Panelists at International conference on police oversight in Latin America and the Caribbean asked: What about police killings in Cuba?

In a police state who provides oversight of police abuse?

An international conference looking at police oversight in Latin America and the Caribbean between January 18-22, 2021 organized by Amnesty International Américas, Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), and the Human Rights Centre University of Essex. It is called Police in the Spotlight. Hopefully, the conference took a look at the lack of police oversight in Cuba.

@ErikaGuevaraR Please check out this thread highlighting some recent cases of police abuse in Cuba. With the current dictatorship there is a lack of police oversight, & need for international oversight. https://t.co/7hsmEk5i8f

— Center for Free Cuba (@cubacenter) January 21, 2021

Cubalex, a human rights NGO founded in Cuba now in the diaspora, reported that "Luis Alberto Sánchez Valdés (alias Lilipi) died on the night of January 2, 2021 at the Abel Santamaría Cuadrado clinical teaching hospital, in the province of Pinar del Río, after an "exchange" with police officers. Various versions circulated about the cause of his death. An official version claims it was an accident and another claims it was due to the use of force and police violence. On January 5, 2021, the weekly El Guerrillero de Pinar del Río published an official note from the Ministry of the Interior on its website stating that Luis Alberto suddenly fell off his feet and hit his head on the pavement."

Luis Alberto Sánchez Valdés (alias Lilipi)

Cubalex shared information in the official note with Yasser Rojas who collaborates with an organization specialized in medical research. Regarding the injuries, he affirmed that a fall by Luis Alberto's own feet is not enough to cause the injuries that are described in the government's version of events.

Rojas "assures that from a kinematic or biomechanical point of view it is unlikely that a hemorrhage at the subarachnoid level of such severity would occur due to a fall of his own feet, taking into account the height of the deceased (approximately two meters) and the impact speed." The fluid-filled space around the brain between the arachnoid membrane and the pia mater, through which major blood vessels pass is called the subarachnoid.

Dr. Alexander Raúl Pupo Casas also commented on the injuries at the request of Cubalex. "He assures that the MININT version is not credible. He agrees that it is possible to kill a person in a few seconds from a fall, if he receives a blow to the head or the upper vertebrae of the spine (cervical). He adds that an injury to the skull of the middle meningeal artery could still cause death within minutes from an epidural hematoma. However, he considers that it is not common for the injuries detailed in the official note to be the result of a fall to the floor."

A pro-regime Youtube channel presented testimonies backing up the official version alleging that Luis Alberto Sánchez Valdés had fallen due to an epileptic seizure on the morning of December 8, 2020, and that the questions raised about his death were a smear job against the dictatorship.

However there have been other deaths that the regime has found more challenging to obfuscate.

Hansel E. Hernández

For example, on June 24, 2020 in Guanabacoa, Cuba 27 year old unarmed Black Cuban, Hansel E. Hernández was shot in the back and killed by the police. The official version claims that he was stealing pieces and accessories from a bus stop when he was spotted by two Revolutionary National Police (PNR in Spanish). Upon seeing the police Hansel ran away and the officers pursued him nearly two kilometers. PNR claimed that during the pursuit Hansel threw rocks at the officers. Police fired two warning shots and a third in his back killing him. Hansel's body was quickly cremated. This prevented an independent autopsy to verify official claims.

Hansel E. Hernández

On June 25, 2020 a woman, identifying as the young man's aunt, posted on Facebook a photo of the dead youth who, she said, had been the victim of the national revolutionary police a day earlier.

"I feel deep pain for the murder of my nephew Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano committed yesterday morning in La Lima, Guanabacoa (in eastern Havana), by two patrolmen (police)," she wrote. "We, the family members, ask for mercy that this cruel act at the hands of our supposed national security does not go unpunished in any way. Because a police officer, a uniform, does not give the right to murder anyone in such a way. If we know very well that they are trained with personal defense, they must carry spray, tonfas, etc. Why then did they have to resort to their firearm and take a son from a mother, a father, a nephew from their aunt, a brother from their younger sister ... Noting that he was NEVER armed, please, justice."

