The family of political prisoner José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), was able to visit him in the Mar Verde prison, in Santiago de Cuba, after waiting six months. His wife, Nelva Ismarays Ortega-Tamayo, and his children, Daniel José and Fátima Victoria, spent two hours with the inmate and reported on his state of health.
“They found him very thin but at least with better coloration on his skin,” he explained in a statement on Facebook his sister, Ana Belkis Ferrer García, who was not present at the visit and lives in the United States. Her body remains damaged by “aggressive mosquito bites” and lesions from bacteria and fungi, denounced the activist.
He added that, since Monday, Ferrer has had access to the medicines he needs and that they have allowed him to sunbathe. “You can now turn off the light bulb that stays on 24 hours a day, you unscrew it at night,” she said, although he pointed out that most of the week the prison lacks electricity.
Through his family, the opponent asked that his gratitude reach “all the people in solidarity” who have been aware of his situation in the prison.
Through his family, the opponent asked that his gratitude reach “all the people in solidarity” who have been aware of his situation
The family report shocked several activists both on the island and in exile. The political analyst Andres Albuquerque He indicated, from Miami, that one could not “remain impassive” in the face of the abuses committed against Ferrer, whom he pointed out as the only one of the “traditional opponents” who is in prison, and that while “everyone should be talking about him”, it was perceived a strange “silence” about his figure in the opposition.
He called for an “examination of conscience” for anyone who is not giving that family “the solidarity it deserves”, he asserted in his program citizen focus.
In September, the inmate’s sister denounced that the family had not received any information about his condition for several months. Ferrer is part of the almost 1,000 political prisoners that the regime has held since the mass protests of July 11, 2021 or after the demonstrations in recent months.
Since June 4 of this year, the Unpacu leader has been prohibited from making phone calls from prison. At that time, Ana Belkis Ferrer García stated that the officers kept her brother “semi-naked, only in his underpants, full of mosquito bites, feeding on the bag that they are allowing him to [recibir] every 45 days and without the right to family and conjugal visits”.
According to his sister’s calculation, Ferrer had already spent “a year, two months and 12 days burying alive and slowly dying.”
Several organizations, such as the Cuban Democratic Directorate, demanded from the Cuban government proof of life of the inmate, given the refusal of the regime to grant him the family visit that corresponded to him on August 26.
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