After months of denying any visits or communication, the communist Castro dictatorship finally allowed the family of imprisoned opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer to see him, and they were horrified by what they saw.
Via CiberCuba (my translation):
Family of Jose Daniel Ferrer is finally allowed to see him after months of being held incommunicado and denounce his physical deterioration
The family of José Daniel Ferrer were allowed to visit him in prison this Friday after several months of being unable to communicate. After the finally seeing him, they denounced the alarming physical deterioration suffered by the opposition leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU).
“Today, the dictatorship of Raúl Castro and Díaz-Canel provided proof of life for José Daniel to his wife and two children, and we have been left as alarmed and horrified as we have been since yesterday when we heard the strong, serious, and very grave statements from Mrs. Laura Jusino about the critical state of health he is in,” said the sister of the political prisoner, Ana Belkis Ferrer García.
In a live-streaming video on her social media account, Jusino said Ferrer was in a very delicate condition after a beating he received in April. “He is a poor skeleton,” said the activist, who also denounced other systematic tortures inflicted on the opposition leader, who is now experiencing difficulty speaking, by the regime’s oppressors.
The political prisoner’s wife, Nelva Ismaray Ortega Tamayo, and their children found Ferrer “in underwear, struggling to walk, with severe pain in his hands, arms, and legs, extremely thin, suffering from toothaches and loss of vision.”
“José’s body is riddled with injuries, to such an extent that he didn’t want to hug his child to avoid infecting him with the bacteria that has been growing on his skin for months,” stated his sister. “José Daniel told his wife and daughter that during the months of April and May, he couldn’t walk, and now he does so with great difficulty,” she added.
According to Jusino’s account, who refused to reveal the identity of her source, Ferrer’s health situation has become a matter of a state secret for the regime, which has been pressured by the international community and Cuban activists to provide proof of life for the opposition leader. She assured that at this moment, he is in a worse state of health than in previous hunger strikes of the UNPACU leader.
“With horror, his daughter and wife heard José Daniel recount that in recent days, he was taken out of Mar Verde prison and transferred to the Surgical Clinical Hospital in the city of Santiago de Cuba with the apparent purpose of extracting one of his damaged molars, but it was only for him to be tortured once again. It turns out they removed a healthy tooth and didn’t touch the decayed ones. An agent from the G2 later went to his cell to mock and threaten him, saying that ‘everything he was going through was avoidable, that he just had to accept leaving the country,'” denounced Ana Belkis.
After the visit, Ortega Tamayo shared an emotional audio recording in which she stated that her husband was being “killed.” In that regard, she expressed her fear he was being poisoned through the water or medications given by his jailers.
“It is fully confirmed that my brother is being assassinated in the slowest, most perverse, and cruel way imaginable. In the midst of such a difficult and worrying situation, he sends his message of gratitude to all the supportive people, friends, fellow fighters and thinkers, media outlets, institutions, and justice-loving governments. He expresses that he doesn’t lose hope of making it out alive from such hell, but if he doesn’t, remember that he was always willing to give his life for the freedom of his people,” shared Ferrer’s sister.
On Saturday, the Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the Department of State, Brian A. Nichols, went on Twitter and demanded the immediate release of José Daniel Ferrer, who is detained “in inhumane conditions in Cuba.”
“After months without contact, his family reports that Ferrer’s condition is grave. His peaceful protest on 11J does not merit cruelty or imprisonment. #PresosPorQué,” concluded the US official.