U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday reiterated his call to the Cuban government to release some 700 people still in prison there for participating in mass protests. protests of July 11, 2021Havana rejected the comment, calling it “cynical propaganda” by Washington.
He release Blinken, three years after the unusual protests, calls for reflection “on the courage and resilience of the Cuban people” who “bravely took to the streets to demand respect for their human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
The text indicated that the “unanimous” call of the Cuban people in Havana, the provincial capitals, and even in rural areas, was a clear call for a profound change in “justice and a government that listens to its citizens.”
The reactions of the Cuban government
Shortly afterward, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez criticized what he called “lies and cynical propaganda” from Washington in a post on social media network X, in which he did not directly mention the statement but referred to slander uttered by State Department officials.
“These days, US politicians and the State Department are determined to slander #Cuba in a desperate search for electoral support from the anti-Cuban mafia. With their lies and cynical propaganda, they seek to justify the cruel and absurd policy of economic suffocation of the Cuban people,” Rodríguez wrote in a post which was accompanied by a Cuban flag and was replicated by the official account of the island’s Foreign Ministry.
More than 700 detainees
The US has said it is still concerned about the situation About 700 people remain in prison Cubans “unjustly detained” after peaceful protests, according to Blinken’s statement.
“We reiterate our call for his immediate and unconditional release, as well as for the release of all political prisoners held in Cuba. The Cuban people will not be silenced, nor will our commitment to support them in their search for a brighter and freer future,” the statement added.
Cuban-born Republican Senator Marco Rubio said in a message in spanish in X, that after three years “things have gotten worse inside Cuba.”
Rubio pointed to the “extremely long sentences” for many of those detained and referred to the “disrupted” economy and the forced migration of Cubans seeking to leave the country, in the midst of one of the most serious economic and humanitarian crises in recent decades.
“Marxism doesn’t work, dictatorship doesn’t work and they are destroying a country that deserves freedom,” said the Republican senator from Florida, who is at the top of the list of candidates for vice president of former President Donald Trump, who is seeking to return to the White House.
Shortly after the messages from Blinken and Rubio, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, criticized in X what he described as the “anti-Cuban machinery” that “insists on bringing the Cuba issue into the US electoral campaign, taking advantage of the corruption and lies involved in the process.”
“It is part of the persistent hostility of imperialism against a truly independent, peaceful and supportive nation,” Díaz-Canel wrote in X, without directly referring to people or events.
The non-governmental organization Justice 11J documented 1,887 protesters arrested Two years after the protestsOf these, some 793 remain in prison. More than 900 people have been sentenced and nearly a hundred have already gone into exile.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel’s government has called detained protesters among the thousands who took to the streets across the country to demand improvements in health care and solutions to the economic problems afflicting the socialist island “counterrevolutionaries.”
Havana maintains that the protests were financed and supported from abroad to undermine its hold on power.
The NGO Prisoners Defenders counts At least 1,117 political prisoners are held in Cuba. The Cuban government considers them “mercenaries” financed by foreign powers and often tries them for common, non-political crimes.
Activists denounce violations before human rights commission
This Thursday, on the third anniversary of the protests in Cuba, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), part of the Organization of American States (OAS) system, held a special hearing on the situation of those “arbitrarily deprived of liberty for political reasons.”
Commissioner Stuardo Ralón said that the IACHR maintains its condemnation of the Cuban government’s “repressive actions” against protesters who took to the streets peacefully.
The rapporteur reiterated that there is no justification for the continued repression of those who participated in the protests, as well as of the relatives of those detained, three years later.
The director of Justice 11J, Camila Rodríguez, said that to date there are 1,584 detainees as part of the State’s repression against Cubans who participated in the events of three years ago.
Hundreds remain in detention, while others have been released from prison to house arrest. Prisoners of conscience in Cuba, he added, suffer greatly from repression within prisons, in a penitentiary system with underlying problems.
According to the organization’s data, 240 of the detainees have reported a constant level of harassment within the prison “for having participated in the 2021 protests.”
The IACHR urged the Cuban State “to listen to the demands of civil society” and the international community to release political prisoners, and said that the Commission will continue working to make the situation on the Caribbean island visible.
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