V. Political Prisoners

During the nearly five decades of Fidel Castro’s rule, Cuba repressed virtually all forms of dissent using a wide range of abusive tactics, including imprisonment. While the denial of fundamental freedoms throughout that time was unrelenting, Fidel Castro’s rule was also marked by periods of heightened repression, such as the 2003 crackdown on 75 human rights defenders, journalists, trade unionists, and other critics of the government. Accused of being “mercenaries” of the US government, the individuals were summarily tried in closed hearings. Fifty-three of those 75 prisoners continue to languish in Cuba’s prisons under Raúl Castro.

Since taking over for his brother in July 2006, Raúl Castro has added scores of additional political prisoners to the hundreds of dissidents in Cuba’s abusive prisons. To sentence these individuals, Raúl Castro’s government has relied on many of the same laws that were used routinely during Fidel Castro’s rule, including those punishing contempt and insubordination. In addition, Raúl Castro has increasingly relied on the law criminalizing “dangerousness.”

Human Rights Watch has documented more than 40 cases of dissidents who have been sentenced for “dangerousness” under Raúl Castro. We believe there are many more. In particular, the Cuban government has relied heavily on language in the provision that classifies unemployment as a form of “antisocial behavior.” In a classic catch-22, critics of the government are denied work because of their political beliefs, and then imprisoned for not having work. Raúl Castro’s government not only applies the “dangerousness” provision to dissidents, but to all Cubans who are unemployed or illegally self-employed—demonstrating the extent to which any form of noncooperation with the Cuban government is a punishable offense.

Repression under Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 after leading a revolution that toppled the government of Fulgencio Batista and ruled by decree until 1976, when a new constitution—one whose drafting he oversaw—reformed the structure of the government. From that time until he transferred power to Raúl Castro in July 2006, Fidel Castro held all three of the most powerful positions in Cuba’s government: president of the Council of State, president of the Council of Ministers, and first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party.

Under Fidel Castro, Cuba repressed virtually all forms of dissent. His government used a wide range of abusive tactics to enforce political conformity, including long-term imprisonment, beatings, threats, and surveillance.[100] The repression was codified in law, carried out by security forces and groups of civilian sympathizers tied to the state, and prosecuted by a judiciary that lacked independence. As a result, thousands of Cubans were incarcerated in abysmal prisons, thousands more were harassed and intimidated, and entire generations were denied basic rights.

While the denial of fundamental freedoms during Fidel Castro’s rule was unrelenting, the Cuban government carried out periodic waves of heightened repression, marked by an increase in arbitrary arrests of dissenters. One such wave was in March 2003.

2003 Crackdown

In March 2003, the Cuban government arrested 75 peaceful dissidents across the island in a widespread crackdown. Those detained included journalists, human rights defenders, members of unauthorized (and thus illegal) political groups and labor unions, and other activists drawn from all fourteen of Cuba’s provinces.[101] All 75 were tried and convicted in summary hearings. None were acquitted. They were sentenced to six to twenty-eight years in prison, with an average sentence of 19 years.[102]

The raids took place in the context of rising tension between the United States and Cuba, and a bold public campaign by citizens within Cuba challenging their system of government. In 1996, the US Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act, an act to “plan for support of transition” of the Cuban government, which further tightened the decades-long embargo on Cuba. Cuba responded in 1999 by passing the Law for the Protection of Cuban National Independence and the Economy (the National Protection Law), which punishes any act that “supports, facilitates, or collaborates with the objective of the Helms-Burton Act, the blockade and the economic war against our people.”[103]

The administration of George W. Bush hardened its policy toward Cuba in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.  In a May 2002 lecture, then US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton said that the United States believed Cuba had “at least a limited offensive biological warfare research-and-development effort” and had provided the technology to “rogue states.”[104] These comments carried significant weight in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, when US national security strategy embraced the use of preemptive force to protect the United States against imminent threats[105]—a justification used in the invasion of Iraq.[106]  And in September 2002, newly-appointed chief of the US Interests Section,[107] James Cason, arrived in Havana, adopting a more aggressive stance toward the Cuban government. Cason organized workshops and meetings for dissidents at the Interests Section, traveled across the island meeting with critics of the government (often distributing free books and shortwave radios), and offered more outspoken criticism of Cuba’s human rights record than his predecessors.[108]      

