“The number of processes we dismiss is worrying, as women withdraw their accusations”

The Las Tunas Prosecutor’s Office revealed this Saturday that, so far this year, it has opened more than 200 legal proceedings for “threats, injuries, sexual assaults and murders” of women and girls. Although the official press did not disclose the number of femicides committed in the province in 2023 – as it did, last week, the newspaper Gironfrom Matanzas–, criticized that the authorities carried out a “invisibilization of the issue.”

In a long reportagePeriódico 26 regretted that in Cuba there is “no institution” or “legal document” that confirms the 77 deaths due to sexist violence recorded – “with support” of photos and testimonies, he stressed – by “unofficial sources”, such as observatories and the independent press.

The phenomenon is “sadly increasing,” the newspaper insists, especially in the municipality of Jobabo, where, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, the largest number of crimes against women have been reported. According to the lawyers consulted by the official press, the most frequently reported crime is threats.

However, the Penal Code complicates things: it provides for the possibility of dismissing the claim if the interested party assures that she no longer feels in danger. “We are concerned about the number of processes that we dismiss, since the women withdraw the accusations,” admitted Lisbeth Pavón, head of the Criminal Proceedings Department of the Prosecutor’s Office.

The phenomenon is “sadly increasing,” the newspaper insists, especially in the municipality of Jobabo

“We probed with the aim of checking if they acted under duress, but to date in none of the cases investigated have we been able to demonstrate that they were forced or there was any impact on the part of the family members,” he lamented. The most alarming thing, she added, is that “on many occasions these same women later die at the hands of the aggressor. This is what we are seeing in the daily practice of the profession.”

In Las Tunas, Pavón noted, investigations are interrupted by a frequent event: after committing the murder – almost always in a family environment and with a knife – the attacker commits suicide.

This was the case of Arianny Chávez, one of the first women murdered in 2023 in her own workplace, the Las Tunas pediatric hospital. After killing her with a machete, her ex-partner hanged herself.

Lianet, the doctor who certified Chávez’s death and who was attended by the nurses who discovered the body, was one of the sources of the Periódico 26 report. The woman suffered a paranoid condition after the event, her night guards became “a torture” and the hospital authorities did not provide him with “psychological support” of any kind.

His first thought, with which he became obsessed, was: “There is a murderer loose in a place that is supposed to be safe and I didn’t know who he was until that minute. He could have killed me.”

After committing the murder, almost always in a family environment and with a knife, the aggressor commits suicide

Chávez’s murder is one of the few femicides that the authorities – in this case, those of the pediatric hospital – have reported. The usual thing, laments the official media, is that “the microphones do not find answers, no one talks about the issue and the phones do not return calls.”

Newspaper 26 He denounced the obsolete state of the statistics that the official journalists themselves have. The most current data available, from 2019 – 47 femicides – was published with the collaboration of Cuba by the Gender Equality Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean, belonging to the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC). But the current situation, they state, demands updated official data.

The lawyers interviewed agree that the law also needs to catch up with the situation. The treatment of crimes due to sexist violence is, at the very least, “ambiguous” in the current Penal Code, acknowledged Lázaro Leandro Báez, a criminal lawyer from Las Tunas.

Violating the traditional silence on the subject, last week the newspaper Giron revealed that, in the first half of 2023, seven women were murdered in the province of Matanzas. The newspaper also offered details until now kept secret, such as the age of the deceased – between 20 and 57 years old – and the cause of death: wounds caused by a knife, in most cases.

However, both Las Tunas and Matanzas are, so far, exceptions. As recognized this Saturday Newspaper 26for the official press “talking about femicides in Las Tunas, as in Cuba, is an impulse without much support.”

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