After nearly three years in a communist gulag, Cuban opposition leader and prisoner of conscience Jose Daniel Ferrer continues his defiance, refusing to wear a prison uniform. Despite constant torture by his captors, Ferrer bravely rejects being classified as a common prisoner and is left in his underwear.
Via Martí Noticias (my translation):
Ferrer continues to refuse to wear prison uniform, says his wife
Cuban opposition leader José Daniel García Ferrer refuses to put on the uniform of a common prisoner at Mar Verde prison in Santiago de Cuba, where he is serving a sentence of four years and 14 days for his participation in the massive protests of July 11, 2021.
“It’s a right that he is demanding,” explains his wife Nelva Ismaray Ortega in an audio recording obtained by Martí Noticias, where she details her latest attempt to see him.
Ortega went to the prison on Monday, but Ferrer continues to be denied family visits. “They were following me until I arrived. For a moment, I thought they were going to stop me at the checkpoint,” she said.
The activist, promoter of Cuba Decide, and president of the Council for Democratic Transition in Cuba, has been without the right to visits and phone calls since March 2023, according to complaints from his family.
After several hours of waiting, Ortega was given a letter from her husband. “He sends greetings to everyone,” she said. According to her, the political prisoner asks her to send him books in English to study, magazines, and other texts he can read in prison.
Last Saturday, the wife of the political prisoner also went to the prison but was detained and taken to the Second Police Unit in Santiago de Cuba.
“They said it wasn’t visiting hours, asking where I was going because it wasn’t visiting hours that day. During our last visit, which was also denied through family channels, they told us the visits would be on the 2nd and 9th (of March). This is a new strategy to mock the family, not just the prisoner,” she said.
In a police station office, she was threatened by three officers and received a warning letter. “This is the second one, and they told me the third one would be the last, that it would constitute contempt.”
Amnesty International, which has named the Cuban opposition leader a prisoner of conscience and has repeatedly demanded his immediate release to Cuban authorities, echoed the detention of his wife on Monday.
“Once again, the government of @DiazCanelB harasses and arbitrarily detains @NelvaIsmarays, the wife of prisoner of conscience @jdanielferrer, while she was trying to visit him in prison. The multiple times access to visits are denied are part of the repression pattern,” wrote X Erika Guevara-Rosas, Senior Director of Research, Advocacy, and Global Policies of that organization on social media.
After the protests of July 11th, during which he was arrested, the court considered that Ferrer did not meet “the requirements for limiting freedom” of a sanction imposed on him in 2020 and ruled that he should serve the remaining time, 4 years and 14 days, in prison.