Cuba’s new penal code ‘could stifle dissent’

Cuba’s new penal code has been criticised by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which said it would have a “catastrophic effect” on independent journalism. But the president of Cuba’s Popular Supreme Court, Ruben Remigio Ferro, told the state-run newspaper Granma the code, introduced on Sunday, was compatible “with international legal instruments on criminal matters, always respecting human rights”. The legislation creates crimes classed as “other acts against the security of the State,” to confront “the financing of counterrevolutionary, subversive or any other illegal activity … on behalf of a government, international organisations, nongovernmental or others.”