The magnitude of the sentences to those charged for the mobilizations of last July reported by the Supreme Court of Cuba has caused indignation and surprise.
It is difficult to understand that participation in the demonstrations that Cuba experienced, in some cases with violent incidents, is going to ruin the lives of 129 young people, although the court has not specified the age of those convicted.
48 sentences do not go below 10 years in prison, another 25 sentence to sentences of between 15 and 19 years, and even 31 more people receive sentences that will take half the life of the prisoners, between 20 and 30 years.
They are accused of "subversion of the constitutional order", instigated by foreigners.
The distribution of sentences betrays that he seeks a social lesson, instructive and allegedly exemplary.
Any mobilization of protest, dissidence or even unrest on the island must know that it is exposed to falling under the criminal classification of sedition and the risk of carrying sentences for life that lack the slightest legal logic.
There are no precedents in Cuba for such a punishment.
The sentences against the demonstrators in the so-called Maleconazo in 1994, for public disorder, were hundreds, but almost all the sentences did not exceed one year in prison.
The current disproportion is the daughter of desperation, but not only of the population, but also of the Government if it has to respond in this way to social protest.
The worst thing is that these sentences also lack political logic if any power in Havana aspires to build better living conditions for its suffocated population.
The protests and internal dissidence are not going to be strangled with repressive measures.
The Cuban judiciary has defended the actions of the courts through a statement by the National Union of Jurists of Cuba that warns that, for every judge who is harassed or criticized, the magistrates will find "tens of thousands throughout and wide, ready to change the toga and the dais if necessary for the rifle and the trench”.
Social networks have once again become allies in denouncing the atrocity, and this time their voice has formally taken shape in a
Manifesto against silence, for justice
.
It is signed by 40 intellectuals, singers and artists who disqualify the sentences and encourage the Government to rectify them through amnesties (or other formulas).
The mobilizations, according to the document, were born as civil disobedience against "government mismanagement" of the economy and the "authoritarian ways" of the Executive against sociopolitical conflicts.
No exorbitant sentence has ever been able to reverse a social malaise.
Nor to silence a dissidence harassed today as in the worst of times: desperately.