Christian content creator convicted for calling Cuba ‘dictatorship’
Baptist Convention of Western Cuba says conviction of girl and her mom 'will be the drop that causes the cup to overflow.'
A Havana court has convicted a 21-year-old Christian content creator who has called Cuba a “dictatorship,” finding her and her mother guilty of violating the privacy of a state security agent they filmed at their home.
Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente, who posts as Anna Bensi, and her mother, Caridad Silvente Laffita, were tried Thursday at the municipal court in East Havana. Each received two years of “restriction of liberty” on a charge of “acts against personal and family privacy,” the Miami Herald reported.
The penalty is served outside prison under court supervision. Those serving it must appear when summoned; they cannot change residence without permission and face limits on travel outside their province.
Judge Zamira Marrero Morgado sentenced the women to two years of house arrest, according to the United Kingdom-based rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW).
However, the penalty the court announced does not necessarily confine the pair to their home, The Latin Times reported.
Benítez said the judge read the sentence aloud and that details will come in the written ruling. Her attorney, Roberto Ortega, said the defense plans to appeal within the limited time allowed once the ruling is issued.
On Tuesday, four of Cuba’s largest registered Protestant denominations issued separate statements supporting the women: the Assemblies of God, the Baptist Convention of Western Cuba, the Evangelical League of Cuba and the Methodist Church of Cuba.
Baptist Convention of Western Cuba said both women are full members and that their conviction “will be the drop that causes the cup to overflow.” The convention said the women "possess a powerful testimony of Christian life."
"They are not delinquents, attackers, drug dealers, terrorists or mercenaries. … Due to a basic sense of justice we cannot, do not want to and will not leave them on their own," the Baptist Convention of Western Cuba said in a statement shared by CSW. "On an island that is falling apart, characterized by hunger, illness, unhealthiness, scarcity of water, electricity and medicine, apathy and a lack of protection from the police, the imprisonment of these two innocent and righteous women will be the drop that causes the cup to overflow."
The case began March 10, when an agent of Cuba’s Department of State Security came to the family’s home in Alamar, a Havana neighborhood, in civilian clothes to deliver a summons. The women recorded him, and the video was posted online.
Two weeks later, the agent, Yoel Leodán Rabaza Ramos, filed a complaint and sought a video apology from Benítez. His lawyer asked for two years in prison for her and two years of house arrest for her mother.
Witnesses testified that the agent “felt depressed” after the video spread on social media, Benítez said.
Prosecutors relied on Article 393 of Cuba’s Penal Code, which protects a person’s image, voice and personal data and applies to some social media posts.
Cuba’s Interior Ministry has said the law treats recording a person and publishing that image without consent as two separate acts. It has rejected claims that Benítez was prosecuted only for filming an official.
Before entering the court, Benítez said, “We do not agree with our country’s political system; that is not a crime.”
She said a pastor arrested on his way to the trial was held without justification “because Cuba is a dictatorship where you cannot think differently.”
A plainclothes agent and two police officers pushed that pastor, Rolando Pérez Lora, and handcuffed him as he and his wife tried to accompany the women.
David Espinosa, a youth pastor with the Baptist Convention of Western Cuba, and his wife were also detained that morning. Police released all four after the trial ended.
Independent journalists Yoani Sánchez and Camila Acosta said police prevented them from leaving their homes to cover the trial.
The Cuban Observatory for Human Rights said the measures were part of an operation to keep activists, reporters and clergy away from the courthouse.
From 10 a.m. until the women emerged at 2 p.m., a crowd sang and prayed outside the courthouse in Cojímar. About 30 representatives of religious communities attended, and two religious leaders, Arturo Leal and Bárbaro Marrero, accompanied the women inside.
The women have been under restrictions since March, and Benítez has been barred from traveling abroad. Authorities reopened the case in April after she argued online with the national coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, a government-aligned network of neighborhood groups.
In July, state security officers questioned her for more than 10 hours. A hearing scheduled for Sept. 17 was postponed.
Anna Lee Stangl, CSW’s advocacy director, called the verdict “a gross miscarriage of justice” and urged Cuba to void it.
U.S. Reps. María Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., Mario Díaz-Balart, R-Fla., and Carlos Giménez, R-Fla., condemned the proceedings. On the day of the trial, the U.S. Embassy in Havana wrote: “Thinking differently is not a crime.”
Mike Hammer, the U.S. chargé d’affaires and the top American diplomat in Cuba, visited the women at their home in April.
Cuban musicians Yotuel Romero, La Diosa and Diana Fuentes also voiced support for Benítez.
