Javier Larrondo: "Citizens must be defended from the mistreatment we have seen in Cuba"
Javier Larrondo, representative of Prisoners Defenders in Spain, was on Capital Radio's Atalayar on Monday to talk about the report they have made on the arrests in the Cuban country during the latest protests.
We have heard this week that you have increased the number of complaints to the United Nations for what we can call "forced disappearances" to almost 200, following the protests that have been taking place in Cuba for the last week or so. First and foremost, what is known about these people? It is not known whether these disappearances have been cleared up in any way.
We are still working on that. There are a few dozen people who are being released who have been in a situation of enforced disappearance for days, depending on when they were released, but yes, the bulk of the list is still unaccounted for. The circumstance in Cuba is not that there are 187 disappearances, we had a list of 187 when we started documenting, but right now we have an extravagant list that would be more extensive. Also, I have to confess something that is happening, the regime has cut off the internet in all of Cuba and they have all the activists who are the point of distribution of information very limited and many of them are among the thousands of detainees. The estimate we are making from NGOs is that there are thousands of detainees and hundreds of people who are being processed in trials that are police processes called atestado directo, which they want to make it look as if it were a trial, but it is not. It is not a trial because not even the right to defence is guaranteed, nor does the prosecutor have to appear. The court asks the accused at the hearing without knowing what he is accused of and does not even see the indictment. At the moment there are hundreds of people who are being prosecuted with sentences of between three months and four years in prison for crimes of public disorder and incitement to crime, all of which, let's remember, is for demonstrating.
When Díaz-Canel was asked about what will happen to those who are arbitrarily detained, he assured that they will have "the application of the law in its just measure, respecting due process". What does this sound like?
I'll outline the respect for due process and the guarantees offered by the Penal Code in a couple of paragraphs to give you an idea. We are talking, for example, that Article 135 of the Penal Code says that "if you stop working for the State, when you are working abroad, you have eight years in prison". In articles 72 to 84 they talk about "pre-delinquent sentence, in which a person is sentenced to prison without a crime", that's why it's called pre-delinquent, because otherwise it would be criminal and they also define it, "if you are observed to be behaving contrary to socialist morality", well, those are the guarantees. On the other hand, if we go to the Law of Criminal Procedure and we see how the direct report is, which is an express trial, which is not even a trial, it is a joke, simply the policeman with a police witness calls the judge and a hearing is set in 24 hours. The judge, who does not know the case, only knows what the policeman says by word of mouth. The prosecutor doesn't know the case either and is offered to appear or not, and the defence lawyer is not even called. The accused is summoned a few hours before the trial and in the trial itself he is questioned about the case without him knowing absolutely nothing about what he is accused of. The judge acts as a prosecutor, as a lawyer and as a court, and immediately gives him a sentence that is oral because he does not hand it over in writing, this is allowed by the law of criminal prosecution and at that moment he goes to prison for four, five or six years. The limit for these sentences is that each of the sentences for the crimes involved does not exceed one year in prison, but if you are accused of three different crimes you go to prison for three years, if there are four crimes, four years. These are the procedural guarantees of the Cuban penal system.
What can we ask of the European Union, what can we ask of the international community to intercede in these cases? Can these kinds of complaints from outside have an effect?
It certainly has an effect. If Camila Acosta is free, it is only because the Cuban government has a lot to lose by keeping her in prison. The international pressure on a government that has such a weak economy and an absolutely degraded ideological weakness that any initiative, from the social democratic left like the PSOE, French or European socialist parties in general, the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Vital Foreign Service, the United Nations, Norway, Canada; all these bodies have a radical capacity to influence the Cuban government to protect people, so their position is very important. It is also a delicate issue because if the European Commission launches aggressive words, it can detract from their power to negotiate important things about what is happening with the activists, so they have to maintain a balance. What you can't do is what Josep Borrell did by saying that Trump is to blame, you can't do that because it's mixing the sheep with the goats. We are talking here about an issue of fundamental and basic human rights, and we cannot taint it with other issues that are of general policy. Right now what we have is a regime that is acting like a criminal and we must focus on that.
Complete deprivation of people's freedom and life, they say that there is a process and there is no process, these are false truths, therefore they are lies. The international community should act, is there any chance that the international community can take action?
I think so. Let's see, I think that in the PSOE, for example, which is important at the European level, there is an atmosphere of great repulsion towards what is happening. What is happening is that there is a kind of sense of prudence that I think is excessive. Prudence can be a good thing, but prudence should not be tainted by mixing the sheep with the goats. You can be diplomatic, but you cannot hide the truth, because submitting to the dictator by hiding the truth is a mortgage for tomorrow. So one may not use the strongest words, but one can use the truth at all times. I hope that the PSOE will gradually get back on track because otherwise we are lost. Moreover, social democracy in Spain needs to detach itself from these regimes in order to grow as the right has detached itself from Hitler, Franco and Pinochet. You won't see anyone from the PP clearly defending Pinochet, nor defending Franco, they can't because they know that is a wasteland and the left has to do the same. That is where I see possibilities and the European Commission and countries like Canada, Norway and the United Nations must give stronger responses.
The PSOE and the Spanish government can start by calling what is a dictatorship a dictatorship, if you call Raúl Castro a dictator you are not calling him anything that he is not. I don't think that this harms relations between Spain and Cuba.
For me these things are not the key issues.
But in Cuba there are no elections, there is no voting....
Just as there are surrogates for trials, there are also surrogates for elections. But that is something that the opposition parties should say. In my case, as a human rights activist, I am not asking the PSOE in this case to qualify, I am simply asking them to call things by their name. We are concerned because there are thousands of arrests in Cuba, the mistreatment that we have seen towards citizens must be defended and this can be defended, nothing more is needed. If you use clear language, you are defending the interests of the people. The Cuban government is torturing its people and you cannot allow the Cuban government to do these things at the same time as you are negotiating, you have to try to strike a balance between the two.
