Cuban Political Prisoner Melkis Faure Hechevarría on Conditional Release

As of of May 4, 2021 there are 145 political prisoners in Cuba according to the NGO Prisoners Defenders. While the regime conditionally released two Prisoners of Conscience in April, in the same month it imprisoned 9 more people for a total of 145 political prisoner. So far, according to the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, April has been considered the most repressive month of the year win the island with reports of 1018 repressive actions against artists and human rights activists.

DEMOCRATIC SPACES recently learned that Melkis Faure Hechevarría and Edilberto Arzuaga Alcalá, two Cuban prisoners of conscience listed in our PETITION to the Parliament of Canada were released from prison. Our petition (supported by Tom Kmiec, Member of Parliament for Calgary-Shepard and Conservative National Caucus Chair ) published in the House of Commons website on March 18 called upon the Government of Canada to join Amnesty International and the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to demand the release of Aymara Nieto Muñoz, Melkis Faure Hechevarría and Edilberto Arzuaga Alcalá as well as hundreds of other Cubans imprisoned by the Cuban regime for political reasons.

Within the first 48 hours of its publication, the petition surpassed the minimum 500 signatures required to be formally presented in Parliament.

With Canada as a historic key economic and strategic partner, the possibility of calls to release Cuban political prisoners and public statements of support with the Dissident San Isidro Movement and the Patriotic Union of Cuba, make Cuban regime and its representatives abroad nervous. If the Government of Canada were to publicly support those leading the peaceful struggle for human rights in Cuba, the effects on the regime would be devastating and would set a precedent in the foreign relations of other countries in Latin America and europe.

MELKIS FAURE HECHEVARRÍA

Melkis Faure Hechevarría was declared a Prisoner of Conscience by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

On April 28, 2021 after spending four years and eight months in a forced labour camp in Artemisa Habana. Melkis Hechevarría´s, prison sentence was changed to ¨conditional release.¨

Throughout her prison confinement, she was separated from her five minor children and for a period of over a year she was denied family visitation due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Hechevarría was beaten during her arbitrary and violent arrest in retaliation for leading a peaceful protest in the Parque de la Fraternidad in Habana where she demanded freedom for Cuba. She was subsequently sentenced to a total of six years and seven months on charges of “Public Disorder,” “Resistance,” and “Assault,” even though she was the one been beaten by police during her arrest.

While in prison and unaware that she was pregnant, Melkis staged a hunger strike of 46 days in protest for her violent and arbitrary arrest. Unaware that she was pregnant and denied of adequate medical care, she suffered a miscarriage prison. Melkis suffers from hypertension and poor blood circulation and was while in prison, she received a poor medical attention.

Upon her conditional released, Melkis stated:

“It was unfair to put me in prison for only expressing in a loud voice what I felt. I was exercising my right to free speech and free assembly,¨

“The regime will never bring back these four years and eight months that I lost in the company of my children. That was one of my greatest sufferings as I spent a year monad one month during the COVID-19 pandemic and I was unable to see them, I could not hug them.” she said in an interview with Radio Martí.

EDILBERTO ARZUAGA ALCALÁ

Edilberto was released on April 25, 2021.

He had previously been declared Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. He was arbitrarily arrested on December 24, 2018 in retaliation for his work as a pro democracy activist who was recording testimonies from people in Camagüey about the constitutional reform. Subsequently he was sentenced in a summary trial in the Municipal Court of Santa Cruz del Sur to one year and one month.

While in prison he led a hunger strike of 34 day in demand of his release. He was denied medical attention after the strike and was beaten in July 2019 for refusing to enrol in the communist re education prison program.

When Edilberto was about to serve his arbitrary sentence, the State Security forced him to sign a document in which he swore to abandon his activities as a member of the opposition. He refused to comply and he was sentenced to a second sentence under the fabricated charge of resistance.