The trial of 33 demonstrators opened Monday, January 31 for a week in court in Havana (Cuba). Six of them are under 18 years old. All are appearing for “sedition”, in other words for having defied the communist regime during the demonstrations of July 11, 2021. The crowd then gathered to cries of “Freedom” and “We are hungry” in the 10-October district, in the Cuban capital.
A few thousand people only, it seems little in a country of 11 million inhabitants but it was unprecedented for sixty years. A few incidents then broke out with the police in front of a neighborhood bakery, the Toyo. Since then, these demonstrators have been nicknamed “the Toyo group”.
Until the end of January, the number of people arrested during the clashes was unknown. The prosecutor’s office has finally lifted the veil: 790 people are in pre-trial detention, including 55 minors, and 172 other people have already been sentenced in the greatest discretion. This time, social networks and protest movements against the regime learned of the trials and made them public. Families of the defendants therefore tried to gather around the court on Monday but they were dispersed and the Internet was cut throughout the neighborhood.
In total, 55 minors are therefore prosecuted. They are all aged between 16 and 18 because in Cuba the age of criminal majority starts at 16. But their conditions of detention are in contradiction with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Cuba has signed and ratified. In particular, it provides that any detained child may receive visits from his family. According to several testimonies, this is not the case. Many of these minors have been prevented from seeing their families. Some were victims of torture, such as fingernails being pulled out. Others, sick, could not see a doctor. All face up to 23 years in prison.
If there are many young people among those arrested, it is because the protest movement was initiated mainly by artists and musicians, especially rappers. With a clip that for almost a year has been a hit in Cuba: Patria y vida, “homeland and life” in French, an ironic reference to the Castro slogan “Homeland or death”. The clip has been viewed 10 million times.
These trials are a sign that the regime has not given up on repression. With the coming to power of Miguel Diaz Canal and the end of the Castro family dynasty, one might have thought last year that the regime was going to liberalize. There have been some reforms, but basically, the regime remains the same: contestation prohibited. Cuba is experiencing extreme economic difficulties because the pandemic has combined with the maintenance of the American embargo, but the regime is holding on despite everything. Power obviously accuses Washington of orchestrating all protest movements from a distance. Fidel and Raul Castro are no longer there, but Castroism has survived them.