Cuba sentences 22-year-old mother to 15 years in prison for publishing videos of protests

At the age of 22, Mayelín Rodríguez Prado received the heaviest of the sentences the Cuban government handed down to a group of 13 people who demonstrated in August 2022 in the municipality of Nuevitas, in central Cuba. Prado, who is the mother of a little girl, will serve 15 years in prison for publishing the protests through the social network Facebook.

Prado recorded the moment in which Cuban police beat three girls during the demonstration, as well as other repressive actions against protestors. The young woman, whose daughter at the time was less than a year old, was detained at her home after the protest and held in solitary confinement at a State Security facility.

The judicial sentence issued by the Municipal Court of Camagüey, to which the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH) had access, states that the court agreed to punish Prado as “author of an intentional and consummated crime of enemy propaganda of a continuous nature” and “author of an intentional and consummated crime of sedition.” The court also announced sentences of between four and 14 years for 12 other participants in the demonstration for the same crimes. According to the Cuban Penal Code, sedition is a “crime against the internal security of the State,” and anyone who “tumultuously and by means of express or tacit agreement, using violence, disturbs the socialist order” can be prosecuted on that charge.

“It was Mayelín who gave visibility to the protests and to the repression of the authorities, that is why this sentence [has been imposed], as a way to punish her,” says Cuban lawyer Raudiel Peña Barrios, a member of the legal advisory group Cubalex. Barrios insists that the objective of these sentences is to criminalize peaceful protest and freedom of expression. “The message is clear. Anyone who protests, no matter how peacefully, anywhere in Cuba will be punished. The crime of sedition carried significant political context, because sedition has to be committed by someone who wants to change the political regime. The message is to convey that anyone who does not participate in a demonstration, but who records them, takes photos or videos, will also be sanctioned.”

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