“I came home shocked just thinking that, in addition to suffering from that strike, I also have to be tied up,” lamented Yosvany’s wife.
HAVANA, Cuba – “He is conscious, but very weak, his pale color and weight loss, his dark circles and his deep eyes are notable,” is how Mailín Rodríguez Sánchez described her husband, the political prisoner Yosvany Rosell García Caso, who is celebrating 39 days on hunger strike this Sunday.
Rodríguez Sánchez was able to see him this Saturday in the intermediate therapy room of the Lucía Íñiguez Landín Clinical Surgical Hospital, in Holguina center to which he was transferred on November 19 from the Cubasí prison.
In statements to CubaNetthe wife of the 37-year-old young man explained that he continues to be reported in “critical condition with no prognosis” by doctors. Furthermore, he does not allow himself to be touched, he only allowed his blood pressure to be taken and it was very low, “something very dangerous in his condition”, he ingests little water and already has kidney failure.
Likewise, he commented that he remains guarded at all times by State Security officers and handcuffed to the bed. “A wife with a chain from one of her feet.”
“My God, how horrible, I came home shocked just thinking that, in addition to suffering from that strike, I also have to be tied up,” she said.
“I hold the Cuban government responsible for my husband’s life because thanks to them today he is unjustly imprisoned and in danger of his life, away from his family and his three children for more than four years, just for wanting a better future for them. He did not commit any crime because peacefully demonstrating is a constitutional right,” she stated.
García Caso began the strike after more than four years in prison for participating in the demonstrations from July 11, 2021 (11J) in Holguín, for which he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. His sentence was among the highest of the more than 1,000 people prosecuted for 9/11 in the country. With the current hunger strike, he demands his freedom or, according to his wife, that he be transferred to an isolation cell.
Neither Mailín Rodríguez nor his daughter have managed to convince him to abandon the hunger strike. “He is firm in his decision,” says the wife and mother of his three minor children. “He told me that he loves us very much, but that he can’t take it anymore. I told him that there were many people worried about him and he asked me to tell them to support him in his freedom, not in abandoning the strike. He told me: ‘I am firm, tell them to fight for my freedom,'” he said.
“His life is counting down,” adds the heartbroken wife.
