Free Jose Daniel Ferrer and all Cuban political prisoners
By Michael Lima, March 8, 2024.
The Cuban dictatorship, which for decades has systematically practiced preventive repression to conceal its oppressive nature and avoid raising international alarms, has openly become the largest jailer of political prisoners in the Americas. This not only reflects its cruelty but also its high degree of unpopularity and popular rejection.
The regime’s inner circle of power fears the Cuban people and their demand for democratic changes following the protests of July 11, 2021. That is why they seek to annihilate all opposition in Cuba and target pro-democratic leaders like Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, who have dedicated more than 30 years of their lives to peaceful struggle for democracy in Cuba. Ferrer has been a prisoner of conscience on three occasions and is considered by the Cuban regime as the main target of repression and torture.
According to a report by the NGO Prisoners Defenders, Jose Daniel Ferrer has been subjected to the highest intensity of brutal torture, aiming to slowly kill him or force him into exile. He has endured extreme isolation, sonic attacks, lack of medical attention, beatings, and has been denied conjugal visits 15 times. He hasn't been allowed even a phone call with his family for a year, and the repression extends to his wife, Dr. Nelva Ortega Tamayo, who has been subjected to house arrest and threatened with detention if she publicly denounces the denial of visits to her husband.
Today, dictatorships, from Havana to Caracas, Managua, Moscow, and Tehran, are experiencing their moment of greatest impunity. This is evidenced by the state crime against Alexei Navalny in Russia, the kidnapping and murder in Chile of Venezuelan military officer Ronald Ojeda by the Maduro regime, and the murder of Belarusian activist and political prisoner Igor Lednik.
The greatest of all human rights violations is political imprisonment, the deprivation of liberty of a human being for thinking differently. Its continuity is immoral, inhumane, and represents the greatest humanitarian crisis for thousands of Cuban families.
The free world must unite to condemn and take urgent and immediate actions in support of the liberation of all Cuban political prisoners in the face of serious and systematic human rights violations in Cuba.
We, from our NGO Democratic Spaces, will continue to call on the government of Canada and parliamentarians from all political parties to impose targeted sanctions on the main oppressors in Cuba and to use both the Canadian Parliament and all international forums where Canada has a presence to achieve this vital objective.
Freedom for Jose Daniel Ferrer and all Cuban political prisoners!
Michael Lima is a human rights activist and an expert in Cuban and Latin American history and politics. He has lectured on modern Latin American history, holds a Master’s Degree/Ph.D. candidacy in Latin American History from the University of Toronto, and is the founder of Democratic Spaces, an NGO seeking solidarity in Canada with human rights defenders and civil society in Cuba.