The outcry within Cuban society and abroad against the enormous penalties requested for the July 11 protesters has had its first effects this Friday with the decision of the Holguín Prosecutor’s Office to withdraw the charge of sedition against minors.
Thus it ensures 14ymedio the sister of one of the defendants, who prefers to withhold her name. “My brother is not a minor and the lawyers ask that the crime of sedition be removed from all the accused.”
The four minors under 18 who faced a 15-year prison sentence in Holguín are Yeral Michel Palacios Román, Ernesto Abelardo Martínez Pérez and Ayan Idalberto Jover Cardosa, 17, and Keyla Roxana Mulet Calderón, 16. The sentences for them They will stay, say unspecified sources close to the trial, in 5 years in some cases and 7 in others.
The Miami-based Cuban Democratic Directorate (DDC) had called on democratic governments and foreign investors to take “forceful steps”
The Miami-based Cuban Democratic Directorate (DDC) had called on democratic governments and foreign investors to take “strong steps” in response to the trials of minors prosecuted for 11J.
Similarly, in a statement published this Friday, he had demanded that human rights organizations denounce “the serious violations that are occurring in Cuba against children.”
The DDC recalled, with figures from the Justice 11J group, that “at least 45 minors were arrested in July when the population staged a civic uprising that ended with more than 1,355 people arrested.” Of the detained minors, 29 were released, some on bail, and “14 have served political prison.”
Compared to the relief of sentences for minors, there is the harshness that can fall on adults. In Holguín, prosecutor Fernando Valentín Sera Planas –recently included in the list of repressors of the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba, together with a dozen other colleagues, requested 30 years in prison for Miguel Cabrera Rojas, Yosvany Rosell García Caso, José Ramón Solano Randiche and Iván Colón Suárez for the crime of sedition.
This charge, for which a total of 158 protesters are prosecuted, according to the figures collected by Justice 11J, is included in the Cuban Penal Code in its article 100 for those who “riotously and by express or tacit concert, using violence, disturb the socialist order or the holding of elections or referendums, or prevent the fulfillment of any sentence, legal provision or measure dictated by the Government, or by a civil or military authority in the exercise of their respective functions, or refuse to obey them, or make demands, or resist fulfilling their duties”.
The severity of its provisions contrasts with the sentences received in the past by other “disturbers of order” who “used violence”. Specifically, the brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro
The severity of its provisions contrasts with the sentences received in the past by other “disturbers of order” who “used violence”. Specifically, the brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro, who, for the assault on the Moncada barracks in 1953, received, respectively, 15 and 13 years in prison, a sentence of which they only served 22 months, a term in which they were acquitted by the dictator Fulgencio Batista, or Frank Country, who was acquitted in 1957.
With another difference: unlike those revolutionaries, whose actions caused deaths, the 11J protesters did not cause victims, and it remains to be seen how much “violence” they used in trials that different organizations have denounced for not adhering to due process.
For the rest, such high penalties are reserved, not only in other countries but on the Island itself, for serious crimes such as murder, aggravated rape or terrorism.
Meanwhile, the silence about these trials in the official press is total. Justice 11J denounces that “ no propaganda outlet of the Cuban authorities has reported so far from the execution of ordinary trials to at least 223 protesters”.
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