Prison sentences of 6 to 30 years for 128 July 11 protesters in Cuba

A group of 128 Cubans who participated in the demonstrations on July 11 and 12, 2021 in two neighborhoods of Havana, considered the most violent of those days, were sentenced to between 6 and 30 years in prison, the Supreme Court reported Wednesday.

In the trials, held between December 14 and February 3, 129 Cubans were tried who participated in the protests in the diez de octubre and La Güinera neighborhoods, “accused of committing and causing serious disturbances and vandalism,” the Supreme Court (TSP) said in a statement published on its website.

Of the 129 defendants, 128 were found guilty of crimes of sedition and theft, and two of them, Dayron Martín Rodríguez and Miguel Páez Estiven, received sentences of 30 years in prison, the TSP statement added, which did not specify the age of those convicted.

According to the statement, both groups flipped vehicles and patrols and threw stones, bottles and Molotov cocktails at police facilities and agents of the Ministry of the Interior, causing “injury to others and serious property damage”.

In La Güinera, the only deceased was killed in the historical demonstrations that broke out in nearly 50 Cuban cities shouting “Liberty” and “We are hungry”.

Dayron Martín Rodríguez, 36, “started recording that day to send his father the video”, but in the middle of the crowd and feeling the rain of stones he fell and lost his phone, his mother Esmeralda Rodríguez told AFP.

For her part, Zoila Rodríguez, the mother of Katia Beirut, 36, commented that her daughter and her husband began to be tried for “a crime of public disorder” and ended up doing so for “sedition.”

- “Exemplary effect” -

The prosecution says in the file that Katia recorded with her phone to “publish everything that was happening and thus get more people to join them”.

Another 125 people involved in both protests were sentenced to between 6 and 26 years of imprisonment, one to four years of correctional labour without internment, and another was acquitted. Everyone will be able to appeal their judgments to the Supreme Court.

The government reported on January 25 that 790 people, including 55 under the age of 18, were indicted for the July demonstrations. And another 172 had been convicted so far.

But according to Justice 11J, a Cuban group that keeps a record of cases, 1,442 people were arrested, of whom 756 remain in prison.

Laritza Diversent, director of the Miami-based human rights NGO Cubalex, told AFP that the rulings that were heard on Wednesday “have that exemplary effect on the rest of society, considering that Havana is one of the most difficult provinces to govern” and where there were the most protests and arrests during the outbreak of july.

The activist criticized the penalties for “the crime of sedition, when we know that the protests were totally spontaneous and that in any demonstration harangues are normal to others and that they ask people to join (...) that should in no case be qualified as sedition”.

The Cuban government has blamed the United States for being behind the July 11 demonstrations, the biggest protests ever recorded on the island since the triumph of the revolution in 1959.

For its part, Washington has insistently called for the release of these prisoners.

“As the regime in #Cuba is trying dozens of more #11J protesters on unfair charges this week, we know that the harshness of the sentences is being used to make Cubans afraid,” the US embassy in Havana wrote on Twitter on Monday.

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