Physics professor Pedro Albert Sánchez, imprisoned since November 3, 2021, is on a hunger strike in the Valle Grande prison. The Prosecutor’s Office asked the academic for five years in prison in July, who last year announced a walk “for freedom of thought, expression and peaceful demonstration,” but the trial has not yet been held.
Sánchez refused to receive the food that the family brought to a prison visit on September 13. “The frustration and impotence that I feel right now I have no way of expressing them,” said Pedro Antonio Albert, son of the professor and resident abroad, in a video that posted this wednesday on Facebook.
“My dad’s situation is really worrying and I fear for his life,” Pedro Antonio wrote on social networks, to accompany his speech. “A professor of physics and mathematics who has educated thousands of students in Havana and Pinar del Río,” is how the young man described his father, adding that the academic suffers from cancer and ulcerative colitis.
“My brother and I are worried because we know that when our father makes a decision, there is no one to intervene or make him change his mind”
“His only crime has been to freely express what he thinks,” laments Pedro Antonio. “My dad is going to die, he has been on a hunger strike for two days. My brother and I are worried because we know that when our father makes a decision, there is no one to intervene or make him change his mind.”
“I wouldn’t want the worst to happen but I know the worst can happen,” says the young man.
Heir to a long tradition of walkers, including such emblematic characters as Andarín Carvajal, a Cuban athlete who participated in the 1904 Saint Louis Olympic Games in the marathon event, the professor sought to vindicate through his steps the citizen freedom on the island.
On that November day, despite the threats he had received, he vindicated his initiative: “The reasons are the same as in the previous walks, but more intense, given that the situation in the country is the same, but more dangerous.”
Sánchez refuses to speak to anyone to avoid reprisals against his family, warns his son. “He does not want that he agentucho of State Security, the one who calls himself Abel, go visit my brother.” The young man regrets that they had his father “locked up without cause, without trial. Enough that he tried to use the established channels to say what he wanted to express and none wanted to listen “.
“Release him, because my father is not a criminal. He is a professional with dignity, which is what you do not have,” the young man remarked, addressing the agents of the Cuban political police. “That man has more dignity than all of you.”
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