By: Julio Ferrer, Esq.
On November 18, 2019, the Governing Council of the Supreme People's Court issued Ruling No. 459, published on December 11, 2019, in Extraordinary Official Gazette No. 28. In this way, it was established that recruits of the Compulsory Military Service (SMO), previously sanctioned for indiscipline, who self-harm will not be exempt from this.
The report responds to an inquiry made by the Deputy Attorney General of the Republic of Cuba to the Head of the Military Prosecutor's Office regarding the increase in self-harm committed by soldiers sanctioned at the Western Disciplinary Unit El Globo. To evade military service, some soldiers ingest objects such as screws, washers, blades, etc.
Most of these cases, after undergoing aptitude assessments, have resulted in a finding of unfitness for military service, or fitness with recommendations, and therefore have not been prosecuted by the military prosecutor's office. In some instances, they were even acquitted by the military court.
In response to this trend, the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces adopted Ruling No. 459. This ruling establishes that if, while serving their sentence in the aforementioned disciplinary units, individuals self-harm to evade their obligations, they may be committing the crime of evading military service obligations. This act is sanctioned under Article 20 of the Law on Military Offenses, and they would be punished a second time.
This new instrument of coercion, with which the Armed Forces and the highest court in the country are trying to contain or put an end to a growing and very serious social phenomenon: the disinterest or refusal of young Cubans, those born in the midst of the Revolution, to comply with the obligations of military service.
Decree Law No. 224 of 2001, on Military Service, vehemently endorses the political and military training of Cuban cadets. According to this law, “the contribution to patriotic, military, and internationalist education and the formative character that the passage of our young people through the ranks of the Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior has represented for more than 30 years in the fulfillment of military service has been demonstrated.” However, reality paints a very different picture. An increasing number of young people are capable of taking their own lives or even attempting suicide to escape from military units. The government's response to them has been extreme repression.
The most appropriate course of action, in my opinion, is to conduct a multidisciplinary sociological investigation to identify the objective and subjective causes that lead a human being, in this case a young Cuban, sometimes a minor, to try to get rid of his most precious possession: life.
It should also be noted that this is not an isolated practice, but rather one of the many facets of a larger phenomenon that is corroding contemporary Cuban society to its very foundations. Those political principles that once mobilized the masses to fight against a “common enemy” are disappearing.
Human history has shown that coercive methods, repression, and criminal law are not effective in cases like these and, far from making their solution viable, they aggravate them and even generate worse ones.