Cuban singer Danay Suárez was acquitted by the Havana Provincial People’s Court in a lawsuit against her in June last year by Cuban LGBTI activist Alberto Roque Guerra, according to the applicant’s own post on his Facebook profile.
The process began with a message that the young rapper shared on her Facebook profile about pedophilia and homosexuality and for which people in the LGBTI community in Cuba were offended.
Roque Guerra, linked to the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), shared the trial of the case, according to which, where the content is ethically and morally inappropriate, such an act does not comply with the legally and objectively and subjectively required legal requirements for its configuration. “
For the Court, neither the applicant (Roque Guerra) nor the witnesses, members of the LGBTI community who took part in the trial, stated that they felt “particularly injured in their individual honor”.
He also considered the activist’s reaction to be excessive. In this regard, he pointed out that he first posted “a series of messages, in which, although it was largely projected openly against all forms of discrimination and in a tone of rejection of the text in question, in some of those messages he used images that blasphemed the Christian faith that Suárez Fernández confesses, and in others he made clear allusions to the defendant that could be offensive. “
The sentence called into question the credibility of the witnesses because of their friendship with the applicant.
On the other hand, the Court did not decisively assess the criteria of the doctors who presented themselves at the trial. The fact that the text shared by Danay Suárez was not his was more important.
“Although for doctors (…) the equality established in the examined text could influence the conformity of negative criteria, rejection towards homosexuals, thus inciting discriminatory behaviors that associate homosexuality with a mental illness and contradicting the efforts of the international community and Cuba to develop a culture of respect and inclusion towards people of different sexual orientations, it is no less true that the statements contained in the contradictory text have never lost their attention from a perspective expressed by another person and not by the defendant who one of them when it is published … “, raised the document.
In another post on his Facebook profile, with his considerations about the trial, Roque Guerra described as “transcendental” the fact that the Cuban justice system accepted his request, despite the fact that he eventually ruled against him.
After raising a number of questions, including “how is hate speech taken into account in interpreting Cuban law?”, He announced that he would appeal to the Supreme Court.
“I am not sad or defeated, nor disappointed. I am not surprised by the content of the sentence. I reiterate: my activism, my honor, my ethics, my dignity, my indomitable will are one thing. When this process ends at the Supreme Court, I will publish the judgments. motivated me for the whole process, “he concluded.
The controversy began on June 13, when Danay Suárez shared on his Facebook page an extensive comment signed by Dayis Arizmendi, in which homosexuality is compared to pedophilia.
According to the Cuban artist, who in recent years has shown fierce militancy in the principles of the evangelical church, pedophiles use the same arguments as homosexuals to defend their practices.
The comments reproduced by the singer produced a majority rejection even among her followers.
Also, Roque Guerra’s post announcing the start of the trial provoked responses of all kinds.
To journalist Yaiset Rodríguez Fernández, as now at the Court, Roque’s reaction seemed exaggerated: “I don’t like some posts, I really find some idiots, ignorant, in bad taste, offensive, cruel, indecent, cruel, malicious. .. Ohhh, I’m offended. And what do I do? Certainly, out of respect for the other’s right to have a different opinion, it will not be to file a lawsuit. “