SLP, Mexico.- Legislators from Europe, Latin America and the United States, and other attendees at the Transatlantic Parliamentary Forum for a Free Cubaheld this Tuesday in Brussels, denounced human rights violations on the Island and pledged to support citizens in their demand for freedom.
He Forumheld for the first time in Europe, was co-presented by MEPs Carlo Fidanza and Marius Kamiński. In the sessions, legislators and members of civil society expressed solidarity with the Cuban people in their fight for freedom, democracy and human rights.
Rosa María Payáleader of Cuba Decide, a citizen platform that organizes the forum, wrote: “In light of the recent and increasing acts of repression and violation of human rights, the international support of the Cuban regime for other dictatorships and the aggressor of Europe, as well as “the conditions of a failed state that the Cuban people face, we reaffirm our commitment to supporting democratic change on the Island as the only way out of the deep existing crisis.”
Dozens of MEPs from the European Conservative and Reform (ECR) and European People’s Party (EPP) groups, parliamentarians from other European countries and Senator Ted Cruz, representing the American Congress, participated in the sessions.
Fidanza, head of the Fratelli d’Italia-ECR delegation and vice-president of the EuroLat interparliamentary assembly, explained that the event was “an opportunity to listen to the emotional testimonies of former political prisoners and relatives of citizens still detained.”
Angélica Garrido offers her testimony in Parliament
The express Cuban politician intervened on the day Angelica Garridowho raised his voice for all political prisoners and for his sister, Maria Cristina Garridoexecutive director of the Republican Party of Cuba and political prisoner.
In his statement he recounted the abuses he suffered during his arbitrary detention at the hands of the regime’s repressors.
“I was subjected to repression, I was subjected to torture and beatings just for shouting ‘freedom’ with my sister,” she said.
“In Cuba Being able to exercise our citizen rights costs us our lives. Exercise this right by raising our voice, which is the only weapon we have, demanding that the dictatorship leave power, demanding that the dictatorship leave, because Cuba is a failed State. For exercising that right peacefully, on July 11, 2021, I was arrested along with my sister with beatings, with torture from which I still have consequences,” she explained at the Forum.
The brave former Cuban political prisoner Angélica Garrido denounces the abuses of the #CastroDictatorship before the European Parliament in Brussels. pic.twitter.com/qmPABU5bTs
— FNCA (@vozdelafnca) November 12, 2024
His testimony recounted the seven days without food and three without water that passed and described the torture to which his sister was subjected.
“They urinated on her to make her shout ‘Long live Fidel and long live communism’, beating her, from which she also has consequences that she currently suffers in prison. Many women were sexually violated that day. Our children have aftermath psychological problems due to the arbitrary arrests they made in front of them,” he exclaimed.
The political prison, according to denouncedcost the lives of his parents, who died the first year in prison. “They couldn’t stand so much pain and so much injustice and they died.”
Within the framework of the Forum, they signed the Brussels Declaration, which reiterates the request to the Cuban regime to immediately release all political prisoners and to the European Union Commission to suspend the Cooperation Agreement with Cuba for “the clear violation of the clause of human rights”.
