The Lady in White Annia Zamora, mother of political prisoner Sissi Abascal, denounced this Monday that she was detained by State Security in the municipality of Diez de Octubre, in Havana. Two women and several uniformed officers – including a “repressor” who identified himself as the agent Jonathan–, she explained on her social networks, they intercepted her on Santa Catalina avenue and took her to the Aguilera police unit.
“There they searched all my belongings and my body as well,” said Zamora, who was threatened with going to prison if she visited the opposition member Martha Beatriz Roque or the headquarters of the Ladies in White in the Cuban capital. In addition, her mobile phone was intervened and deleted, since “contacts and other things do not appear” in the device’s memory, she said.
He was also warned not to continue posting anti-regime messages on social media. “I will face prison with great dignity,” Zamora wrote hours later, in addition to demanding the freedom of his daughter, beaten and arrested by the political police during the demonstrations on July 11, 2021, in the Matanzas town of Carlos Rojas. Sentenced to six years in prison in Matanzas, on December 27 the appeal court confirmed her sentence.
“I visit whoever I want. And only after death do I stop demanding my daughter’s freedom,” concluded Zamora, who accompanied her message with a photograph from inside the police car where she was detained. Recently, Zamora denounced having been beaten during an official summons in Jovellanos, Matanzas. The opponent remarked that the mistreatment, carried out by the officers Dorka and Orlandohad occurred precisely on Women’s Day.
Mirka Ibáñez, also the mother of a 9/11 political prisoner –Yadir Ayala, sentenced to 10 years in prison in Camagüey–, received a summons from the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office for demanding the release of her son. According to exposed the activist Julio Góngora in the middle Cuban DNAthis is a new episode of harassment of Ibáñez for his work at the head of Cuba de Luto, an association of relatives that demands justice for the inmates.
The document describes Cuba as an “authoritarian state” and describes the repressive apparatus that, from the Ministry of the Interior to the Attorney General’s Office, contributes to the legal abandonment of political prisoners.
These new cases of repression coincide with the publication of the last annual report of the United States on human rights practices. In the corresponding section, the document describes Cuba as an “authoritarian state” and describes the repressive apparatus that, from the Ministry of the Interior to the Attorney General’s Office, contributes to the legal abandonment of political prisoners.
Unlawful or arbitrary executions, including “extrajudicial killings” and torture, are some of the serious State Department accusations.
The report details that ignoring the situation of the prisoners, torturing them and abusing their condition is a “policy” of the regime. In addition, it records the most notable cases of police violence on the Island, such as the murder of the young Zinédine Zidane Batista, in Santa Clara, or the massacre of the rafters in Bahía Honda.
Torture, disappearances, harassment, arbitrary arrests, surveillance and intervention of correspondence, police cordoning of homes and travel bans are also detailed in the report, which cites numerous organizations defending human rights on the island. and whose content has already been criticized by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla.
Several international organizations for the defense of human rights have denounced that 2023 did not mark an improvement in the conditions faced by political prisoners on the Island. If anything, said journalist and political prisoner Jorge Bello Domínguez in a report on the maximum security prison of the Combinado del Este, what the regime has demonstrated is its inflexibility and its lack of respect for its own Penal Code.
The document, which analyzes the situation of the penitentiary center – where Bello himself is imprisoned – in the first two months of 2023, states that inmates are subjected to “discriminatory treatment, abuse, physical torture, ill-treatment by word and deed, denials and suspension of family and conjugal visits”.
Bello is meticulous in his description of the human rights violations carried out in Combinado del Este against those who protested the “chaotic economic, political and social situation” on the Island during 9/11.
The Ministry of the Interior has redoubled the repression and torture against inmates “with mental problems”, such as Asley Nelsón Cabrera Puentes and Amalio Álvarez González
The Ministry of the Interior, he affirms, has redoubled the repression and torture against inmates “with mental problems”, such as Asley Nelsón Cabrera Puentes and Amalio Álvarez González, who have been deprived of their medicines and suffered the supply of drugs that worsen their condition.
Álvarez was also beaten by a jailer while he was immobilized by handcuffs and wounded – after a suicide attempt – with an injury that required 12 stitches. “Once treated, he was taken to the internal order area with both hands handcuffed to an iron rod, this practice is known as the bus and it is one of the most frequent torture practices, not only against politicians, but also against other common prisoners,” denounced the journalist.
As for Nelson, in a state of nervous breakdown he often shouts slogans against the regime, which has caused the officers to subject him to continuous torture, which includes depriving him of alleviating his physiological needs, in addition to denying him water and food.
Another case of deteriorated health corresponds to the prisoner Alexis Borges Wilson, sentenced to 16 years in prison. Borges, victim of a “delicate situation [de enfermedad] without receiving specialized medical treatment”, he refused to wear the clothes of a common prisoner. As punishment, he is prevented from communicating with his family and is subjected to physical torture, Bello points out.
As for the case of Bello himself, sentenced to 15 years in prison, he stated that he had suffered “a rigged judicial process devoid of all guarantees.” He denounced, in the report, a State Security official identified as Pedro, responsible for “issuing express orders to carry out everything from torture to mistreatment of deeds and words.” Finally, he demanded “support and solidarity” from various international bodies for the 9/11 prisoners, whom he considers helpless against the “tyranny” that imprisoned them.
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