MADRID, Spain.- This November 29 marks the International Day of Women Human Rights Defenders, established in 2005 during the First International Consultation of Women Defenders, held in Sri Lanka.
On the occasion of this date, dedicated to the recognition of women who, individually or collectively, work to make the rights contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights a reality, today in CubaNet We remember some of the many women on the Island who fight for respect for human rights, despite the repression of the regime, which has led many of them to jail.
Maria Cristina and Angelica Garrido
The sisters María Cristina and Angélica Garrido were arrested on July 12, 2021 for their participation in the 9/11 protests in Quivicán, Mayabeque. María Cristina was sentenced to seven years in prison for the alleged crime of double attack. While her sister was sentenced to three years for the alleged crimes of contempt and assault.
Angélica Garrido has spent more than 50 days in a punishment cell in the Guatao prison, in Havana; despite the fact that the Island’s Penal Code indicates that no woman can be confined for more than 10 days in these cells.
Lizandra Gongora
Activist Lizandra Góngora, mother of five children, was sentenced to 14 years in prison last April for her participation in the 9/11 demonstrations.
In September of this year, Góngora, together with the Garrido sisters, carried out a hunger strike for the imposition of the regime to wear common prisoner uniforms.
In the last few days it emerged that Lizandra Góngora had been admitted for psychiatric reasons “to disqualify their way of thinking.”
Camila Acosta
The journalist and collaborator of CubaNet she is constantly watched and harassed by Cuban State Security.
As Acosta herself has denounced, “in her years working as an independent journalist in Cuba, she has suffered the most dissimilar repressive variants: evictions, kidnappings on public roads, interrogations, hours in cells or police patrols exposed to the sweltering heat, fines, false accusations , confiscation of work equipment”.
After July 11 he remained four days detained and incommunicado and spent ten months in home confinement.
Anay Remon
Anay Remón García, also a contributor to this medium, is one of the CubaNet journalists most harassed by the Cuban political police. In addition to having been summoned and questioned on several occasions about her work in the independent press, she has been prohibited from leaving the country since 2018.
In March 2021, Remón denounced that the regime was also harassing his mother, in an attempt to dissuade him from carrying out his journalistic work.
Marthadela Tamayo
The activist and member of the Women’s Network of Cuba, Marthadela Tamayo, is another of the opponents who is under constant harassment for demanding respect for human rights in Cuba. Tamayo, who is also “regulated”, was among the signatories of the letter that notified the Havana authorities of the celebration of a civic march on November 20, 2021.
Last Sunday, the day in which the voting of the delegates to the Municipal Assemblies of Popular Power took place, Marthadela Tamayo was prohibited from leaving her home.
Barbara Farrat
The activist Bárbara Farrat is one of the mothers of the young people imprisoned after 11J. Her son, Jonathan Torres, was arrested on July 11, 2021, when he was 17 years old. Jonathan remained in prison from then until May 25, 2022.
During all those months, Bárbara Farrat kept demanding the release of her son and that of all the political prisoners. Her demands unleashed police harassment against her; as well as the cruelty of the penitentiary authorities with the young man.
ladies in white
The opposition group Ladies in White emerged on Sunday, March 30, 2003, after the wives of those then detained as part of the Black Spring carried out by Fidel Castro reached that agreement while waiting in a common room of the General Staff of the Department of State Security, known as Villa Marista, in Havana.
Since then, they have continued demanding the release of political prisoners and defending human rights. For this reason, he has been persecuted by the Government of the Island, especially its main representatives.
Its leader, Berta Soler, since she announced on January 21, 2022 that the Ladies in White were reactivating “the campaign of confrontation for the freedom of all political prisoners without exclusion”, has been arrested every Sunday.
For their part, Aymara Nieto, another of its most active members, has been serving political prison since 2018.
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