Providing context
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| Iván Michel
Ponce de León beaten up by police on April 19th and died of his injuries |
Police officers in Old Havana brutally beat Cuban citizen Iván Michel
Ponce de León on April 19, 2019. Iván Michel died of his injuries eight days
later on April 27th.There was little coverage on this extrajudicial killing. Conservative Spanish newspaper ABC
covered the story on May 1, 2019 and a couple of opposition platforms
reported on it a day later.
Cuba is not the United States. In the United States of America there is an independent press, an independent judiciary, and when
the police kill a citizen it is documented and the subject of public conversations and political debates.
A totalitarian government exists in Cuba. The Castro regime controls the judiciary, owns the press, and recognizes only the communist party as legal. Independent civil society is marginal and repressed.
Police killings of civilians are systematically covered up, and accurate data is unavailable. Worse yet, when the news breaks out from the numerous hurdles presented by the Castro regime it gets limited coverage, if any, in the international press.
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| Alejandro Pupo Echemendía died from police beating on August 9, 2018 |
Less than a year ago Alejandro Pupo Echemendía, a 46 year old Cuban national was also beaten to death by the Revolutionary National Police on August 9, 2018 while he was in their custody. Antúnez also posted the testimony of Elizama Mujica Cabrera, the wife of the victim.
Cuban dissident and former political prisoner, Juan Wilfredo Soto (age 46) was beaten and arrested by the Cuban Revolutionary Police on Thursday, May 5,
2011 while protesting the dictatorship. He died early on Sunday May 8,
2011 as a result of the injuries suffered at the hands of the police.
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| Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia died three days after beating by political police |
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was a human rights
defender who was unjustly imprisoned in the Spring of 2003 and was
tortured by Cuban prison officials and state security agents over the
next six years and ten months. He died on February 23, 2010 following a prolonged hunger strike, aggravated by prison guards refusing him water in an effort to break his spirit.
Orlando had been the victim of numerous beatings by prison officials while in custody.
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| Orlando Zapata Tamayo was repeatedly beaten by prison officials |
According to Amnesty International on October 20, 2003 Orlando Zapata Tamayo was dragged along the floor of Combinado del Este Prison by prison officials after he requested medical attention, leaving his back full of lacerations. Orlando managed to smuggle a letter out following another brutal beating it was published in April of 2004:
"My
dear brothers in the internal opposition in Cuba. I have many things to
say to you, but I did not want to do it with paper and ink, because I
hope to go to you one day when our country is free without the Castro
dictatorship. Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so
that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that
are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]."
This is a partial accounting taken from memory. Ivan and Alejandro were not political dissidents, but Juan Wilfredo and
Orlando Zapata Tamayo were. Nevertheless all three died as a result of gross mistreatment by regime officials.
Shouldn't government officials in Cuba also be held accountable for the deaths they are responsible for?
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