Havana, Cuba.- Wilber Aguilar As soon as he sleeps waiting for his son, the political prisoner Walnier Luis Aguilar Rivera, between the door of the house. His despair to see him free increased since the Cuban regime announced the release of inmates and, in the following days, were released around 167 political prisoners.
However, without explanations and without reaching 553 announced figurethe Cuban authorities paused the releases on the same day of the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States.
“Our children are hostage,” he said Wilber Aguilar a Cubanet. “We have told us that the attitude of us has an impact to give him benefits, to give his freedom, all that kind of threats. When you threaten a person and say: ‘If you don’t shut up, it will be worse for your child’, then my son, in addition to being a political prisoner, is a hostage, ”he said.
With just 21 years old, Walnier Luis Aguilar Rivera was arrested On July 20, 2021 and subject to forced disappearance for weeks by the forces of the order, after participating in the protests of July 12 in the town of La Güinera, in Havana.
“My son is innocent, my son He is raised here with his mother, with his daughters, with his wife who lived here, his brother; My son is a person who has never had a criminal record or has never vandalized anything. Here at the güinera nothing was vandalized. Here the violence came from the police and the civil dresses officials who attacked the protesters and, when attacking them, they responded. Here they murdered Diubis Laurencio, they responded with disarmed people who were only demanding freedom and demanding their rights, ”says Aguilar.
Walnier Aguilar was accused of “sedition” and his request Prosecutor was 23 years of deprivation of liberty. According to his father, the same day of the trial, months later, the request of the Prosecutor’s Office was ratified. “The trial was rigged, a lie, everything was ordered by the security of the State, with those young people they crossed, a total evil. That was the saddest day of my life, ”Wilber told this newspaper.
However, after a cassation process, the penalty was reduced to 12 years of deprivation of liberty. The authorities did not even take into account, in addition to the fact that the young man did not have a criminal record, which suffers from intellectual disability due to a head injury and that, since childhood, he receives treatment by psychiatry.
“His mother became ill of his nerves,” the father continued to tell. “I had to be a father, grandfather, I had to do everything because my wife became ill and cost him more than a year to recover. Not only has it been hard for her, but also for her daughter, because Walnier has two small daughters who have been in our care. The whole family was destroyed. ”
“That’s why I don’t want to talk to any of these minions, with any of these dictators who have taken that sentence against those boys. To date, my son is imprisoned, and the encounter of us has to be in a living room, it is not in the house of the house. I have nothing to talk to them. For me it is always freedom, my word is freedom, ”he said in tears.
Until they are free
Wilber Aguilar is not missing a visit in prison of his son, not only takes his food, but hope.
“The main thing that is taken to a prisoner, and more if he is a political, like my son, is hope. I do not have a visit because I have to take my son hope. The prisoner lives and feeds more about hope, ”he said.
It has also been the relatives of political prisoners more active in the peaceful struggle to demand freedom. On August 1, 2022, he made a peaceful protest in the Cathedral of Havana with several mothers and relatives of political prisoners. They began to shout “freedom for political prisoners” and “freedom for our children”, all were detained and fined by the authorities.
The punishment for that civic action also weighed on his children, in the case of Walnier, was transferred for an area of greater rigor in the prison of the East Combin, in Havana, where they are repeat priests.
Wilber Aguilar has also received threats from the Political Police, citations, his house has remained under police surveillance and have kept him in arbitrary domiciliary seclusion on several occasions.
However, Wilber refuses to shut up and has not stopped denouncing and demanding the freedom of his son. “No one can play with pain or feelings of family members who are suffering for their loved ones,” said the father.
Similarly, he denounced that a few days ago they returned to lower food ration in prison, so prisoners are going more hungry.
“Now you have to take more foods, so they don’t starve. A person who does not aliement, gets sick and dies; They are killing them alive, ”he said.
“Then I, that I am his dad, how I am going to make silence, how am I going to eat the threats of state security. No. I am going to defend my son. The freedom of my son is above all, his well -being, to be with his brother, his daughters, his family. We are going to keep fighting until it is free, ”he added.
Despite suffering and harassment suffered for more than three years, Wilber says he has no hatred in his heart, he only craves the freedom of his son and all unjustly imprisoned political prisoners.
