HAVANA, Cuba. – “I have saved my energies; That is why I ask you to get to the point, be concise, because I am interested in exposing some issues that seem relevant to me now; Then, if you want, we will do a more extensive interview,” said political prisoner Pedro Albert Sánchez, 68 years old, before starting our conversation. Just three days before had been released and he was still recovering from a hunger strike that had left him even weaker and thinner.
“Skinny and bad as you see me, a little physically weak, but with a lot of strength of spirit,” he clarified in a joking tone.
Respecting his instructions and his time, as if I were in one of his classes, I accepted his conditions. He spoke slowly but accurately. For him, this interview was essential because he would soon have a meeting with the Execution Judge to define the conditions of his extra-penal license.
The human rights activist has prostate cancer and chronic ulcerative colitis. You need to rest and take extreme care.
“My state of health is almost miraculous, it is not only because of this strike, but because of the previous strikes, 39 days that I was there, in prison 1580, in a state of disobedience, sleeping on a sheet on the floor because I gave up the mattress , to the food in the dining room, to all those things, feeding only from the sack [comida que le hace llegar la familia]”he explained.
He also explained that sometimes he needs his wife’s help to be able to move from one place to another in the house and has experienced difficulty waking up. However, he feels he has enough strength and will to gradually recover.
“I think that prison weakened me a lot on the outside, but it strengthened me spiritually more,” he said.
“In the [prisión] 1580 they gave us peas without salt, but there are no peas on the street nor is there salt. The cells have constant water leaks, and that water leaking is our country bleeding. But that was not in my cell, it was in all the cells, in all the galleys, it is in all the prisons, in all the schools and hospitals in Cuba,” he added.
After participating in the protests of July 11, 2021 (11J) in Guanabacoa, Havana, in 2022 Albert Sánchez was sentenced to five years of limited freedom on charges of “public disorder” and “contempt.” However, he was imprisoned in November 2023, after the Havana Execution Court revoked his extra-penal license and ordered the punishment to be carried out in a closed penitentiary center. On November 12, one year would have passed since his imprisonment in prison 1580 in Havana.
“I am not free, but a prisoner in my own home. “I’m supposed to serve five years, of which I was almost one there, behind metal bars,” he said.
Three months before his one-year license expires, family members must present to the authorities a summary of the medical history of the Havana Oncological Hospital, where he is treated, and thus be able to request an extension from the authorities. However, Albert Sánchez is aware that this will not be enough, but that the political police agents, who define his case, will also base it on his behavior, that is, whether he remains calm at home or returns. to participate in peaceful marches or protests of some kind.
“Even if they gave me definitive freedom, I would remain imprisoned, I would feel imprisoned between the mental bars of our Island, in this mental mesh that responds to that doctrine that all dissidence is treason. “They have applied it cruelly to me,” he said.
His “sin,” as he expressed it, was having gone out during the massive 11J protests and approaching a State Security officer who was recording the protesters and telling him that, if he was recording those who were not communists, he should record it. him too.
That day, upon seeing the repression, he says, he felt a lot of helplessness and anger.
“I felt the same sensation that perhaps Simón Bolívar felt at the end of his life when he said ‘I have plowed in the sea’; Now I realize and say ‘no, Bolívar, you did what you could and you were a man of your time.’ “I also believe that I will not plow in the sea, I am doing what I can within my possibilities,” he said.
In July of this year, Amnesty International declared him a “prisoner of conscience” and sent a letter to ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel urging him to “release him immediately and unconditionally.”
This Tuesday, Albert Sánchez must appear before the Execution Judge and State Security officials, who will inform him of the conditions of his second one-year extra-penal license.
During the interview with CubaNetthe professor assured that he would not accept impositions: “Once, when they gave me the first extra-penal license, I told them that I did not recognize them as a Court of Justice, but as an instrument of repression. If I said that two years ago, under those conditions, now, after having gone through all these circumstances, I have thousands more reasons not to recognize them.”
“And forgive me those who say that there is no dialogue with State Security, with the dictatorship. I do have to talk to them, and it’s not that I’m talking to the dictators, it’s that I’m defending myself, I’m kicking; I have them on top of me, with two chronic illnesses, 68 years of age, a damaged, tainted spirituality, and prison… I have to kick, at least,” he expressed before ending the interview and going to rest.
