A Cuban man has been sentenced to two and half years in prison for sharing memes that make fun of the communist regime with family members. Dissident Jose Manuel Barreiro Rouco was arrested and charged with “crimes against the state,” simply for sending images that go against the communist dictatorship with family members in a private chat.
Cuba’s communist regime sentenced dissident José Manuel Barreiro Rouco to two and a half years in prison for having privately shared anti-regime memes with his family, Martí Noticias reported on Wednesday.
Barreiro Rouco is a 52-year-old barber who lives in the city of Cienfuegos and has been a member of Cuba’s Citizens’ Movement for Reflection and Conciliation (MCRR), a local dissident group, since 2010.
The Cuban dissident was initially arrested on June 15, 2023, in the Cienfuegos municipality of Aguada de Pasajeros. At the time, Castro regime officials charged him with crimes against the security of the state and relationships with alleged “counter-revolutionary” groups.
The dissident’s nephew, Jam Pérez Aguiar, explained in a Facebook post on Saturday that the Castro regime tried to fabricate other crimes the courts did not recognize after his uncle proved “his innocence to the point of exhaustion,” but he remained in prison for six months until December 30, when he was placed under house arrest.
Barreiro Rouco maintained a private WhatsApp group chat titled “Family” in which he and other relatives privately exchanged memes criticizing Castro regime officials, including the regime’s figurehead president, Miguel Díaz-Canel.
In case you were wondering, this is the natural progression of the American left’s attack on freedom of speech, as seen in the Biden-Harris administration and California, to name just two. After all, Democrats have always admired the Castro dictatorship.