MIAMI, United States. – Mariela Castro Espín, director of the state Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX) of Cuba, said this wednesday in a press conference that the trans political prisoner Brenda Díaz, a protester of 11J, was “very well” in the male section of the prison for people with HIV Cuba-Panama.
“Brenda is very good there (…). [Ella] he does not know that he is a media figure that they have invented against Cuba. He has not even found out about it, ”said Castro Espín, during the press conference that he offered this Wednesday at the inauguration of the 16th Cuban Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.
According to the official, daughter of the dictator Raúl Castro, the complaints about Díaz’s situation are part of an “oversized story full of fantasies.”
“Her mother even expressed that she felt very calm that Brenda was still there,” added Castro Espín, for whom the information about the case of the young Cuban is “little gossip” and is part of a “media show by the press and corporate agencies.
“It is sad that the same lie continues to be reproduced to attack Cuba with this story,” he said.
Castro Espín assured that he had recently visited the Cuba-Panama prison, where Díaz is being held, and said that people from the LGBTIQ community deprived of liberty receive “very good food, better than what their families have.”
Brenda Díaz was sentenced to 14 years in prison for the alleged crimes of “public disorder and sabotage” in the anti-government protests of July 11, 2021, plus a further seven months for contempt in a recently held second trial.
After Castro Espín’s statements were released this Wednesday, Brenda Díaz’s mother, Ana María García, denied the official information about her daughter’s condition in conversation with Radio Television Martí.
“All the things that Brenda has been through in prison have been real. Brenda has not been treated medically and there they do not give her any type of medication,” García said. “And the [antir]retrovirals that are now being given to him, because I also had to take him three months ago [antir]retrovirals. That is an HIV prison and they are obliged to give him all the medicines”, she added.
According to García, Castro Espín did visit the Cuba-Panama prison, but the entourage had no contact with his daughter. “That day Brenda was talking to me for 45 minutes, 45 minutes that Mariela Castro was inside the prison and that they hid her, that is, they took her up to that office to talk to me because they hid her,” said the woman.
“What they want is to cover all the things that are being done with my daughter and she is not going to silence me or any of the people who are fighting for the freedom of the prisoners, for the freedom of Cuba,” Garcia concluded.
