Officials of the government of Washington and its Embassy in Havana has once again slandered Cuba, By accusing  its government of prosecuting minors after the violent events of July 11 and 12, 2021.

Faced with such a lie, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Cuban Foreign Minister, denounced in his twitter account this new media attack against the island and declared that the US is lying to “tarnish Cuba’s exemplary work in the protection of its children and to justify criminal coercive measures”.

“The U.S. is well aware that the current judicial processes in Cuba are carried out in full compliance with the law and within internationally accepted standards. Lies to tarnish #Cuba’s exemplary work in protecting its children and justify criminal coercive measures”.

On the treatment of US justice towards children citizens of that nation, the Cuban foreign minister exposed that “the @ChildDefender Report points out that in 2019 nearly 700,000 children were arrested and 3,371 killed with firearms in the US.”

“Meanwhile, the implementation of anti-immigrant policies led, between April and June 2018, to the separation of 4,500 children from their parents.”

The Criminal Code in force in Cuba establishes that “Criminal responsibility is enforceable on the natural person from the age of 16 years old at the time of committing the punishable act,” and specifies in its Article 17.1 that “In the case of persons over 16 years of age and under 18, the minimum and maximum limits of the penalties may be reduced by up to half, and with respect to those from 18 to 20, by up to one third. In both cases, the purpose of reeducating the sanctioned person, training him/her in a profession or trade and instilling in him/her respect for the legal order will predominate.”

This is quite different to the reality faced by many juveniles in the United States.

According to a 2016 study by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), “thousands of child murderers are held for life in U.S. prisons. In 2005, however, the Supreme Court ended juvenile executions. But since the death penalty was instituted at the federal level at the turn of the last century, an estimated 365 minors have been executed.”

The idyllic society, the impeccable democracy and defense of Human Rights that the US insists on exporting is a myth from an old manual of imperial hypocrisy.

Source: Cuba en Resumen