Abel Machado Conde suffers from a mental disability, but that hasn’t stopped Cuba’s communist dictatorship from unjustly imprisoning him in a Castro gulag for protesting on July 11, 2021. In a heartbreaking letter to his mother, Conde explains how he cannot take another day of being imprisoned, although he has committed no crime, and wants to end it all.
“I’m going to take my life”: Painful message sent by disabled Cuban political prisoner to his mother
“Mom, I’m sorry. I love you with all my heart, but if they keep me here one more day without having done anything, I’m going to take my own life. I can’t take it anymore,” confessed the 25-year-old
Cuban political prisoner Abel Machado Conde, who was sentenced to 9 years in prison after the anti-government protests of July 2021 (11J), told his family in a letter he was going to take his own life if the abuses against him continued.
He is currently detained in the Quivicán prison, which is located in the province of Mayabeque, Cuba.
“Mama, I’m sorry. I love you with all my soul, but if they keep me here for one more day without having done anything, I’m going to kill myself. I can’t take it anymore,” confessed the 25-year-old in a letter sent this week to his mother, Beatriz Conde Mesa.
Machado Conde, who is from Güines, has been detained since August 25, 2021. Human rights organization Justicia 11J said the young man was sentenced by a military court to serve 9 years behind bars, accused of “public disorder” and alleged “sabotage” after he entered a state-owned store that sells in MLC, a virtual currency that the majority of the Cuban population does not have access to, during the protests.
Cuban civil rights group, Ni un preso político más en Cuba (Not one more political prisoner in Cuba), released a statement on social media, saying that “Abel Machado, a young Cuban who suffers from a mental disability, has already attempted suicide twice since he has been deprived of his liberty.”
“People with this type of disorder are particularly vulnerable and require special treatment. The Cuban regime does not stop repression and harassment. Whatever happens to this young man is entirely their responsibility,” they warned.
Machado’s brother, Guillermo Sierra Conde, told ADN Cuba that no prison official want Abel in their pavillion, “because they say they don’t want to be responsible for what happens to him.”
“Since the beginning, the entire prison has known he has a disability, but the prosecutors charged him anyway because they felt like it, just like my cousin Daniel Antonio Páez Sierra, who is the second in command of State Security in San José de las Lajas, and who pushed hard for all of this to happen,” Guillermo said.
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