(Havana) Around thirty family members of demonstrators imprisoned in Cuba asked the Cuban Parliament on Friday to approve an amnesty law to allow the release of their loved ones.
According to official figures, some 500 Cubans were sentenced to up to 25 years in prison for participating in anti-government protests on July 11 and 12, 2021, but NGOs and the US embassy on the island estimate that there are more, up to a thousand.
Thousands of people took to the streets across the country shouting “Freedom”, “We are hungry”.
Wilber Aguilera Bravo, whose son was sentenced to 12 years in prison, submitted a letter to Parliament on Friday in which the demonstrators’ relatives ask the institution to “launch(r) the procedures […] so that an amnesty law can be adopted.”
“This means that we must recognize that there was no crime in manifesting the desire for democratic change expressed by citizens,” indicates the letter of which AFP had a copy.
The signatories, initially 36 people, emphasize that they “suffer persecution and harassment” from the state security services and the police, to “punish them for defending” their imprisoned loved ones.
The families of imprisoned demonstrators regularly denounce the police surveillance and pre-trial detentions to which they are subject.
“Our rights of association and peaceful assembly, as well as the right to freedom of expression, are hampered” by “arbitrary arrests, interrogations, criminal investigation procedures, warning letters, methods of systematic surveillance and violations of freedom of movement,” the document adds.
The signatories emphasize that they will continue to “defend those who should not have spent a single day in prison”.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights sent a letter to Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez in early January to remind the Cuban government that it has several legal avenues to free political prisoners.
Among these legal avenues are amnesty, pardon, conditional release, alternative sentences to prison, underlines the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights, an NGO based in Madrid.
The United States, the Catholic Church and the European Union have repeatedly called for the release of imprisoned protesters.