MADRID, Spain.- The Center for a Free Cuba (Center for a Free Cuba) launched this Tuesday a petition for signatures in solidarity with the five Caimanera protesters that the regime keeps imprisoned and who will be tried in the coming days.
By disseminating this initiative, the organization shared from Twitter the link to sign and stressed that “gathering peacefully to ask for freedom, human rights and food is not a crime. It is a fundamental human right.”
Save the Guantanamo Five!
Peacefully assembling to call for freedom, human rights, and food is not a crime. It is a fundamental human right. –Sign the Petition! https://t.co/W3NNV84Ilo via @Change— Center for a Free Cuba (@cubacenter) May 16, 2023
The petition, active on the change.org platform, recalls that last may 6 Hundreds of Cubans in the municipality of Caimanera, Guantánamo, took to the streets to demand “human rights”, “freedom” and chanted “Patria y Vida”.
Videos that circulated on social networks, as well as live broadcasts, captured protest images that went viral internationally. The Cuban regime quickly cut off the internet and deployed officers from the Interior Ministry’s National Special Brigade. The “black berets” violently repressed the protests and arrested five demonstrators, the text exposes.
The five people imprisoned for these protests are Yandris Pelier Matos, the brothers Felipe Correa Martínez and Luis Miguel Alarcón Martínez, and the brothers Rodi and Daniel Álvarez González. His relatives were not able to see them until five days later, during a brief visit.
On the importance of signing this petition, the document explains that “international scrutiny and strong condemnation can mitigate the level of punishment imposed by limiting the feeling of impunity of Cuban officials.”
It also insists that “now is the time to act, before the legal proceedings end”; and warns that “their lives are at stake.”
“If enough people of good will take quick action now, their lives could still be saved. Otherwise, they face long prison terms and further physical abuse. Amnesty International has demanded their immediate release and you should too,” the petition concludes.
