I AM UNPACU. YO SOY UNPACU.

In Santiago de Cuba a group of courageous human rights activists led by José Daniel Ferrer García (former Amnesty International’s Prisoner of Conscience and Medal of Freedom laureate) started a hunger strike on March 20. The group is protesting an arbitrary decision by the regime to surround the national headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) with police to prevent the organization from delivering food, medications and offering medical attention to people in extreme poverty. For the past 18 days, UNPACU has been systematically repressed by the dictatorship and surrounded by more than 20 police agents in civilian clothes. The regime not content with imposing misery and oppression, blocks independent civil initiatives aimed to relief miserable conditions of vulnerable groups living in extreme poverty.  Harassment and repression of UNPACU´s and the flaunting deployment of police to prevent an organization from delivering humanitarian is evidence of the Cuban regime imposes a blockade against its own people. 

As UNPACU reaches day 14 of a hunger strike to protest these injustices and as the health of José Daniel Ferrer and all activists in a hunger strike deteriorates the need for more international support is more pressing than ever. Democratic Spaces calls upon civil society and government in Canada and around the world to raise a voice against the injustice and gross human rights violations perpetrated by the Cuban regime against the Patriotic Union of Cuba. 

Canadians joining in spontaneous support with the cause of UNPACU and human rights in Cuba. This Good Samaritan joined me and offered help to hold the Cuban flag. He expressed his solidarity with the cause of human rights in Cuba.

Open Letter to Canadian Civil Society, Government, Opposition Parties and the Media 

We are writing to call your urgent attention to the plight of José Daniel Ferrer García, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (known in Spanish as UNPACU), a human rights organization in Santiago de Cuba. Ferrer’s health is in serious decline after 14 days on a hunger strike along with 39 other pro-democracy activists. At this stage, they are suffering from severe abdominal and kidney pains, weakness, loss of balance, dizziness, and nausea. All activists are at imminent risk of serious health complications that can prove fatal.

For the past 19 days, the Cuban regime has established a police cordon around UNPACU’s national headquarters to prevent this organization from providing food, medications, and needed medical attention to the needy and vulnerable people in the city of Santiago de Cuba. During this time, humanitarian aid volunteers as well as those seeking aid have been arrested or beaten if they refuse to obey police orders that prohibit them from approaching UNPACU’S headquarters. 

Some of UNPACU’s most concerning reports refer to violent police mistreatment of children. In one instance, police grabbed two children (Alexis Amelo Biscet and Nelis Amelo Biscet, ages 11 and 14) by the neck, threw them on the floor, and threatened to send them to juvenile detention centre if they continued standing up in support of their mother, Niubis Biscet Romero, who is one of the hunger strikers. Other cases have involved seniors with physical disabilities, who were fined $3,000 pesos by police just for saying “Jose Daniel and Dr. Nelva Ortega are doing good work”; they were threatened by police with imprisonment for non-payment of fines. 

In protest of these abuses, Ferrer and the group of activists started a hunger strike on March 20, 2021.  The arbitrary actions of the State Security forces in Cuba against the Patriotic Union of Cuba are contrary to the recommendations made by the Government of Canada to Cuban authorities in the September 2018 Report of the Working Groups on the Universal Periodic Review. On that occasion, Canada recommended that the Cuban regime legalize NGO’s and immediately stop persecution and intimidation of human rights activists. 

On behalf of Democratic Spaces, a civil initiative supported by Cuban and Venezuelan communities in Canada as well as freedom-loving people across the country, we urge the media in Canada to give visibility to human rights activists demanding the end of the police cordon that prevents the Patriotic Union of Cuba from carrying out its humanitarian mission. Canada is a global champion in the defence of human rights. If Canadian politicians issued public statements of solidarity with Cuban human rights activists, then we believe that Canada might have a leading role in putting an end to the unjust treatment of UNPACU activists.