Cuba reduces sentences for some protesters, but activists say crackdown has continued

After a long struggle to get her son released from jail, Barbara Farrat shed tears of joy when the moment arrived last week.

“We won a battle,” she said in a Facebook video announcing that her son, 18-year-old Jonathan Farrat Torres, who was imprisoned for protesting against the Cuban government last July 11, had been released on bail to await trial.

But she quickly added: “We cannot stop denouncing. ‘Patria y Vida’ and Freedom, freedom for all our prisoners.”

The Cuban government has reduced the long sentences it had handed down to at least 31 minors and young adults incarcerated after the mass protests last year. Still, family members and activists warn that they have not yet been freed and that authorities continue the trials against the demonstrators and the crackdown on the opposition.

Justicia 11J, a group tracking the trials of the July 11 protesters, reported the release, following appeals, of Farrat and another 10 demonstrators who participated in protests in La Guinera neighborhood in Havana and Santa Clara. Earlier this month, the group confirmed the release of another 13 demonstrators.

Salomé García Bacallao, one of the group’s founders, said that another seven who had protested in Havana, including 16-year-old Brayan Piloto Pupo and 17-year-olds Kendry Miranda and Rowland Jesús Castillo, were also released. They were initially sentenced to as much as 19 years on charges of sedition.

None were granted outright freedom. Instead, most were sentenced to house arrest or sent to work camps for five years, and many still don’t know what the final sentence is going to be. Justicia 11J says that their release might be temporary, until the court orders them to start serving their sentences, or could be quickly reversed.

That’s exactly what the family of Andy García Lorenzo went through. His sentence was commuted from four years in prison to a similar time in a work camp. But they understood he would be allowed to return home from the camp. Yet, after he gave an interview to the independent outlet Cubanet and posted a video asking for the release of all political prisoners, he was detained by the police and sent straight to the work camp, his sister Roxana García Lorenzo said.

Among those released is Brandon David Becerra Curbelo, who was 17 when he was detained last July. His sentence was reduced from 13 years in prison to five years under house arrest.

Her mother, Yanaisy Curbelo, says her son has been deeply affected by his experience in prison.

She says he doesn’t want to go out of the house and asks for permission to do the simplest things, like grabbing water from the refrigerator or going to the bathroom.