MIAMI, United States. – Cuban activist and former political prisoner Thais Mailén Franco assured this Wednesday to CubaNet who left Cuba to prevent his eldest son from being recruited into the Active Military Service (SMA).
“I was forced to leave Cuba with my child to try to save him from the clutches of the Castro-Canel tyranny, to save him from that Military Service that has killed so many men and that destroys the lives of Cuban families so much,” she said. .
Mailén Franco also assured that so far he has made a very hard journey and that he has not yet recovered. “I am in a safe place, I feel good physically, but I am still very nervous. I am very afraid of the Police, ”she detailed.
The former political prisoner left the country on August 12.
“After all the slow and difficult process, on August 12 in the afternoon, despite the regrets, she and her eldest son, with a call to Compulsory Military Service and she with the threat of returning to prison, left Cuba. For obvious reasons, we prefer to keep the direction to where private,” said activist Gretell Salermo in Facebook.
The post, shared by the group Thais FreedomForever Next to an image in which Mailén Franco is seen on the plane with teary eyes, he points out that “the resources that with great sacrifice on the part of those who donated, shared, helped, were not enough for their two youngest children They might as well go.”
The Cuban activist was one of the participants in the protest on Obispo Streetwhich occurred in Old Havana in April 2021. For this reason, Franco remained in prison for almost five months.
Since her release under a precautionary measure on September 21, State Security has not stopped harassing, detaining and threatening her, both her and her family.
“I have been told to choose jail or exile. For me it is painful. I have left the country and have never stayed. But we know that State Security likes to add years as if they were lines that they are writing down in a notebook. I never stayed outside the country and now I am forced to leave. They told me like this: ‘If you stay in Cuba you will go to jail. If you stay you have to shut up and, if not, you have to go with your three children’”, Franco had denounced in statements to CubaNet.
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