Meanwhile, within Cuba, a broad-based campaign fostered the public expression of dissent toward the Castro government. Founded in 1998 by political activist Oswaldo Payá, the Varela Project aimed to promote reflection on the political system and collect signatures from Cuban citizens calling for democratic reform, respect for human rights, freedom for all political prisoners, and private enterprise, among other reforms.[109] The project made use of an article in the Cuban constitution which states that if more than 10,000 voters support a proposition, it should be put to a referendum.[110] The organizers submitted more than 11,000 signatures to the National Assembly in May 2002. The Cuban government responded by organizing a national referendum of its own in June 2002, which declared the state’s socialist system “irrevocable,”[111] allegedly with 99 percent of Cubans in favor.[112] Although the referendum called for by the Varela Project was not held, its organizers continued to hold meetings and gather signatures.

In the massive crackdown of 2003, nearly all of the 75 individuals arrested had participated in the Varela Project. In a press conference following their trials, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque said:

The Varela Project is part of a strategy of subversion against Cuba that has been conceived, financed, and directed from abroad with the active participation of the US Interests Section in Havana. It is part of the same subversive design and has no basis whatsoever in Cuban law. It is a crude manipulation of Cuba’s laws and constitution.[113]

Of the 75 people arrested, 35 were charged under the National Protection Law, marking the first time it had been used to punish dissent. The rest of the 75 were charged with violating article 91 of the Criminal Code, which broadly punishes any act against the independence or territorial integrity of the state.[114]

Cuban authorities justified the imprisonment of the 75 by claiming that they acted as “mercenaries” in the pay of the US government. In an April 9, 2003 press conference following the summary trials of the 75, Pérez Roque said the arrests had been precipitated by the aggressive US policy aimed at toppling the Castro government. He accused the individuals of receiving funds and materials from the US government; having contact with organizations and individuals actively opposed to the Cuban government, in particular the US Interests Section and Cuban exile groups in the United States; and producing “distorted” information that supported the US embargo.[115]

As evidence of such “mercenary” activities, Pérez Roque pointed to funding that the Cubans had received from organizations funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Cuban exile groups, or other foreign sources such as news organizations. For example, Pérez Roque cited the fact that journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe had received US$7,154 from CubaNet—a website that received funding from USAID—as evidence of his working for the US government.[116]  Chepe’s sentencing documents accused him of writing articles and providing “distorted and falsified” information about the Cuban government to “subversive and counterrevolutionary magazines.”[117] Similarly, Pérez Roque accused Alfonso Valdés, president of the unofficial Liberal Democratic Party, of receiving US$400 from Cuban Democratic Action, a Miami-based organization that also received USAID funding. Pérez Roque also noted other evidence of “mercenary” activities, such as Oscar Elías Biscet and Héctor Palacios Ruiz possessing open access passes to the US Interests Section in Havana.

Cuba has the right to protect national security by regulating and setting restrictions on certain civil society activity, including regulating funding. Yet in order to comply with protections under international law, any regulation must be proportionate, necessary for democratic society, and must pursue a legitimate aim. Cuba’s punishment of the dissidents’ non-violent activities did not fall within these parameters. The crackdown contravened their rights to opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association, and political participation. It also flouted the principles set out in the 1998 UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders that “everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to solicit, receive and utilize resources for the express purpose of promoting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms through peaceful means.”[118] While the Cuban government claimed dissidents acted as agents of the United States, the evidence provided by Pérez Roque and reported in trial documents do not substantiate the allegation.

