14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 17 February 2024 — Yesterday, Friday, was a difficult day. The sun had not yet risen in Havana when I learned of the death in prison of the Russian opponent Alexei Navalny. That news immediately led me to reflect on the fragility of Cuban political prisoners, some confined to punishment cells, far from any contact with their families and at the mercy of a system for which the life of a dissident is worth nothing.
Vladimir Putin had confined Navalny in a cold prison in the Arctic Circle. He was so afraid of the 47-year-old lawyer that he tried to bury him in life away from Moscow, the Russian streets and his colleagues in the fight against corruption. Autocrats are like that, they can sign for the transfer of a political opponent to the most remote dungeon rather than face him at the polls. Cowards are known by their actions and the tenant of the Kremlin is just that: a fear-filled person with power.
In the Cuban streets, no one has bought the version of the sudden death, the result, supposedly, of a blood clot
It was already afternoon, when I had read the international reactions and thought, countless times, about Navalny’s wife and children, I looked out the window to see the obscene silhouette of the Russian Embassy in the Cuban capital, its demeanor defiant and aggressive. If in other parts of the world the surroundings of Moscow’s bases of operation were, and will be, in the coming days, the center of protests, demands and cries of “Assasins!”, in Havana none of that will happen.
Cubans will not go en masse to the crude pile on 5th Avenue, at the least to light some candles for the activist and blogger who cha
