The disappearance of the criminalized pre-criminal dangerous behaviors —which led to the imprisonment of thousands of Cubans for decades—can be considered the most positive element of the Criminal Procedure Law approved in 2021 and a step forward within the Cuban legal system. With its entry into force, in 2022, hundreds of people who were imprisoned without having committed any crime were released, based on mere suspicion. Two years later, the regime takes two steps back and uses a new and more effective legal tool to imprison Cubans who do not work They don’t even study.
In the past, “it was easy to falsify a dangerousness file, due to the lack of effective control by prosecutors and judges over the veracity of the information they contained,” former Cuban judge Edel González Jiménez explains to DIARIO DE CUBA.
Before the approval of the new Criminal Procedure Law, it was enough for the head of the Sector, officers of the Technical Investigative Police, State Security, the so-called “social prevention groups” and elderly combatants said that the person had no employment relationship or that he did not have a permanent job, that he did not attend the activities organized by political and mass organizations or was not integrated into them, and that he was suspected of any crime.
“The defense’s allegations were dismissed and the person was sentenced to a security measure. The most applicable was confinement in a prison,” recalls González Jiménez.
The former judge points out that in this way “the principle of legality was violated, since “No person can be reported, investigated, tried and convicted for non-criminal conduct, but for a specific fact that is included as a crime in the Penal Code,” and the principle of presumption of innocence, “since the police and prosecutorial authorities, while they suspect that a person is the perpetrator of crime(s), cannot order detention or interrogation unless they accumulate sufficient indications or minimum proof of guilt; in Therefore, the court should refrain from judging a case without evidence and, failing that, order an acquittal and the immediate release of the affected person.”
But now, The Cuban regime can defend itself from future criticism, stating that these citizens are not imprisoned for not working or studying. —which are not obligations, according to the Constitution—, but for incurring the crime of disobedience, typified in Article 189 of the Penal Code.
In the last month, The official media has attacked people who do not study or work in Cuba and has presented them as potential criminals. and even guilty of the acute economic crisis that is drowning the country.
In the broadcast of the propaganda program We make Cuba On May 24, the population was even called upon to denounce those citizens.
Four days before, official newspaper Granma dedicated an article to inform (and justify) about the use of the crime of disobedience to imprison those Cubans, who refuse to work for poverty wages.
This new mechanism that the regime uses to send those who do not study or work to prison was approved in July 2023.
On July 24 of last year—less than two years after the president of the Supreme People’s Court (TSP) of Cuba, Rubén Remigio Ferro, announced on the television program Round table the disappearance of pre-criminal danger—the Governing Council of the TSP itself approved, in a session chaired by Remigio Ferro, Opinion No. 472/2023, which consists of a twisted reinterpretation of the crime of disobedience, provided for in the Penal Code, to imprison Cubans disengaged from work or study.
The Opinion recalls that the crime of disobedience “establishes, in section 1, as a typical action, that of failing to comply with the decisions of authorities and public officials or the orders of agents or auxiliaries, issued in the exercise of their functions, the that will be made known to the recipient in an express, strict and clear manner; consequently, the integration of that figure will be determined by the proven decision of the person to disobey the order or decision notified (…)”.
“Non-compliance and repeated failure to comply with the measures established by the authorities based on prophylactic workaimed at reversing the transgressive action that the person incurs, and the warnings derived from non-compliance with those adopted, give rise to the crime of disobedience,” the Opinion states.
In mid-January, the official profile “Fuerza de Pueblo” announced that The MININT held prophylactic meetings with Cubans whom it considered “potential criminals” to “foster” their “reflective capacity” by giving them “the possibility of changing and inserting themselves into society.”
Opinion 472 allows that these people, if they fail to comply with the warnings or measures ordered for them to work or study, can be imprisoned.
The prison sentences for the crime of disobedience in Cuba are six months to one year in prison.or a fine of one hundred to three hundred installments, or both.
In the aforementioned program We make Cuba It was reported that between January and April 2024, 97% of those accused of disobedience in Cuban courts were punished, and only 3% were acquitted. 67% of those found guilty received prison sentences.
In practice, Opinion 472 encourages putting people before an ultimatum: Either you work for a salary that won’t be enough to eat for a week or I’ll put you in prison.
It is striking that sector heads and members of social prevention groups can issue warnings about activities that are not mandatory, as recognized in the aforementioned program. We make Cuba the chief prosecutor of the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Havana, Lisnay Mederos Torres.
The official admitted that the Constitution does not say that working is mandatory, but stated that it does “enhance work as a fundamental source of income.
Mederos Torres forgot that In Cuba, this source of income, in the midst of the acute inflation generated by the Government’s failed policies, is far from guaranteeing a decent life.
“The opinion is contradictory with the established legal system, as it legitimizes and is valid police demands that cannot have any other significance than that of a council. Decisions like these are only explained and have a place in a model of justice subordinated to coercive and political power of the State and has no other purpose than to reduce crimes at any cost and keep the growing exercise of citizen freedoms stopped (threatened),” says González Jiménez.
Besides, While imprisoning ordinary Cubans for not working or studying, the regime violates the constitutional right to work of opponents, activists and citizens who openly dissent.
One of the most recent complaints of this type of rights violations was made in April by activist Ienelis Delgado Cue, known as the Mambisa Agramontina. The young woman from Camagüey said in April that she was expelled from a center where she worked as a cleaning assistant, due to pressure from State Security.
Ironic as it may be, it is likely that with her and others dissidents who are deprived of the right to work, the Cuban regime will now carry out “prophylactic work” and then imprison themnot because of his political activism, but because of disobedience.
