(EFE) .- Cuban opponents Omara Ruiz Urquiola and Roberto Quinones They received this Monday in Miami the Calixto García Order for Freedom and Courage granted by the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba (FDHC).
In a ceremony headed by the president of the FDHC, Tony Costa, and its director, Juan Antonio Blanco, the awards were presented to Quiñones, journalist and former Cuban prisoner of conscience, and to Ruiz Urquiola, art historian and member of the Movement San Isidro (MSI).
Both were recognized for their contributions to the cause of freedom, democracy and human rights on the island, and also for their “courage and perseverance in facing the dictatorship.”
Blanco stressed that both, in addition to being opponents, are “eminently decent people.”
Ruiz Urquiola stressed upon receiving the medal his satisfaction with the fact that Cubans have “prevailed as a community” even though they are spread throughout the world after 62 years of “dictatorship.”
Quiñones said that receiving that distinction puts him in a “difficult position” because he only spent one year in prison, while there have been prisoners who have spent 20 and 25 years in jail and “without giving up.”
Quiñones, who works for the digital medium Cubanet, He said that receiving this distinction puts him in a “difficult position” because he only spent one year in prison, while there have been prisoners who have spent 20 and 25 years in jail and “without giving up.”
He also said that a son of his was told by Cuban officials that he would never be able to return to Cuba again because he went to Washington to ask for his father’s freedom.
Tony Costa, president of the FDHC, told him not to worry because those officials “will soon shut up”, which was met with applause.
The Miami-based FDHC created this award in 2020 to honor the general of Cuba’s three wars of independence, Calixto García (1839-1898).
Quiñones was arrested in September 2019, while covering a trial against evangelical pastors who had decided to educate their children at home, and sentenced to one year in jail.
The journalist was declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.
Ruiz Urquiola, professor and researcher, was expelled in 2019 from the Higher Institute of Design for defending her political ideas.
In November 2020, the activist was one of those garrisoned at the headquarters of the MSI, in Old Havana, to demand the freedom of the rebellious rapper Denis Solís, then jailed, and the end of the repression on the island, among other demands.
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