MADRID, Spain.- Political prisoners Sissi Abascal and Sayli Navarro, both imprisoned for their participation in the protests of July 11, 2021 (11J), were excluded from the group of five political prisoners who received permits to leave La Bellotex prison in Matanzas on Monday, September 2. While these other inmates will be able to visit their homes for four days, Abascal and Navarro did not receive this benefit, according to opposition member Martha Beatriz Roque.
“Today, five of the women convicted of 11J were given a pass, but these two were excluded,” said Roque, director of the Cuban Center for Human Rights, in an interview with 14yMedio. “They have never been given a pass, so this is an absolutely discriminatory exclusion” against Abascal and Navarro, who are also members of the opposition group Ladies in White.
Roque noted that “passes to leave prison are becoming more frequent in Cuban prisons,” a trend that he attributes to the severe economic crisis that crosses the Island. “In the prisons “There is less and less food; sometimes all they have for the whole day is a little rice,” he explained. “When prisoners are released on leave, there are fewer mouths to feed.”
The exclusion of Abascal and Navarro from these permits is a form of punishment for their activism and their links with dissident organizations, as well as for the constant denunciations and statements that both make from prison. Among their most recent acts of activism was a fast which both opponents carried out on July 11, in commemoration of the third anniversary of 11J.
Sayli Navarro, daughter of well-known opposition leader Félix Navarro Rodríguez, was arrested along with her father in Perico, Matanzas, during the historic anti-government protests of July 11, 2021. Sayli is currently serving an eight-year prison sentence in La Bellotex, while her father was sentenced to nine years in prison.
While, in November 2021, Sissi Abascal was condemned by the Municipal Prosecutor’s Office of Jovellanos to six years in prison with confinement for the alleged crimes of Contempt, Attack and Public Disorder.
