From Democracy Digest, the National Endowment for Democracy’s daily blog:
A former high-ranking judge in Cuba has joined an anti-government activist in revealing information from secret government documents that show the government is holding thousands of inmates on dubious charges and has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The revelations by Edel González Jiménez, who spent more than 15 years on the bench and once supervised 65 other judges, are believed to be the first public challenge to the Cuban government by a top member of the judiciary, The New York Times reports…
Approximately 8,400 Cubans currently serve time for ”pre-criminal social dangerousness” – a term used by the regime to jail people who pose a risk to the status quo, without having committed a crime, according to new documents presented by Civil Rights Defenders and Prisoners Defenders on 13 January:
Around 4,000 Cubans every year are accused of being ”antisocial” or ”dangerous”, without having committed a crime. The phrase is commonly applied to people who are unemployed, behave undisciplined or harass tourists. The documents were revealed during a press conference in Madrid on Monday 13 January. During the press conference, former Cuban high-ranking judge, Edel González Jiménez commented on the human rights situation in the country.
Read the full story here.
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