On June 28, 2020 independent journalist Jorge Enrique Rodríguez was arrested and charged with "Fake news" for reporting on this police killing. The Committee to Protect Journalists has called for Jorge Enrique's immediate release.

Jorge Enrique Rodríguez

Over social media demonstrations were announced for June 30 to protest the killing of Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano. Other journalists in the lead up to the June 30th planned protests were detained or their homes laid siege to in order to stop them reporting on Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano's killing and reactions to his extrajudicial execution.

Secret police began shutting off internet connections, cell phones and arbitrarily detaining those they suspected would take part in peaceful protests. Activists recorded or expressed on social media their intention to take part in protest actions. Some were able to message out when they were grabbed by the police, or their homes surrounded and laid siege by state security and placed under house arrest. Over seventy Cubans were successfully targeted "preventing" the non-violent action.

Meanwhile, the Castro regime launched the equivalent of a #BlueLivesMatter campaign that it called Heroes of the Blue ( #HeroesDeAzul ), but instead of something spontaneous from civil society or a police association this was a systematic campaign of the dictatorship at the national level in Cuba. 

"Heroes of the Blue"

Human Rights Watch nearly a month later on July 28th reported that "Cuban authorities committed numerous rights violations in June 2020 against people organizing a protest over police violence, effectively suppressing the demonstration." 

Cuban dissident Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros died on August 7, 2020 in Cuba while in police custody following a 40 day hunger strike. He had been jailed on false charges in the Kilo 8 prison of Camagüey. His body was quickly cremated by the dictatorship.

Yosvany Aróstegui Armenteros

Yale professor and author Carlos Eire writing in Babalu Blog highlighted Yosvany's untimely passing and placed it in context:

It’s happened again. Another Cuban dissident has died in prison. Strangely, unlike previous hunger-striking political prisoners who received international attention, Yosvany Arostegui was barely noticed in social media and totally ignored by the world’s news outlets. He joins a long list of hunger-strikers who have been pushed to their deaths by the Castro regime. May his self-immolation in prison be the last, and may he rest in peace and eternal freedom.

Exiled Cuban lawyer and human rights defender Laritza Diversent over Facebook wrote:

I feel deep sadness and pain. I imagine how lonely he felt and how convinced he was that he preferred to exhaust his body until it was turned off. His death reminds me of the thousands of people who, in Cuban prisons, use their body to protest against unjust criminal proceedings. It makes me more aware of all the activists who, like Silverio Portal, are locked up as punishment for exercising their rights to free expression, criticize, protest, meet and associate.

On Friday, August 7, State Security contacted the family of prisoner Yosvany Aróstegui Armenteros to inform them that he had died during a hunger strike that he had carried out for 40 days.

Aróstegui Armenteros had been arrested a year earlier and prosecuted for two common crimes for which he pleaded not guilty from the beginning. Before this last strike he had carried out others with the same objective: to demand his freedom.

His brother, Yaudel Aróstegui Armenteros was not allowed to see him.

“Ten days before he died, they called my brother Yaudel Arostegui Armenteros, at the hospital to appear there, when he arrived at Amalia Simoni they told him that my brother was very ill. My brother couldn't see him. A doctor who was there told my brother that the next call they were going to make would not be good, it was because he was going to die. And so it was,” Raidel Aróstegui Armenteros, who lives in exile in the state of Washington, United States, told the Center for a Free Cuba.

According to Raidel, his brother always said he was innocent of the crimes he was accused of. The family hired an attorney who conducted investigations into the case, but a week before the trial, the attorney mysteriously died in a traffic accident.

His brother thought he would be released, but upon receiving the 15-year prison sentence he began a series of hunger strikes."My brother Yosvany Arostegui was a human rights activist. He was always confronting the political police. In Camagüey his actions bothered the political police. He always told me that the day something happened to him that he was going to plant himself in protest. That the day they did something to him, he was going to be planted and that the second Zapata in Camagüey was going to be him. And so it happened. Look how his death was,” he added.

Below is the interview with the Yaudel's brother.

Hopefully, the international conference on police oversight in Latin America and the Caribbean sought creative ways to report on policing in Cuba and the deaths of young black men in their custody. Leaving Cubans to the mercy of a police state now in its seventh decade in power is a human rights failure of the first order.