Five Years in Prison for a Cuban Proposing Elections

He dared to spread leaflets

By 14ymedio

HAVANA TIMES – The activist and reporter Lazaro Yuri Valle Roca was sentenced to five years in prison for the crimes of “ongoing enemy propaganda and resistance.” The sentence of the Provincial Court of Havana was communicated this Thursday to his wife, Eralidis Frometa, who has spread it on social networks and has described it as “lying and manipulation.”

In the same case, Alien Tijerino Castro received four years for continued enemy propaganda, Ruslán Hernández Reyes, two years, and Yusniel Milián González, one year, both for enemy propaganda.

The sentence accuses Valle Roca and Tijerina of having an “illicit and self-styled NGO” called Delibera in which they held meetings “with the aim of planning actions contrary to the social and political system in Cuba,” in addition to filming them and broadcasting them on social networks to “disseminate to the world an image of social and political instability within the country.”

The sentence accuses Valle Roca and Tijerina of having an “illicit and self-styled NGO” called Delibera in which they held meetings “with the aim of planning actions contrary to the social and political system in Cuba,” in addition to filming them and broadcasting them on social networks to “disseminate to the world an image of social and political instability within the country.”

Both he and Tijerino had leaflets seized — “with José Martí phrases” — and other dangerous activities such as “proposing elections.” Also cameras, memory cards and mobile phones “with counterrevolutionary content.”

Hernández, whose cell phone was also seized, and Milián, meanwhile, did not possess material considered compromising and their connection to the events is just having responded to a summons. In the case of the latter, moreover, he expressed his “repentance,” despite which he has received a year in prison that he has served as preventive detention.

The ruling highlights that Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca “maintained a socially inappropriate behavior in his place of residence and not because his ideas were contrary to the principles of the Revolution,” the judges concede, “but because his way of showing that disagreement is not the correct way.”

Valle Roca, 60, is the nephew of opposition leader Vladimiro Roca and grandson of communist leader Blas Roca Calderío. Since June 2021 he has been in provisional prison in Villa Marista, for which he has at least four years left to serve.

During the time he has been imprisoned, the reporter has suffered the 15 types of torture described by the Madrid-based organization Prisoners Defenders (PD), which presented a document to the UN denouncing patterns of mistreatment in Cuban prisons.

The list is made up of: deprivation of medical care, forced labor outside of their criminal sentence, forced to maintain uncomfortable or harmful positions, solitary confinement punishment, use of temperature as a mechanism of torture, physical aggression, transfer to unknown locations , intentional disorientation, deprivation of water, food, sleep and communication with lawyers and relatives, threats to their integrity and that of their loved ones, deployment of weapons or elements of torture, intentional subjection to anguish and uncertainty due to the situation of a family member and humiliation, degradation and verbal abuse.

According to the organization, there are at least ten prisoners who have suffered all of this ill-treatment, including Valle Roca.

“The Cuban judicial system does not work because it does not protect, it does not legally protect citizens. I do not intend to review the case or appeal, since we do not have fair laws,” said Eraldis Frometa.

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