The political prisoner, whose health has deteriorated in prison, is HIV positive and also suffers from diabetes.
MIAMI, United States. – The Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH) denounced this Tuesday the delicate state of health of political prisoner Yilian Oramas García and demanded that she receive “immediate and adequate” medical attention, as well as her release, to avoid “irreparable consequences.”
The organization spread in X a testimony from journalist and activist Carlos Michael Morales Rodríguez, which details the care deficiencies faced by the inmate in the Cuba-Panama prison, a mixed prison for people with HIV located in Güines, Mayabeque.
In the material released by the OCDH, Morales relates—citing María Josefa Oramas, the inmate’s mother—that her daughter “has unbalanced blood pressure, as well as sugar, due to her diabetes” and that in the prison “there is a lack of medication (…) and there are not even lancets to measure sugar.”
Although the clinical condition “requires hospital admission,” the prison management refuses to transfer her “claiming that there is no transportation.” The family, he adds, “holds the political police responsible (…) for the life and physical integrity” of Oramas.
The OCDH complaint this Tuesday comes after a series of previous alerts and journalistic reports that document a lack of medication, punitive restrictions and sustained deterioration in the prisoner’s health. On July 22nd, Martí News reported that Oramas—an HIV patient—was denied access to the sun and telephone communication with his family in Cuba-Panama, despite having been promised a transfer to the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK) due to the deterioration of his health.
“They have not given him a yard, nor have they given him a telephone, supposedly, until State Security arrives at the prison, due to the complaint that was made,” his mother declared then.
A week before, on July 16, the same media had reported that in Cuba-Panama they had been without antiretroviral therapies or the reinforced diet required by inmates with HIV for more than a month. In that report, the opponent Librado Linares described the situation like this: “The conditions are terrible. There have been no retrovirals for more than a month. The diet that a patient with these characteristics necessarily needs, a reinforced diet, was removed.”
Martí News He added that, during a prison stint, Oramas herself corroborated the situation and described it as “critical.”
Likewise, on July 17, the Cubalex Legal Information Center launched a public alert about the “serious deterioration” of Oramas’ health and demanded urgent specialized attention. The NGO also pointed out the lack of medication and a proper medical diet in prison.
The Documentation Center of Cuban Prisons (DOCUB) included the case of Yilian Oramas García in his list of people deprived of liberty with delicate health corresponding to last July. The organization described a critical picture and a pattern of deliberate medical negligence in Cuban prisons. DOCUB had already documented restrictions and retaliation against Oramas in previous reports.
Oramas, a native of Santa Clara, is serving six years of deprivation of liberty for events linked to a public protest that occurred on August 15, 2021 in front of a funeral home in that city. After being tried, she was found guilty of the crimes of “attack and resistance.”
This Tuesday’s complaint from the OCDH highlights that the prolonged lack of access to essential medications, the obstacles to hospitalizing her and the documented reprisals – such as the deprivation of the playground and the use of the telephone – increase Oramas’ life risk. For this reason, the organization demands that adequate medical care be immediately guaranteed and that his freedom be arranged to protect his physical integrity and his life.
