Just two days after announce his exit from the magazine The Young Cubawhose director required him to modify an opinion column where he ironized about State Security, the writer and journalist Jorge Fernández Era accuses the regime to retaliate against her son. Eduardo Luis Fernández, 22, is serving a sentence for a robbery with violence perpetrated in March 2021 and enjoyed some prison benefits for his good behavior, until the authorities began to use his situation to put pressure on his father.
in a long post Published this Tuesday on Facebook, Fernández Era tells how his son ended up sentenced to ten years in prison for a robbery in which his buddy brandished a bladed weapon. Due to these events, he ended up in the Guatao Western Juvenile Prison, where he was held until he turned 21 in 2022. Already during the investigation process, the journalist says, he witnessed strange attempts to separate them, including separating him from the visiting group.
In prison, Eduardo Luis – whom he affectionately calls Eduardito – began working as a barber for inmates and guards, a trade he had learned thanks to a course run by his father. When he turned 21, he spent a brief period in the 1580 penitentiary center, in San Miguel del Padrón, and was later transferred to the Toledo 2 camp, near the José Antonio Echeverría Technological University of Havana (Cujae), where he is currently staying. at the moment.
In prison, Eduardo Luis began working as a barber for inmates and guards, a trade he had learned thanks to a course run by his father.
His attitude has earned him four passes so far, the most recent this weekend, when he told his father what happened on Wednesday, April 12, and gave his consent to the complaint that the writer is now making.
“In March, an officer who ‘gets along well with my son’ suggested that he move to the El Chico prison –closer and more rigorous–, where he would be ‘calmer’. My son replied that it was not convenient for him, There are few inmates there, he could peel less. Days later one of his friends approaches him and tells him to move together to that jail,” he explains.
A few days later, the boss of Toledo 2 called a close relative to inform him that the decision had been made to transfer Eduardo to El Chico to “protect him from his father’s influence,” a change that included six months without passes or visits. However, she brandished the official, they offered to intercede for the boy. “We will ask the Ministry of the Interior to postpone his transfer in order to give time for his father to call to tell about the offensive publications against the Government and the Revolution that he publishes on social networks,” he told her.
Although the relative, whose identity the writer does not want to reveal, alleged that these messages were not related to the young man, the official ordered him to keep an eye out, insisting that he would do “the impossible” for Eduardo Luis to remain in Toledo 2 until obtaining probation or extinction of his sentence.
The artist strongly rejects that his son is made to pay for crimes he does not commit, as well as the use made of ministry officials to use “such base methods of human degradation” for the sole purpose of silencing him. “What happened with Eduardito violates the most basic human rights and the Constitution of the Republic itself,” he reproaches.
The artist strongly rejects that his son is made to pay for crimes he does not commit, as well as the use made of ministry officials to use “such low methods of human degradation”
Fernández Era takes advantage of his letter to ask the Government of Spain and its Embassy in Havana to intercede so that he is granted a visa to attend the presentation in Madrid of some books that he has edited and that he requested before he will begin his problems with State Security, for which a ban on leaving the country has been imposed. “We will have to see if they dare, once again, to banish a Cuban by birth, or not to let me return to my homeland,” he adds.
She also asks the international community, including the United Nations, Amnesty International, Churches of different confessions and democratic governments around the world, with special appeal to the international left, to intercede for her son. “I demand, from the only pages that are allowed to me, that my son be released immediately and allowed to leave the country. Here his physical and psychological integrity is in danger,” he claims.
The journalist, who holds the highest State authorities responsible for what could happen to his son, quotes words from Fidel Castro himself to accuse the regime of carrying out “a policy that has nothing to do with revolutionary principles.” In addition, he reproaches them for practicing a socialism that “is congenial with atrocities like this, typical of a fascism entrenched in the soul of the nation.”
Fernández Era announces that this Saturday they will be stationed between 12 and 1 in the afternoon in front of the monument to José Martí in the Central Park of Havana if their requests are not met, in a peaceful protest against the harassment suffered by both he and his son. “I will repeat it week after week, at the same time. I have nothing to lose anymore,” cries the writer, who closes the text with a phrase in capital letters: “Don’t touch my son!”
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