The Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba (FHRC in English) includes three regime officials in its list of Cuban repressors who defended Havana during the recently concluded UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the island’s human rights.
According to a statement sent to the editorial office of the aforementioned foundation, this is the jury: Yuri Pérez Martínez, the lieutenant colonel of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) Luis Emilio Cadaval San Martín, and the doctor Carlos Alberto Martínez Blanco. It is part of the aforementioned list in the category of export regulators.
This classification includes agents of the regime sent abroad to organize, advise, or even participate in the repression of countries allied to the Government of Cuba or to subvert the order of democratic countries. It also includes diplomats or other government representatives who, to the outside world, distort the harsh reality of Cuba, spreading official propaganda instead.
The FHRC opened a file against Pérez because, in his intervention in the UPR, he stated that the Cuban Constitution approved in 2019 recognizes the freedoms of expression, assembly, demonstration, and association, ignoring that its use carries long prison sentences. Pérez also assured that in Cuba the elections are free, democratic, and transparent, keeping silent that independent candidates for the municipal assemblies are blocked.threatened and suppressed.
In the case of Cadaval, he falsified the reality of the criminal procedure (he assured that arbitrary detentions were prohibited), denied the existence of political prisoners, and stated that in Cuba no one is deprived of freedom for their political ideas or ideological motives. This soldier argued that the opponents were sentenced because they were common criminals who only committed offenses such as public disorder, attack, contempt, and sedition.
In this regard, Martínez offers, based on official statistics, an idyllic picture of the current dysfunctional Cuban public health system. As usual, the official blamed the US embargo for the lack of health supplies experienced on the island. The MINSAP official omitted information such as the great disproportion between investments in other sectors (tourism) or the seizing and guarding of Cuban medical collaborators who are victims abroad.
