The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) published Report 81/26, concerning Cases 14,227 and 14,225—Members of Cubalex and Julio Alfredo Ferrer Tamayo, with regard to Cuba. These cases concern various acts of harassment, repression, and persecution targeting members of the Legal Information Center (Cubalex), an organization focused on defending and promoting human rights.
According to this report, the IACHR received on June 4, 2018, a petition about Cubalex, concerning acts of retaliation after the organization started cooperating with international human rights mechanisms. The IACHR noted detentions, interrogations, migration restrictions, smear campaigns, threats, and surveillance against Cubalex members, especially after the organization got involved in platforms including the Universal Periodic Review, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and IACHR hearings.
The IACHR also took into consideration the fact that Cubalex had been denied formal legal status and concluded that the refusal had been arbitrary, based on contradictory criteria, and lacked adequate justification. The IACHR further found that surveillance, tracking, wiretapping, and migration restrictions targeting Cubalex members had been neither justified by the State nor subjected to judicial review, and that those measures had been used to hinder the organization’s work and to scare its members.
One of the most significant events in this case happened on September 23, 2016, when officers of the State raided the Cubalex headquarters in Havana, which was also the home of Cubalex director Laritza Diversent. According to the report, officers stormed into the facilities, seized equipment, documents, files, phones, and SIM cards, and subjected several Cubalex members to interrogation and frisking. The IACHR concluded that these events amounted to arbitrary interference with the victims’ private, professional, and associational lives.
The IACHR further concluded that, as a result of State harassment and of the lack of domestic protection mechanisms, almost all Cubalex members and their close families had been forced to leave Cuba, which had affected their right to freedom of residence and movement and hindered the organization’s efforts in defense of human rights.
Concerning lawyer Julio Alfredo Ferrer Tamayo, a human rights defender and a member of Cubalex, the IACHR received a petition on February 3, 2016, alleging that he had been subjected to unfounded criminal prosecution and arbitrary detention in retaliation for his work as a human rights defender. The IACHR found that Ferrer Tamayo’s arrest had been directly linked to his efforts in defense of human rights, had been unlawful and arbitrary, and had affected his personal integrity and health, since the State had failed to ensure adequate conditions of detention.
The IACHR had previously approved Admissibility and Merits Report 179/25 and sent it to the State, with a two-month deadline to report any measures taken to comply with IACHR recommendations. However, Cuba failed to respond and, later, the petitioning party reported that the State had not implemented any of the IACHR’s recommendations.
IACHR publishes merits report about persecution of Cubalex members