Several respected international and regional bodies and experts have concurred that the sentencing of the 75 prisoners was unjust and that they should be released. These include the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, which found that the Cuban government had violated their rights to life, liberty, and personal security; equality before the law; freedom of opinion, expression, and dissemination; a fair trial; assembly and association; and due process of law, among others.[119] The Commission called for the immediate release of the prisoners and the repeal of the National Protection Law and article 91, as well as reform of Cuba’s constitution to ensure judicial independence. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that those arrested in the 2003 crackdown were arbitrarily detained,[120] concluding that:

Independently of whether domestic law has or has not been respected, the Working Group considers that the legislation applied contravened the provisions of articles 19, 20 and 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in that it limits the free exercise of the rights of opinion and expression, not to be harassed for holding opinions, to research and receive information and opinions, and to disseminate them, without limitation by national borders, by any means of expression, as well as the right of peaceful assembly and association and the right to participate directly in the government of the country.[121]

In addition, the former UN Commission on Human Rights issued a resolution in 2004 condemning the crackdown, stating:

...the Government of Cuba, like those of all other sovereign States, irrespective of the current exceptional international circumstances which have obliged many States to step up security measures, should refrain from adopting measures which could jeopardize the fundamental rights, the freedom of expression and the right to due process of its citizens, and in that regard, deplores the events which occurred [during March and April 2003] in Cuba involving verdicts pronounced against certain political dissidents and journalists.[122]

The European Union Council also called for the immediate release of the prisoners.[123]

Fifty-three of the prisoners sentenced in 2003 remain in prison under Raúl Castro, where they continue to endure cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in Cuba’s prisons (a full list of the 53 and their sentences can be found in the appendix). Those prisoners who have been released have been freed on parole (licensia extrapenal), rather than being released unconditionally, which leaves them vulnerable to being returned to prison to serve out their sentences at any time.

The 53 come from varied professions and have participated in a range of unofficial civil society groups throughout Cuba.  Cases of dissidents who remain incarcerated include journalists, such as Víctor Rolando Arroyo Carmona, who directed the unofficial Union of Independent Cuban Journalists and Writers,[124] and Juan Adolfo Fernández Sainz, a journalist from Havana.[125] Both published articles in foreign outlets that documented abuses by the Cuban government, and since their incarceration have reportedly been subjected to solitary confinement. They each have participated in hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their imprisonment.[126]

Human rights defenders also remain in prison for their criticism of the government, including Havana doctor Marcelo Cano Rodríguez, a member of the unrecognized human rights group, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (Comisión Cubana de Derechos Humanos y Reconciliación Nacional or CCDHRN), who was sentenced to 18 years in prison under article 91 and the National Protection Law.[127] In the case against him, prosecutors emphasized that Rodríguez visited prisoners and their families on behalf of the CCDHRN and maintained ties with the international organization Doctors without Borders.[128]Fidel Suárez Cruz, a farmer and member of the Pro Human Rights Party in Pinar del Río, was sentenced to 20 years under the National Protection Law.[129]  As a human rights activist and manager of a private library, Suárez wasoutspoken in his criticism of government authorities.[130] In November 2005, Suárez was reportedly transferred to a closed cell measuring one square meter.[131]Dr. Alfredo Pulido López, a dentist from Camagüey who was stripped of his job in 1998 for participating in an unofficial religious group, was sentenced to 14 years under article 91.[132] Pulido was accused of calling international attention to human rights abuses.[133] During his incarceration, his wife said, Pulido has been beaten and forcibly paraded naked through the prison by guards. His health has deteriorated so significantly that, at 49 years old, he can hardly walk.[134]

Cubans who tried to organize alternative labor groups outside of the state-run Workers’ Central of Cuba (CTC) also continue to serve lengthy prison sentences. They include Nelson Molinet Espino, who led the unofficial Cuban Confederation of Democratic Workers, sentenced to 20 years under article 91.[135] Prior to his arrest, Molinet had been constantly harassed for his trade union activities, and his 2003 sentence notes that he published articles about labor abuses in the international press.[136] Lester Gonzales Pentón, who was the Santa Clara delegate for the same labor confederation, was also sentenced to 20 years in prison.[137] Despite being the youngest of the 75 individuals arrested in March 2003, Pentón’s health severely worsened in prison.[138]

Members of a diverse range of unauthorized civil society groups critical of the regime were also arrested in 2003 and remain in prison. They include Efren Fernández Fernández, secretary of the Christian Liberation Movement and principal leader of Varela Project in Havana, who was sentenced to 12 years under article 91 of the penal code.[139] Brothers Ariel and Guido Sigler Amaya, founders of the unofficial Independent Alternative Option Movement in Matanzas (Movimiento Independiente Opción Alternativa), were sentenced to 20 years under the National Protection Law.[140] Before their arrests, the Sigler brothers were harassed, subjected to numerous acts of public repudiation, and threatened for their nonviolent activities. Having been moved between at least four different prisons and two military hospitals, at 47 years old Arielcan no longer walk and is confined to a wheelchair.[141] 

