The Archivo Cuba organization asked the international community this Thursday to intercede for political prisoner Carlos Manuel Pupo Rodríguez, national coordinator of the Union for Free Cuba Party.
at your request Why “doesn’t it matter” that Cubans die of hunger? the organization urges the ambassadors and senior representatives of international organizations on the Island to make an appearance at the hospital where the prisoner is hospitalized and ask for updates on his medical condition.
Pupo Rodríguez, who is serving his sentence in the Kilo Cinco y Medio prison in Pinar del Río –where the protesting rapper Maykel Osorbo is also found–, was urgently transferred this week to the Abel Santamaría Provincial Hospital where, following requests from his family, he deposed the strike.
“They had kept him locked up in a small cell, deprived of water, medical attention and telephone communications and family visits,” says the Washington-based NGO, which describes his case as a cruel punishment by State Security.
In the document, Archivo Cuba also calls on the UN special rapporteurs on torture and cruel treatment, the International Red Cross and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, to demand the prompt release of Pupo and all Cuban political prisoners. In addition, it asks all those international bodies to carry out inspections in detention centers “without prior notice.”
Likewise, it asks the Cuban media to reflect in their content the realities of the prison system and officials to safeguard files that show the violation of human rights. In its text, the NGO recapitulates that, since the establishment of the Castro dictatorship, at least 1,748 deaths of detained opponents have been documented, 27 of them on hunger strike.
The organization also has words for Andy Reyes, a common prisoner who declared a hunger strike after he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for a crime that he insisted he had not committed.
The organization also has words for the case of the Cuban Andy Reyes, 27 years old, a common prisoner who went on a hunger strike after he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for a crime he insisted he had not committed. “He died on the 52nd day of his protest strike demanding a review of the case before a judicial system subordinated to a single communist party regime and lacking legal guarantees,” he points out.
Likewise, he recalls that the Council of Human Rights Rapporteurs of Cuba has estimated that “more than a thousand inmates have lost their lives in the last decade due to beatings, torture, mistreatment, inhumane conditions and lack of medical attention”, something that has some political prisoners to go on a hunger strike.
One of the political detainees in danger is precisely Pupo Rodríguez, who has been on a hunger strike for two periods, the last of 21 days, after being sentenced to six years in prison for participating in the demonstrations on July 11, 2021 in the municipality of San Antonio de los Baños (Artemis).
In addition to calling on democratic states to cease all action that legitimizes, finances and supports the Cuban dictatorship, and to impose sanctions on all agents who participate in the repression, including judges, prosecutors or police, Archivo Cuba demands that the Cuban regime “Dismantle the repressive apparatus and allow a peaceful transition to democracy.”
The NGO criticizes that the Cuban regime not only enjoys “total impunity”, but also occupies prominent positions in organizations such as an elected member of the UN Human Rights Council (2021-2023) and the Executive Council of the Pan American Health Organization. (2020-2023).
Neither the Red Cross nor international organizations can inspect compliance with human rights in the more than 100 large prisons that Cuba has, as well as the 150 small penitentiary institutions and 300 police centers. Nor does the Cuban government provide information to the relatives of those detained or who died in prison.
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