats of imprisonment under article 143 of the new Penal Code -which will come into force next December-, which provides for a sentence of 4 to 10 years in prison for anyone who “supports, encourages, finances, provides, receives or has in their power funds, material or financial resources, with the purpose of defraying activities against the Cuban State and its constitutional order.”
Likewise, Andy D. García Lorenzo, who inspired the project, both because of his complaints and because of his affront to power, has been threatened and psychologically tortured in detention centers. In the middle of the current month, his family denounced who had been kept incommunicado for several weeks. The 24-year-old was arrested in Santa Clara for participating in the 11J protests and sentenced to four years in prison; they keep him isolated from the rest of the prisoners.
According to Prisoners Defendersone of the signatory NGOs, there are currently 1,016 political prisoners in Cuba and, from the European Parliament and the human rights organizations that signed the statement, “the repressive escalation to which the family of the inspirational of the network, Andy Dunier García Lorenzo, in retaliation for his activism, as well as Andy Dunier in person who, at the time of writing this note, is deprived of his liberty and his most basic rights, including medical care or communication with his family.
Also the president of the NGO “Funds for the victims of communism”, Samuel Rodríguez, a resident of the United States, has received threats to harm his mother, sister and eight-year-old son, who currently live in the town of Encrucijada, province from Villa Clara, Cuba. Through his NGO, Rodríguez provides the funds to the “Humanitarian Network to Help the Brave of 11J”.
For all these reasons, the signatories reiterate their “expression of full solidarity with the members of the Humanitarian Network to Help the Brave of 11J. We demand that the Cuban government immediately cease the harassment and criminal persecution to which they are subjected for the mere fact of exercising their human right to associate freely to provide humanitarian aid, and we ask the diplomatic missions of democratic countries in Cuba to support this and other humanitarian initiatives. Finally, we call on the Universal System for the Protection of Human Rights, and very particularly the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, to seriously address the situation that we denounce here and in general the situation of persecution of activists. of human rights in Cuba.
The other signatory NGOs are: Freedom House, Civil Rights Defenders, People in Need, Article19, CADAL, Movimiento San Isidro (Cuba), Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, Freemuse, International Institute on Race Equality and Human Rights, PROVEA, Programa Feminista La Corriente, Press and Society Institute, IPLEX Press and Freedom of Expression Institute, Citizenship and Development Foundation, Impulsos Foundation, Patricio Aylwin Foundation, FUSADES, Rede Liberdade, CIVILIS, Construir Foundation, PROMEDEHUM, and ASOPODEHU.
The six signing MEPs are: Dita Charanzová (Vice President of the European Parliament, Renew Europe), Nicolae Ștefănuță (Vice President of D-US in the European Parliament, Renew Europe), Soraya Rodríguez (President of DPAP and member of DLAT in the European Parliament, Renew Europe), Javier Nart (Vice President of DCAM in the European Parliament, Renew Europe), Leopoldo López Gil (Vice President of D-CL and member of AFET, DROI and DLAT in the European Parliament, European People’s Party) and José Ramón Bauzá ( Member of the European Parliament, Renew Europe).
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