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Anyelo Ramírez Martínez, a 24-year-old man, will be tried on June 10 in Santiago de Cuba for taking a photograph of an anti-government graffiti and the police operation deployed around it, according to an alert published by Cubalex, a human rights organization that gained access to the legal file.
Anyelo was arrested on March 5 on a street in Santiago de Cuba while documenting with his mobile phone the actions of agents from MININT at the location where the graffiti had appeared.
According to the report, the officers demanded that he stop taking pictures, hand over his phone, and delete the captured images.
He refused, arguing that he was not committing any illegality and that he had the right to photograph what was happening in a public space.
The tax file itself, accessed by Cubalex, acknowledges that it was an agent of Counterintelligence who first physically restrained him to transport him, without a judicial order or a flagrant offense.
Only after that intervention did the struggle occur that led to the accusations.
The Prosecutor's Office requests four years of imprisonment, simultaneously charging him with the offenses of disobedience, assault, and resistance, all stemming from the same incident. Cubalex reports that this is a stacking of charges intended to inflate the sentence.
The legal analysis of the organization also indicates that the file contains elements of what legal experts refer to as "criminal law of the author": it is explicitly stated that Anyelo "does not show sympathy for the revolutionary process" and that he does not belong to the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, ideological details unrelated to the alleged facts but that serve as implicit aggravating factors.
Cubalex warns that "the accusation relies solely on the testimony of the implicated military personnel, leaving it in total defenselessness."
Since his arrest, Anyelo remains in provisional detention at the Aguadores prison in Santiago de Cuba, a facility with documented history of poor conditions: isolation, lack of water, poor nutrition, and hygiene deficiencies.
The case occurs in a context of increasing repression. In the days following Anyelo's arrest, posters appeared reading "Down with Canel" and "Down with Communism" near the University of Oriente, in the same city.
The recent pardon of 2,010 people announced by the regime barely included two political prisoners identified as such, according to checks by independent organizations.
Cubalex concludes that the case against Anyelo "violates Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN guidelines that protect the right to record the actions of state agents in public spaces," and demands "the immediate cessation of the criminalization against Anyelo Ramírez, an end to the use of criminal charges for political reasons, and guarantees for the citizens' right to document reality."
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