HAVANA, Cuba.- Two prisoners were victims of beatings and ill-treatment in gallery number 15 in the Valle Grande prison in Havana. The inmates were beaten, denounced the political prisoner Pedro Albert Sánchez, by the prison authorities of the place on Sunday, May 8, Mother’s Day.
One of the victims was a protester on July 11 (J11), 2021, who is disparagingly called “stone throwers” in detention centers.
“Cuban mothers, look at what our children are exposed to for having taken to the streets on July 11. For them, I ask world public opinion to pressure the Cuban government to recognize the political nature of the events of July 11, 2021, and immediately isolate all the political prisoners of the commons,” the professor said through a telephone call whose audio his relatives sent to the CubaNet newsroom.
Given these events, Albert Sánchez summons the official press to talk about what happened: “I give until Sunday May 29 for the official press to explain the facts or that same day I will stand up to death if necessary against violence physical and unnecessary in our prisons.”
The political prisoner also asked “that we start calling them counter-myths, instead of counter-revolutionaries, because what we have is no longer a revolution, it is a myth to be replaced by a new revolution. I call for an international campaign in favor of these ideas.”
Albert Sánchez was among the 11J convicts whose case was denounced by Prisoners Defenders (PD) before the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances. He was arrested again at the beginning of November 2021 and accused of “instigation to commit a crime”, when he was about to carry out a solo walk “for freedom of thought, expression and demonstration” and in support of the Archipelago group and the call to the Civic March for Change on 15N. This would be his fourth walk in defense of the fundamental freedoms of Cubans.
In February 2022, he went on a hunger strike to protest the violations of his rights. His case is still pending trial.
“When you defend the Cuban government, you defend that an elderly man with a terminal illness be sent to jail for walking alone as a way of protesting,” the Cubalex Legal Information Center denounced after his arrest.
Regarding his illness, the professor expressed that he feels “his body is old, sick and tired. Politically, I feel abandoned. But, my effort is strengthened by being nourished by my own strength”.
At the end of his message, he asked for help, “more than for my health, for the health of my country, help my children, my family, my friends, all Cubans, before it is too late. new homeland We will grow. Amen”.
Currently, PD registers at least 1,015 political prisoners on the Island, most of them after 11J. In a recent complaint filed with the United Nations Committee Against Torture, the organization exposed 101 testimonies of torture in Cuban prisons. One of the 15 patterns of torture and ill-treatment identified was, precisely, beatings by prison authorities.
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