The Gorki Aguila Case

The Gorki Aguila Case / Lia Villares
Posted on February 23, 2014

The trial schedules for this Tuesday against Gorki Águila, leader of the
punk rock band Porno para Ricardo, was postponed because of the health
problems of his defense attorney, according to the musician himself on
his Facebook page. Gorki spoke about the background of his case with
Diario de Cuba.

Gorki, what are they accusing you of?

The formal citation they gave me said the crimes of pre-criminal social
dangerousness and illegal drug possession, with many points suspended.

Were you carrying drugs?

When they stopped me on the street and searched me and found two Tradea
pills — methylphenidate — for which I have the appropriate prescription,
signed and sealed, which are strong proof that they were bought legally.
The police investigation has no evidence beyond those two pills.

Why are they accusing you?

The classic recourse of the government is to tie the "uncomfortable"
individual to some prefabricated crime. In my case they didn't ahve much
more and I thought it unlikely that they'd convict me, if it was a free
trial, for the (completely legal) possession of two tables of a
medication that I need, according to a doctor's prescription.

What's your impression of this new trial and now the suspension of it?

It has the same characteristics of the 2008 trial, the same intentions,
because a despotic government like ours never renounces the idea of
silencing protestors like me by constant threats of prison, whether we
are artists, activists, journalists or simply citizens.

On the morning of the day before yesterday I learned that the trial had
been postponed because of my attorney's health. It was to have been held
on Tuesday, the 11th, but was delayed approximately a week. I thought
this surprise, without any definitive date, could be dangerous because
State Security could use it as a strategy and take advantage of less
media coverage so I'd have a silent trial with weaker visibility.

Meanwhile, the government could create a parallel campaign to discredit
me on the social networks, which seems like a recurring error on their
part, because the exaggeration of creating false situations against each
and everyone who dares to denounce them or express an opinion contrary
to its purposes becomes suspect.

Castro never could admit that his opponents could be dignified enemies
and have a body of more elevated moral principles; his attitude has
always been not to recognize opponents and so to underestimate them, but
taking care that they are never respected, rather defamed and in extreme
cases imprisoned and even assassinated.

What are your expectations for the trial? Why summary?

I understand that these trials are held in very few countries and almost
always in times of war, as an immediate lesson. The summary trials in
Cuba are produced serially, with little documentation, that is, they can
hold several trials on the same day, at the same time, with the ruling
made in advance, where the political police has everything to gain. In
this sense the regime takes great advantage of them against the peaceful
opponents.

In these trials, mostly rigged by State Security — it's expected that
the ruling will go against the accused. So I think it's extremely
important to maintain solidarity among everyone because, as demonstrated
in the previous trial in 2008, the more public opinion was moved and the
more visibility the case got at the international level, it was possible
with everyone to change a decision already decided by the
anti-revolutionary injustice, on the retrograde sense of the Cuban
government.

Your case is not isolate…

The government finds in these moments in the practice meant to
"neutralize" the various opponents, one of their bad so-called
"revolutionary offenses." This is the case with my friend Manuel Cuesta
Morúa, who finds himself under police investigation with absurd charges
like "the spread of false news that threatens international peace."

It's incredible that someone who threatened the total destruction of the
planet earth, could say that a simple opinion or the exercise of free
expression could threaten international peace. It's something as cynical
as his persona, someone who dedicated his whole life to launching the
false image of "revolutionary and ecologist."

There was also the case of the independent journalist Calixto Ramón
Martínez, who spent long months in prison simply for exposing the spread
of the cholera epidemic in the country, work that should have been the
job of the national press, which has never mentioned, with sincerity,
news that is alarming to the population.

Tell me how it was in 2008…

I was in the dungeon without knowing anything that was going on outside.
At a specific time a cop came with the file and told me what I was
charged with would be changed. Then the treatment inside the jail
mutated tremendously. When they reduced the charges, some official even
said that all those who were there were criminals while I was just there
for being "anti-Castro."

That is, they changed the crime of social dangerousness to the crime of
disobedience and from then is where I can corroborate the rapid collapse
of the armed farce. When they substituted the charge of one crime for
another following no procedures at all, completely lacking in rigor:
what's missing is the Rule of Law. This leaves the usual arbitrariness
of the Cuban judicial system completely exposed, where terms like "legal
certainty" or "res judicata" are alien to is citizens, frequently
defenseless before such procedures.

Then I knew I had a strong international solidarity campaign and within
the country all my friends and activists supported me making sure
everyone knew about my situation and the false charges I was accused of.

I'm convinced that the only way to transform these previous designs of
the tyranny is to realize that uniting in the demand against injustice
we can multiply the message that we all need right now, that of freedom
for civil Cuban society, in short, freedom for Cuba.

I would like to thank all the people sensitive to my situation who have
signed the petition and who are continuing to pay attention to what
could happen with respect to this inadmissible case.

Thank you so much! Hopefully this is the year that yes, it falls!

Diario de Cuba, 12 February 2014, Lia Villares

Source: #FreeGorki – The Gorki Aguila Case / Lia Villares | Translating
Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/freegorki-the-gorki-aguila-case-lia-villares/