Repression under Raúl Castro

Since taking over in July 2006, Raúl Castro’s government has continued to lock up dissidents using many of the same laws employed during Fidel Castro’s rule. These include laws criminalizing contempt, association, disobedience, resistance, and attacks on public officials. The Raúl Castro government has also increasingly relied on a “dangerousness” provision to imprison individuals who have not committed any crime. This provision has been applied both to dissenters and to ordinary Cubans who are unemployed or illegally self-employed.

Applying the “Dangerousness” Provision

In researching this report, Human Rights Watch documented more than 40 cases of dissidents sentenced under the “dangerousness” law by Raúl Castro’s government. Scores more report receiving official warnings that exercising their fundamental rights constitutes a form of “dangerous” behavior.

The cases are spread across Cuba’s 14 provinces and affect individuals from a range of professions. Some belong to unofficial organizations, such as unions and youth groups, while others are unaffiliated. They include journalists, members of religious groups, doctors, students, and human rights defenders. The group includes individuals such as a bicycle taxi-driver who attempted to organize his fellow bicitaxistas into an independent union; a journalist who created an independent press agency; and a human rights advocate who tried to walk across Cuba to call attention to abuses and political prisoners.   

The indictment of political activist Digzan Saavedra Prat offers insight into the kinds of activities that the state considers dangerous. A member of an unofficial human rights group in Banes, Holguín province, Saavedra collected information about abuses and attended unsanctioned gatherings.  His indictment accused him of, among other forms of “antisocial behavior”:

being tied to persons of bad moral and social conduct, thinking he is handsome, ...demonstrating against the revolutionary process and people belonging to political organizations that live in his area of residence. He has been cited in four official warnings and two educational letters... setting a bad example for the new generation.[142]

Saavedra said the prosecutor presented no witnesses, “official warnings,” or any other evidence during his closed, summary trial in January 2008. When Saavedra told his defense lawyer that his rights were being violated, his lawyer told him that unless he wanted to receive a harsher sentence, it was better not to speak of rights in court. Saavedra was sentenced to a year of “re-education” and was immediately taken to prison.[143]

Targeting the Unemployed and Illegally Self-Employed

The Cuban government also applies the “dangerousness” provision to non-dissidents who are unemployed or illegally self-employed. Under the “dangerousness” provision, those who “live, like a social parasite, off the work of others” are engaging in a form of “antisocial behavior,” and may be punished.[144] The imprisonment of individuals because they do not take part in the state-controlled labor system shows that any form of non-cooperation with the Cuban government may be viewed as dangerous behavior.

Self-employment (cuentapropismo) is strictly regulated by the Cuban government, and permission to run a private business is granted on a case-by-case basis.[145] To operate or work for a business without government authorization is illegal.

Non-dissidents and dissidents alike told Human Rights Watch that it was difficult to survive on wages from a full-time official job and government rations. The workers we spoke with said that monthly wages ranged from 250 to 400 Cuban pesos, or US$9.50 to $15.20. Enyor Díaz Allen said a month’s wages were not enough to buy a pair of shoes. Rafael Meneses Cuco said he could not afford a toothbrush. “Gerardo Domínguez” said that without finding a second form of income, he and his retired mother would not have enough to eat.[146]

In 2008, natural and man-made disasters deepened the economic hardship experienced by most Cubans. A series of three devastating hurricanes struck the island, causing approximately US$10 billion worth of damage, and the global financial crisis dramatically slowed Cuba’s economic growth.[147] In response, the Cuban government introduced a set of austerity measures in 2009, such as a 50 percent reduction in lunch portions at workplaces, which affected all Cubans.[148] Meanwhile, sanctions from the decades-long US embargo continue to hurt all sectors of the Cuban population.

In the face of such economic hardship, some Cubans said they had chosen to work in unofficial businesses because, in spite of the risk, they were able to earn better wages. Others said they chose not to take government jobs because they were not interested in the work they were offered, which was often in construction or agricultural labor. Human rights defenders and journalists in Havana, Sancti Spíritus, Holguín, Santiago, and Guantanamo said that Cubans who were unemployed or illegally self-employed were routinely prosecuted for “dangerousness.”

