After Hurricane Ian left Cuba in the dark, protestors took to the streets. Now the government is set to charge them with crimes against nature and human rights violations.
As the world celebrated the end of the island’s deadly and destructive embargo on Cuba, protestors staged a sit-in and demanded an end to their imprisonment.
The protest was peaceful, with the exception of a brawl breaking out when police charged protestors with sticks, hammers and pepper spray.
After the incident, protestors were cuffed, taken to jail and put in solitary confinement. They are now facing charges of crimes against nature and human rights violations, according to a criminal complaint filed in May that was made public this week.
The criminal complaint accuses the protestors of breaking laws related to “the destruction of public property with the use of fire and explosives, and the destruction, modification, and use of public roads and structures for purposes of access to places of public access, and damage to water and other natural resources,” among other violations.
The charges appear to arise from a June protest in Havana that lasted 10 days. After several days of protests in the streets, the government declared war on the protesters and began what it called “preventive attacks,” including the use of tear gas and a number of arrests.
The protestors who took to the streets, however, maintained the sit-in despite the fact that the state charged them (with crimes against nature and human rights violations), and were detained, as an act of retaliation.
The people of our own revolution are being persecuted and deprived of dignity in the most brutal way in the history of the revolution. We are being attacked and denied freedoms and human rights. We are not a bunch of criminals, we are defending our freedom and dignity. We are the last defense of liberty! We are going on a hunger strike to protest against the new criminal charges filed against our organization.
– Crescia
The criminal complaint against the protestors was brought by the Cuban Commission for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (Comisiones de Promoción y Defensa de los Derechos Humanos y la Democr