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Just before Christmas, Cuban authorities handed decades-long sentences to July 11 protesters

By Nora Gámez Torres, Miami Herald
Published: December 29, 2021, 8:43am

In the middle of holiday festivities last week, the families of some Cubans who took to the streets to protest against the island’s communist government in July received dreadful news: Their loved ones would spend decades in jail.

In a crackdown that resembles the so-called Primavera Negra, Black Spring, when on Fidel Castro’s order 75 dissidents received lengthy sentences in 2003, several demonstrators were convicted on charges of sedition and sentenced to between 15 and 30 years, according to the activist group Justicia 11J.

Members of Justicia 11J told the Miami Herald that they verified with family members that Dayron Martín was sentenced to 30 years; father and daughter Freddy and Katia Beirut to 20 years; Walnier Luis Aguilar Rivera to 23 years and Elier Padrón to 15 years in trials that took place during Christmas week.

Many more sentences are still expected to come, as 55 protesters were tried between Dec. 20 and 24 in Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Matanzas, Artemisa and the Isle of Youth. One hundred and eight were tried the previous week, the group said.

The sentences were given verbally to the protesters and their family members on the last day of their trials, and the group is waiting for the courts to issue the final ruling documents to produce a full report, said Salomé García Bacallao, an activist working with Justicia 11J. The group is working with legal aid organization Cubalex to document the arrests and trials linked to the summer protest.

“Of a total of 1,332 people arrested in connection with the July 11 protests, at least 710 remain in detention,” Justicia 11J said in a statement. “Of the 574 people who have been released, many are awaiting trial under bail or house arrest. A total of 141 people face sedition charges or have already been indicted on those charges.” Another 38 are accused of sabotage, the statement added.

Activists and family members believe the Beiruts and others who protested in La Guinera, a poor neighborhood in Havana, were given such harsh sentences because they were key witnesses to the only death reported during the protests, that of Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, who was allegedly shot by a police officer, according to statements, videos and a trove of legal documents published by Madrid-based Cuban Observatory for Human Rights.

The day following a three-day group trial that started on Dec. 20, the court informed the Beiruts of their sentences, said Zoila Rodriguez Marzo, the mother of Katia Beirut. They were tried along with 15 other demonstrators.

“In what time were they able to decide the sentences of each of those persons?” Rodríguez asked before calling the trial “a theater performance” in a video published by news outlet Cubanet.

“When my daughter gets out of prison, how old will I be? I am about to turn 60,” she said, crying. “How many years will her 9-year old boy be suffering because his mom will be locked up for 20 years? Why? It is unfair.”

Authorities also denied an appeal by Sissi Abascal, a 23-year-old member of the opposition group Ladies in White who was sentenced to six years in prison for participating in the July 11 protests, Cuban independent news outlet 14ymedio reported.

Fathers and mothers of the young Cubans detained have been grieving on social media.

Barbara Farrat, the mother of 17-year-old Jonathan Torres Farrat, who is in prison waiting to be indicted, said on a video published on Facebook that authorities threatened neighbors who signed a letter addressed to Cuban leader Miguel Diaz-Canel calling for his release. She was briefly detained on Christmas Eve for speaking out on social media and going on a hunger strike to protest his incarceration.

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“Look at how I live,” she said, showing a deteriorated ceiling in her home. “Nobody is paying me; I do this for my son Jonathan. Do you want to call me a worm? Do it; I don’t care,” she said, referring to the authorities’ accusation that she paid neighbors to sign the letter.

Farrat said she would again start another fast on Dec. 30 and that she didn’t fear the government’s retaliation. “I know people would defend me,” she said.

In a widely shared video, the father of Aguilar Rivera, 21, who was sentenced to 23 years on sedition charges, said the court dismissed documents showing his mental disability.

“They brought false witnesses, they made up things, they made up charges to prosecute and incriminate all those people,” said Luis Wilber Aguilar. “That is unfair. They are not hurting only those accused, they are destroying an entire society, a people suffering all this. They are harming the people. Who is responsible for so much evil?”

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