Twenty people gathered this Monday in the Juan Delgado Park, in Havana, one block from the Municipal Court of Diez de Octubre, to ask for “acquittal” and “immediate freedom” for all prisoners of July 11.
The group, made up of activists and relatives of the detainees, uploaded a video on networks of the prayer, holding hands, that they made in the place. After that publication, neighbors of the place report to 14ymedio, They have cut the 4G signal in the area. “You can barely make calls but the connection is down,” details a resident near the park.
The relatives had clarified that they still did not know if it would be in that court or, on the contrary, in the Provincial Court of Havana, to be judged. to 33 demonstrators that Sunday, including six under 18 years.
“I did not know that the trials were going to start here today and when I got up there were two men dressed in civilian clothes stuck in the doorway of my house,” says another neighbor.
However, while in the vicinity of the Provincial, located next to the Capitol, 14ymedio does not appreciate any movement, the operation in the Diez de Octubre court is evident. “I didn’t know that the trials were going to start here today and when I got up there were two men dressed in civilian clothes stuck in the doorway of my house,” says another resident of Diez de Octubre. “They made calls and were very nervous. When we asked them why they were there, they told us that a counterrevolutionary provocation was expected in the area.”
Neither the Cuban authorities nor the official press have provided specific information on this trial, although the Cuban Attorney General’s Office reported last week, in an unusual gesture, on the total investigated in relation to the protests of July 11.
The process, in which they are accused of “sedition”, will take place in any case from this Monday until February 7, and raises the highest expectations, given that the defendants were present at the 11J protest on the corner of Toyo, the place that gave the most iconic image of that day, u an overturned police patrol and a young man with a Cuban flag on it.
These are scenes not only broadcast on networks by ordinary citizens, but used by the regime, both to prosecute the detainees and to try to discredit them in the official media.
In this regard, the group Justicia 11J, which accompanies the families of the detainees with legal advice and shares the information available on the trials, pointed out in a Facebook post that these videos, “very visibly modified in the closed-door trials”, reveal, once seen “in their entirety”, that “the violent response of the protesters responded to legitimate defense, typified in articles 21.1-5 of the Penal Code”.
In the same post, they report that the images presented in the Star News of Cuban television last january 25 correspond to the trial of demonstrators from La Güinera held between January 17 and 18.
“We have not been able to identify whether these images correspond to recordings of the event now made available to the official press, or whether the discreet entry of a local press team was allowed”
“We have not been able to identify whether these images correspond to recordings of the event now made available to the official press, or whether the discreet entry of a local press team was allowed, as the interviews with lawyers and relatives shown tonight seem to indicate.” , specifies Justice 11J.
The platform also recalls that Cuban law itself establishes the public nature of the trials, which would allow access to the media, “without distinctions between them,” and questions “the selective nature of such permission (in the event that, in effect, a team from the press participated), discretion, violation of the principle of equality before the law, and with it, of the principle of transparency”.
Neither the independent Cuban media, nor the international press, nor even more than one family member per detainee, have been able to attend the trials of July 11, which to date, in four weeks, have tried some 440 people, according to the count. of Justice 11J and the legal NGO Cubalex.
For this week’s trial, and in relation to the minors on trial, the activists demand “the non-discretionary presence of the media, as the only guarantee that the right to be presumed innocent, the right to to be heard, the right to effective participation, the presence and examination of witnesses” provided for in the 2017 Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Justice 11J added two new minors to its list of those accused of “sedition”: Osbel David Núñez Frómeta, 17, and Christian Lázaro González Ávila, 16, both from Cárdenas (Matanzas)
“Although this same section refers to full respect for private life, between paragraphs 64 and 67, which maintains that it is advisable to hold trials behind closed doors in the administration of justice for minors,” the platform details, “we understand that this case would typify as one of the possible exceptions to this recommendation”.
And they continue: “Let us remember that these children have already been exposed and stigmatized on national television as ‘delinquents’, ‘hooligans’, ‘rioters’, so that the access of the press to the supposed scientific evidence and the questionable testimonies of supposed witnesses , would hopelessly expose the biased nature of the trials.”
Likewise, Justice 11J added two new minors to its list of those accused of “sedition.” They are Osbel David Núñez Frómeta, 17 years old, with the precautionary measure of home confinement and a prosecutor’s request for 15 years in prison, and Christian Lázaro González Ávila, 16, secured on bail and with a prosecutor’s request for 15 years. deprivation of liberty, both from Cárdenas (Matanzas). With them, the platform registers a total of 50 people between 16 and 20 years old accused of sedition “29% of the total accusations for this crime (169)”.
The platform emphasizes that the Cuban government is using sedition, a crime of a political nature, “as an example”, despite the fact that “in several judicial events, the lawyers have defended the inexistence of elements that justify the seditious nature of the events “.
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