Mayelín Rodríguez Prado was arrested after uploading images to Facebook of a small demonstration in Nuevitas in August 2022
At the age of 22, Mayelín Rodríguez Prado received the heaviest of the sentences the Cuban government handed down to a group of 13 people who demonstrated in August 2022 in the municipality of Nuevitas, in central Cuba. Prado, who is the mother of a little girl, will serve 15 years in prison for publishing the protests through the social network Facebook.
Prado recorded the moment in which Cuban police beat three girls during the demonstration, as well as other repressive actions against protestors. The young woman, whose daughter at the time was less than a year old, was detained at her home after the protest and held in solitary confinement at a State Security facility.
The judicial sentence issued by the Municipal Court of Camagüey, to which the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH) had access, states that the court agreed to punish Prado as “author of an intentional and consummated crime of enemy propaganda of a continuous nature” and “author of an intentional and consummated crime of sedition.” The court also announced sentences of between four and 14 years for 12 other participants in the demonstration for the same crimes. According to the Cuban Penal Code, sedition is a “crime against the internal security of the State,” and anyone who “tumultuously and by means of express or tacit agreement, using violence, disturbs the socialist order” can be prosecuted on that charge.
I swear people on here think the right to protest is some magical talisman that protects you from the consequences of your actions.
If you break other laws the right to protest doesn’t somehow stop that being illegal - you cant just wear a free Palestine shirt and go shop lifting or break into someone’s house.
It is about not making protesting illegal in the absence of other crimes - like for example it is in Cuba where this person didn’t commit other crimes but is arrested simply for documenting.
I see you’ve been relying on the mainstream news narrative. There was nothing illegal about the protests until after the police started cracking down.
Then there was UCLA where pro-Israel counter protesters were dragging protesters out and beating them with sticks while an army of cops half a block away stood around with their thumbs up their asses.
It’s the neoliberal way to keep protesting legal while making it all but impossible to actually do so without breaking some minor law. Then the police come in huge numbers with riot gear, rubber bullets, and chemical agents that aren’t even legal in a warzone. Suddenly it’s a “violent” protest.
Neoliberals are always on the side of the protesters starting about 10 years after the protests are over. Until then they always wring their hands and whine about how the protest was done. This is all the exact shit they said about every protest of the civil rights movement.
Sure, yet even with your very biased telling of events it’s still nothing like the situation in Cuba
First of all, I never said it was. Second, the results are not that far off, it just looks different. Don’t forget that there are states where it’s now explicitly legal to drive over protesters, and I already mentioned protesters getting beaten with sticks while the police stood by and watched. The US has just privatized much of the oppression.
Also, if you have any evidence of an actual crime happening before police crackdowns start, I’d live to see it. (Not something lame like loitering). If you think I’m biased, then show me I’m wrong.