Until July 11, 2021, Yosvany Rosell García Caso spent his days between his job as a welder and raising his three children. That Sunday day his life took a turn when he joined the popular protests in Holguín. Six months later he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the crime of sedition. This Wednesday he has been on a hunger strike for 20 days demanding his immediate release.
“My husband has lost a lot of weight and is very fragile, he barely weighs 55 kilograms after so many days without eating food,” she tells 14ymedio Mailin Rodriguez Sanchez. “On May 29, they were transferred from the prison of El Yayal, Cuba Sí, to the Hospital Clínico Quirúrgico [Lucía Iñiguez Landín]”.
“He is refusing to be given hydration serums,” adds Rodríguez, who spoke with her husband to “try to get him out of that position.” However, Rosell, 34, was determined to “continue the strike because he is tired of the continued violation of his rights and those of the other prisoners” from 11J.
“I understand perfectly, but he is in a situation where he could lose his life and that worries me tremendously,” the woman says anguished. Rosell began the strike on May 11, after an incident in which the prison authorities denied him a visit from his wife and his three children, and over the days he has extended his demands to be released as soon as possible. before.
“Since yesterday my daughter has been asking me if she wants to see her father and we are making arrangements so that she can visit him in the hospital”
“We have three children, ages five, six and 14. The youngest are not aware of what is happening with their father, but the oldest knows everything,” Rodríguez explained to this newspaper. “Since yesterday my daughter has been asking me that she wants to see her father and we are making arrangements so that she can visit him in the hospital. I hope that she will talk to him and get him out of the position in which she is now “.
Since the hunger strike began, the desperate woman has gone to prison four times, but was not allowed to see him, or even to give her husband religious attention. “After many pleas, they only let me see him yesterday at noon when I was already in the hospital. Today I’m going there again to see if they’ll let me in,” she says.
Rodríguez assures that the damage is not only emotional or physical: “In addition to having his human rights violated, the family has lived through two very difficult years, because he was the material support. We have suffered repression and the economic blow that he is prisoner. He, with his work as a welder and blacksmith, was the one who supported the family”.
It is not the first time that Rosell has gone on a hunger strike. In February 2022, he spent 17 days without eating food to demand not to be transferred from Holguín to a prison in Cienfuegos and to demand improvements in prison conditions. At that time, he had been the victim of several suspensions of his right to make regulatory telephone calls and was kept in isolation.
A few months later, in July of last year, Rosell went on hunger strike again after being beaten for wearing white to commemorate the popular demonstrations of 11J.
“I do not regret anything in the slightest. How could I regret wanting to see my country free from a communist dictatorship, which has submerged us for more than 60 years in extreme misery, and violating all our human rights? That blessed 11 July not only marked a before and after the beginning of the end of communism in Cuba, it also showed us the worst face of the dictatorship,” he wrote in a letter posted on networks a few weeks earlier.
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