Havana. Ten months after the massive protests that shook Cuba, Parliament “unanimously” approved a new Penal Code, a forceful deterrent to the repetition of these events and a guarantee for the current socialist regime.
The new law “classifies as crimes the most serious and harmful acts for society and protects the interests of the State and the people,” said the president of the Supreme Court, Rubén Remigio Ferro, when presenting it to the plenary.
On July 11 and 12, 2021, thousands of people staged the largest protests against the Communist Party government in 60 years in 50 cities, one death and hundreds of arrests, the balance.
The most serious violations related to the abusive use of constitutional rights, participation in subversive activities and attacks on information and communication technologies are penalized,” added Ferro.
For the Cuban jurist Harold Bertod, based in Spain, “the Penal Code expands the catalog of criminal behaviors related to the constitutional order to confirm a reality of the political system: there is no room for alternatives in the political sphere, and the right to demonstrate” .
The right to demonstrate “will only be allowed if it is in a sense of ‘confirmation’ of the State’s policies and never in a ‘contradictory’ way,” he commented.
The new law maintains the death penalty and may be pronounced “in crimes against state security, terrorism, international drug trafficking and murder,” said the prosecutor.