Just before Christmas, Cuban authorities handed decades-long sentences to July 11 protesters

In the middle of holiday festivities last week, the families of some Cubans who took to the streets to protest against the island’s communist government in July received dreadful news: Their loved ones would spend decades in jail. In a crackdown that resembles the so-called Primavera Negra, Black Spring, when on Fidel Castro’s order 75 dissidents received lengthy sentences in 2003, several demonstrators were convicted on charges of sedition and sentenced to between 15 and 30 years, according to the activist group Justicia 11J. Members of Justicia 11J told the Miami Herald that they verified wi...