Madrid/The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGDA) considers that 49 protesters who participated in the anti-government protests of the July 11, 2021 (11J) in Cuba were detained “arbitrarily for political and ideological reasons and without due process or defense.” This is what it indicates Prisoners Defenders (PD) in a report published this Tuesday, after receiving the conclusions of this UN body.
The organization, based in Madrid, was the one that reported the cases to that body. The GTDA, which also recognized that they suffered other “multiple crimes against humanity”, such as forced disappearance and isolation, torture and rape, has asked the Cuban regime to release and criminally exonerate those 49 people “immediately” and compensate them for damages.
The international organization also asked Havana to initiate an “exhaustive and independent investigation” into the process against these participants in the 11J demonstrations.
Likewise, it considers that the crimes for which the detainees were accused, including contempt and resistance, are “vague” figures and considers it a violation of due process that those arrested were prosecuted in military courts.
Neither the “detainees nor their families have a copy of the arrest warrants or preventive detention orders”
In its conclusions, the GTDA accepted PD’s version that neither the “detainees nor their families have a copy of the arrest warrants or preventive detention orders.” The group indicated that the Cuban Government did not respond to the request made to include its position in the report initiated as a result of PD’s complaint.
In this regard, the organization stated in a statement that, by not responding, “the regime (…) tacitly agreed to the arguments and evidence presented by Prisoners Defenders.”
The complainant organization stated, as stated in the pair of opinions of the United Nations organization, that the arrests were made “without a court order” and that many of the detainees suffered “long periods of forced disappearance and incommunicado detention (in some cases, up to 40 days) without access to legal defense.”
Precisely in terms of forced disappearance, the ranking in which Cuba is placed after these rulings is striking. Since 2012, Prisoners Defenders has processed 193 urgent actions before the UN related to the Island, so that the country is in fourth place, only behind Mexico, Iraq and Colombia. With an “essential particularity,” the NGO points out: “While in these countries forced disappearances occur as a consequence of mafias, in Cuba the only mafia that causes forced disappearance is the Government itself.”
In this regard, PD gives as an example the case of Daisel González Álvarez, one of those detained after 11J “without judicial protection” and without “technical, legal and independent defense throughout the criminal process, except for jurists appointed by the State”, which they point out as “especially serious.” At this time, he is missing, “without any confirmation that he has left the country or any immigration record that proves it.”
According to news published in various media last year, the young man left the Island on a boat that left from Güira de Melena, Artemisa, and disappeared upon arriving in Florida. However, this version, Prisoners Defenders asserts, “has been denied by his own family, who point out that he finally gave up on that idea.”
In reality, he concludes, “there is no verifiable information about his whereabouts, and State Security has stopped looking for him and shows no interest in clarifying his situation, a highly worrying indicator.”
With the 49 9/11 cases examined, in any case, the Island is already the country with the most arbitrary detentions since 2019, according to the UN, with a total of 93, and “the only one,” says PD, which has been condemned in three opinions with “more than 10 victims.” Cuba, Türkiye and Nicaragua are, in this order, the only three countries in the world with the most mass sentences of this type.
In its opinion, the GTDA, “with these new 49 cases, places Cuba as the first country in the world for arbitrary detention since 2019, with 93 cases between 2019 and 2025” and “the only one” that has been convicted in three opinions with “more than 10 victims.”
In that sense, PD regretted that in Cuba “prison is a tool of social discipline. Detention and prison are punishments, but also recurring intimidating messages to society.”
In addition to detailing the current situation of all the cases examined, the organization’s report includes the names, surnames and positions of “repressors and agents of the regime” – including defense lawyers at the service of the State – involved in 66 of the cases examined by the GTDA.
