Cuba adopts a new, more repressive penal code against forms of protest
HAVANA, May 15th Nearly a year after unprecedented demonstrations in Cuba, the power in place has just had a penal code approved which favors the repression of demonstrators and opponents.Cuba adopted on Sunday a new Penal Code aimed at “protecting” the socialist system, in particular by punishing demonstrations, ten months after the unprecedented revolts of the summer of 2021.
This new code, approved during the day by the parliament, “protects the interests of the State and the people”, declared the president of the Supreme Court, Rubén Remigio Ferro, presenting the bill.
It punishes in particular political activities on the Internet, demonstrations and the foreign financing of certain activities.
A text that completes the new Constitution
Barely published on the site of the general prosecutor’s office in March, the project had aroused rejection among the opposition to the communist government.
“The new Penal Code is a new twist of the regime to intensify repression against citizens,” said René Gomez Manzano, president of Corriente Agramontista, the oldest organization of Cuban dissident lawyers.
This text is part of a series of laws, such as those on food sovereignty, the Family Code and personal data, intended to complement the new Constitution approved in 2019.
It was adopted less than a year after the historic demonstrations of July 11 and 12, 2021, unprecedented in sixty years of revolution, which left one dead and dozens injured. More than 1,300 people were arrested, many of whom later received heavy sentences, up to 30 years in prison.
