The Cruelty of Cuba’s Judicial System

Lynn Cruz

HAVANA TIMES – Cuba is a peculiar country, so to speak. The Caribbean Island is where, according to many, one of the most radical revolutions in the world took place. Almost sixty years after the event, and after having been a virtual province of the former Soviet Union, one cannot speak today of a socialist system, nor of a capitalist one.

The definition would be the closest thing to feudalism. Maybe because there has never been democracy in Cuba, only governments that flirted with those ideas, the darkness is reflected mainly in its judicial system.

Those who have followed the news related to scientist Ariel Ruiz Urquiola should know that; after what appeared to be a rigged trial, he was sentenced to one year in prison.

His sister Omara, has all the evidence in a video recorded by Ariel at the time of his arrest. Just look at it to disprove the false accusations point by point.

However, the appeal of the sentence only confirmed his conviction, with its cruel, inquisitorial document?

Faced with so much injustice, Ariel began a hunger and thirst strike in his prison cell. He is exercising his last right: “The protest”.

The hunger strike has resulted in the final outcome of the injustices. This happened before with Guillermo Farinas, and the most painful case of the late Orlando Zapata.

In other words, from the utmost coldness, the government conspires with prosecutors, judges and lawyers. They all sign documents and approve of immoralities.

As if that were not enough, they are joined by the public health staff, who attend to the inmates in the prisoner rooms of the hospital where they are guarded.

Ariel’s sister Omara makes a visit every two days to the hospital even when, to add to the injustice, they do not let her in.

I want to add that no prison authority had contacted Omara to tell her that her brother was on a hunger strike, it was another inmate who called her on the phone.

This brother and sister are neither hero nor heroine, they are saints. They have to purge the blame of the revolutionaries amid the collapse of the social justice system.

I imagine that the government’s inquisitors ask the doctors how much longer the patient will endure the hunger and thirst strike without dying (in the best of cases, in the case of Ariel) and thus they will prolong his torture to destroy his strength and return him to the society turned into a zombie.

The Cuban government does not appear to calculate the moral damage that these decisions entail. And if it does, then it is much worse. The opposition has already given martyrs, Osvaldo Paya, Laura Pollan, Zapata himself, and the list will continue to grow. Ariel Ruiz Urquiola, has been turned into a political prisoner, by the mere fact of showing his autonomy not only economic but also moral and political.