SAN LUIS POTOSI, Mexico.- Nelva Ismaray Ortegawife of José Daniel Ferrer, political prisoner and leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), raised her voice again this Monday to demand proof of her husband’s life and ask for support from international organizations to achieve the release of the opponent.
“To all people, organizations, institutions, MEPs, democratic governments, supporters, lovers of freedom, democracy and justice to join this campaign for my husband’s freedom. We continue to demand not only ‘proof of life’, but also the restitution of all his human and prison rights, as well as his immediate and unconditional freedom,” she said in an audio shared with Marti News and ICLEP.
Ortega reiterated that the regime continues to prohibit her from visiting her husband in the Mar Verde prison, where he is serving his sentence under inhumane conditions and being a victim of mistreatment, violence and physical and psychological torture.
On September 3, the prison authorities again denied him the required family visit.
“I went to the prison accompanied by my stepdaughter Fátima Victoria and my son Daniel José, who, according to the rules, were supposed to have a family visit, but for the eighteenth time the prison authorities and the so-called State Security did not allow us to see him. They only allowed us to deliver the ‘bag’ with food, toiletries and some medicines,” she denounced.
In her voice message, she recalled that her husband has been deprived of the right to telephone calls or family or conjugal visits for a year and six months. “All this time, he has been confined to a punishment cell, isolated not only from his family, but from the entire penal community.”
JJose Daniel Ferrerturned 54 on July 29 in the Mar Verde maximum security prison, without being able to see his family.
In April, authorities only allowed a two-minute meeting and since then, no one has been able to see Ferrer.
There he was able to confirm that he is being held in unsanitary conditions, and despite the fact that on April 1 the “sentence for the false crimes imposed on him during the trial” was carried out, he is still incarcerated.
Renowned organizations and figures of Cuban civil society, both on and off the island, have joined together to request the nomination of the political prisoner and prisoner of conscience for the Sakharov Prize, awarded by the European Parliament. The nomination seeks to protect and safeguard the life of the opposition leader, who is in a situation of extreme risk.
“His life is at serious risk due to the conditions in which he is held and the constant violation of his fundamental rights. José Daniel has been kept in a cell, isolated since his confinement, as an added punishment,” the document states.
The activist has been detained since 11 July 2021 for trying to gain access to the site of protests in his province; a month later, a four-year prison sentence he had been serving since 2020 under house arrest was revoked. This is his third politically motivated imprisonment.
In the 2020 case, he was convicted along with Fernando González Vaillant and Roilán Zárraga Ferrer, who “have already served their time and are still in prison,” Ferrer assured Ortega.
In 2003, José Daniel Ferrer was arrested during the Cuban Black Spring. At the time, he was leading the Christian Liberation Movement and the Campaign for the Varela Project in the eastern provinces. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison, after his death sentence was commuted. He spent eight years in prison for refusing to be exiled. He was declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.
The ten years following his release he did not cease his opposition activism: he founded UNPACU, and presides over the People’s Party and the Council for the Democratic Transition of Cuba.
Between October 2019 and April 2020, he was held incommunicado. He was released thanks to a resolution of the European Parliament, but not before being sentenced to four and a half years of house arrest.
