Cuban historians demand total exoneration and denounce ‘unfair’ judicial process

Historian Alina Bárbara López Hernández and Jenny Pantoja Torres, subject to a criminal process that they consider «unfair,» said Monday that they will only accept the «total exemption from the accusations» made by the Municipal Prosecutor’s Office of Matanzas.

The Declaration for dignity and justicepublished in the Laboratory of Ideas Cubaxcuba makes clear the position of both women, who reject their prosecution «as common criminals» and strips the accused party and the accuser of political motivations.

The accusing body in his provisional conclusions requested four years of deprivation of liberty for López Hernández, for the crimes of «disobedience», «contempt» and «attack» and for Pantoja Torres, three years, for «attack.» Such sanctions may be «alternately replaced by correctional work without internment» in the same period of time.

Although they were the attacked, the sentences of deprivation of liberty were requested last week, more than 11 months after the activists were arrested with violence, on June 18, 2024.

The activists believe that obedience to the sentence would represent granting credibility to false imputations against them, whose sole purpose is to avoid the exercise of rights endorsed and approved in the Constitution of the Republic and send an exemplary message to the Cubans.

Academics defend their position and reject the differentiated treatment that the authorities deal with them: «In Cuban prison institutions, women and men whose crimes are unjustly charged, are similar or milder even than those attributed to us; therefore, we refuse to be the subject of privileges in front of an elitist, racist and antipopular judicial system.»

The manifesto indicates that the subsidy of the penalty of jail for correctional work without internment does not intend to benefit two professionals of mature age, but that «it is pure political calculation of the Cuban State to avoid a greater scandal.»

«We will refuse to comply with the correctional work without internment for considering it totally inadmissible and harmful to our human dignity,» says the statement.

The two intellectuals enjoy broad popular, media, diplomatic and international organizations of various political tendencies.

«We are willing to expose, before global public opinion and international organizations, the absolute lack of citizenship rank with full rights for Cubans, who are prevented from the exercise and enjoyment of the most elementary rights and guarantees,» says the statement.

«We do not deserve to go to prison; as the hundreds of prisoners and political prisoners who have exercised their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful demonstration were not deserved to challenge a government that ignores and crushes them. We do not want to go to prison either; but we are willing to run the necessary risks to make the exercise of our rights valid,» he emphasizes.

«We ask our compatriots and the world, solidarity with our cause and with that of all people prey for political reasons in Cuba,» concludes the statement.

The Cuban repressor project, of the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba (FDHC), included in its compilation the provincial prosecutor of Matanzas, Ana Lilian Caballero Arango, and the agent of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) María Juantorena Herrera, which attacked both academics in 2024.