“Gerardo Domínguez,” a 28-year-old in Havana who does not belong to any unofficial political groups or movement, told Human Rights Watch that more than ten of his friends had been warned or imprisoned for not working, or for operating unauthorized side businesses. One of his friends was caught selling car parts without official permission in 2008, and was charged with “dangerousness.”[149]  “Michel Labrada,” another Havana resident, said police went door to door in his neighborhood in June 2009, creating a list by household of who was employed and who was not. The unemployed were given a short-term work assignment, and told that they would receive a warning for “antisocial behavior” if they did not report to work.[150] According to human rights defender Ana Margarita Perdigón Brito, “Luis Acosta,” a resident of Sancti Spíritus who could not work because of spinal injuries, chronic asthma, and other ailments, was sentenced to two years for “dangerousness” for being unemployed. Acosta said that his ailments and the fact he received disability support from the government were not taken into account during his closed, summary trial.[151] Gabriel Díaz Sánchez, a human rights defender, described an identical effort in Bayamó, Granma province, at the beginning of 2009. He said that while the government was carrying out a household census, officials also asked who was unemployed, and assigned them new jobs.  Those who did not report to their new jobs, Díaz said, were brought before the courts and charged with “dangerousness.”[152] 

The government launched a campaign targeting the unemployed in eastern Cuba in 2009 called Operation Victory (Operación Victoria). According to several human rights defenders in Guantanamo province, the campaign consisted of issuing official warnings to the unemployed, especially young people, and subjecting them to police surveillance. Those who did not find a job within a few weeks of their warnings were sentenced for “dangerousness.”[153] Beginning in January 2009, news of the operation was broadcast on official state TV and radio stations and disseminated during meetings of the “committees for the defense of the revolution” (comités de defensa de la revolución,or CDRs),[154] according to five sources in the region.

Approximately 80 people, most of them youths, were given official warnings in Guantanamo for being unemployed on January 12, 2009, according to journalist LuísFelipe Rojas, who reported on the operation. Rojas was only able to publish his articles about the operation—like all of his work containing criticism of the actions of the Cuban government—on websites based outside of Cuba, especially CubaEncuentro. According to Rojas, those who received warnings were told that they had 15 days to find work before facing charges in court.[155] Rojas told Human Rights Watch that 35 of the 80 were charged in February 2009 with “dangerousness,” and given sentences ranging from a year of forced labor to four years in jail. He said Operation Victory “had as its objective to grab people who do not work, but they ended up grabbing people who were self-employed in order to survive, reselling objects, doing manual labor, filling tires, mobile vendors, and so forth.”[156]

In addition to punishing those who are unemployed, the government has also launched a propaganda campaign to cast people without jobs as social parasites, and to stoke collective resentment against those who operate unauthorized businesses.

In March 2009, a young man referred to as “Gustavo” in an article in Granma, the official government newspaper, was tried for “dangerousness” before an audience of onlookers in a public park in Las Tunas. According to the article, the event was “called to elevate the judicial culture and the conscience of the population.”[157] Gustavo was charged with operating an illegal currency exchange[158] and, the article reported, the disdain of the community was displayed in the “facial expressions which mix worry with rejection of improper attitudes when it is youths who are the ‘sad protagonists’ of such distortions.”[159] The article closed with a call for self-reflection and a change in behavior by the public:

Hopefully the discomfort reflected in [Gustavo’s] expression is embarrassment, repentance, gratitude for the skilful defense by the lawyer.... Hopefully the repercussions of this and other cases evaluated for their degree of dangerousness will lead all of us (“crooked and straight,” family and community, institutions and society) to determine to be more preventive and inflexible when confronted with such wrongs and to do a better job in what each of us is supposed to do.

People we spoke with in other provinces said “dangerousness” trials like Gustavo’s were broadcast on state television to provide warnings to the public.

The Catch-22: Unemployed Dissidents and “Dangerousness”

Under Raúl Castro’s government, dissidents are routinely denied work due to their political opinions. Because anyone who is unemployed may be accused of “living off of the work of others” and thus guilty of “antisocial behavior,” the “dangerousness” provision provides a tailor-made system for punishing dissent. Dissidents cannot get jobs because they are considered dangerous, and they are considered dangerous because they do not have jobs.

