HAVANA, Cuba: Over 100 protestors in Havana have been sentenced to between 4 and 30 years in prison following island-wide demonstrations last year.

The July 11-12 protests saw thousands take to the streets in towns and cities nationwide, protesting shortages of food, medicine and electricity, at a time when coronavirus cases had soared in Cuba.

The Supreme Court said in a statement that those convicted had “tried violently to subvert the constitutional order.”

The Cuban government has previously accused the United States of funding and fomenting the protests.

“They threw stones and bottles at various officials, law enforcement officers, National Revolutionary Police facilities, patrol cars. They overturned a motorcycle and cars…and caused injuries to other people and serious material damage,” the statement said.

More than 700 people across Cuba have been accused of crimes in connection with the demonstrations, including vandalism, assault against people or property, and grave public disorder, Cuban prosecutors have said.

Human rights groups, the U.S. government and the European Union have said the trials lack transparency and due process, and that long jail sentences already handed down were disproportionate with the crimes committed.

Alcide Firdo, 47, of La Guinera in Havana, said his son, 22-year-old Jaime Firdo, had been given 11 years in prison for sedition, a sentence he considered too steep for the crime committed.

“It’s too many years just for having thrown a few rocks,” said Firdo. “What they are doing with these boys is inhuman, they are destroying a young life,” he said, according to Reuters.

Havana’s poor neighborhoods of La Esquina de Toyo and La Guinera saw the greatest number of violent protests. Elsewhere, rallies were largely peaceful, apart from scattered incidents of looting and stone-throwing at police in cities throughout Cuba.