As Ana Margarita Perdigón Brito, a human rights defender in Sancti Spíritus and sister of a journalist sentenced for “dangerousness,” explained the catch-22: “My brother worked for the government and they let him go for not being trustworthy, for being a human rights defender.  No one would employ him and then, when they charged him, they prosecuted him because they said he was not working.”[160] Her brother Raymundo Perdigón Brito was sentenced to four years in prison for “dangerousness” in December 2006.

Alexander Santos Hernández, a member of the unofficial Cuban Liberal Movement in Holguín, was fired in 2005 from his job as a martial arts instructor. When he went to the State employment center to seek a new job, he said, a government official told him, “worms don’t deserve employment.” After months of unsuccessfully applying for jobs, he was sentenced to four years for “dangerousness” in 2006. The primary argument of the state prosecutor in his trial, Santos said, was that he was unemployed.[161]

Hugo Damián Prieto Blanco, a political activist who gathered signatures for the Varela Project, was granted parole in February 2008 after completing three-and-a-half years of a four year sentence for “dangerousness.” But according to his wife, once released, he could not find a job. One employer after another told him he was not “suitable” or “trustworthy,” or that they did not hire “counterrevolutionaries.” His conditional freedom was revoked in August 2008 on the grounds that he was unemployed, and he was sent back to prison, where he served out the rest of his sentence until May 2009. “In court, the judge told us that he couldn’t find work,” said his wife. “But the thing is that they won’t employ him.”[162]    

As noted at the start of this report, Ramón Velásquez Toranzo was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for “dangerousness” in January 2007 for attempting to march across Cuba to call attention to human rights. According to his daughter, the primary argument presented by the state prosecutor in his trial was that he was unemployed. The government said it had sent three official warnings to Velásquez’s home in the weeks preceding his arrest, informing him that his joblessness constituted “antisocial behavior.” But he had not been home to receive the warnings because he was on his march.[163]

Other Forms of Criminalizing Dissent

In addition to the “dangerousness” law, Raúl Castro’s government has employed many of the same laws criminalizing dissent as were used during Fidel Castro’s rule. Relevant cases include those of Rigoberto Zamora Rodríguez and Yoandri Gutiérrez Vargas, each sentenced to two years in prison for acting in contempt of the head of state (desacato al jefe de estado) for chanting anti-government slogans in public in Bayamo, Granma province, in January 2008.[164] The prosecutor’s indictment, a copy of which was obtained by Human Rights Watch, said that two ex-members of “counterrevolutionary groups” had “demonstrated against our revolutionary process” in the street. Zamora and Gutiérrez, it went on, had encouraged people:

not to take part in the unified vote that strengthens our political and social system, and used offensive phrases directed against the character of our Commander in Chief, among which were “this old man is killing us with hunger,” “down with Fidel,” “down with the old,” “down with communism”....[165]

The indictment also noted that Zamora was unemployed, “does not perform socially useful activity,” and “associates with counterrevolutionary persons”; and that Gutiérrez, in addition to being unemployed and linked to counterrevolutionaries, “does not belong to any organization of the masses.”[166]

Enyor Díaz Allen, member of the unauthorized political group Youth for Democracy (Jóvenes por la Democracia) in Guantanamo, was sentenced to a year in prison for contempt (desacato) in March 2009 when he participated in a small protest criticizing the government and demanding respect for human rights.[167] Authorities had detained Díaz three times before his arrest for participating in peaceful activities and had warned him that he would be imprisoned if he did not change his behavior. Pro-democracy activist Maikel Bencomo Rojas said he was repeatedly harassed by security officials because he had a tattoo on his back that read “Down with Fidel.” He was arrested on his way to an unauthorized meeting in Havana and was sentenced to two years of imprisonment in February 2008. He was charged with carrying out an attack on authority (atentado) and contempt.[168] In another case, Alejandro Jiménez Blanco was charged with resisting authority (resistencia) for having yelled anti-government and pro-democracy slogans in a public park in Guantanamo in March 2009; he was sentenced to two years in prison.[169]