Rosa María Payá asks the Rapporteur for Human Rights of the European Union to visit José Daniel Ferrer in prison

The Cuban activistRosa María Payá, asked the rapporteur for Human Rights (HR) of theEuropean Union (EU) what visit hasJose Daniel Ferrer, the leader of thePatriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) in prison since July 11, 2021.

“EU Representative,Eamon Gilmore, I urge you to visit José Daniel Ferrer in prison and see for yourself the reality of more than a thousand prisoners of conscience in Cuba. Listen to the voices of the alternative and the victims that the dictatorship silences,” Payá wrote in X.

At the end of June, Ferrer's family managed to see him in prison after several months of solitary confinement anddenounced the alarming physical deterioration suffered by the opposition leader of the UNPACU.

After the visit, concern for the opponent's health skyrocketed, with statements from sources close to the family denouncing that Ferrer was very delicate after a beating received in April.

“He's a poor skeleton,” said an activist who denounced other systematic torture that the regime's repressors apply to the opposition, and that has diminished his ability to move and speak.

For her part, the detainee's wife,Nelva Ismaray Ortega Tamayo and his children found Ferrer “in his underwear, with difficulty walking, severe pain in his hands, arms and legs, extremely thin, with toothaches and loss of vision.”

“José's body is full of lesions, to such an extent that he did not want to hug the child so as not to infect him with the bacteria that he has had on his skin for months,” said Ferrer's sister. According toAna Belkis Ferrer García, “José Daniel told his wife and daughter that during the months of April and May he could not walk and now he does so with great difficulty.”

The alarming situation prompted a statement from the Undersecretary for Hemispheric Affairs of the State Department,Brian A. Nichols, who demanded through X the immediate release of Ferrer, detained “in inhumane conditions in Cuba.”

“After months of deprived contact, his family reports that Ferrer's condition is serious.Your peaceful 9/11 protest does not merit cruelty or imprisonment. #PrisonersWhy”, concluded the US official.

The EU human rights rapporteur, Eamon Gilmore, will travel to Cuba from November 22 to 25 to “analyze the situation created before, during and after the demonstrations and arrests” of 11J, as explained in May by the head of diplomacy of the European bloc,Joseph Borrell, during his visit to Havana.

The occasion has motivated the request of several activists and members of Cuban civil society that Gilmore hold meetings with political prisoners and their families. In that sense, it was also statedCarolina Barrero, promoter of the platform 'Cuba says NO to the dictatorship', who visited the European official in Brussels.

“We talk about the situation of political prisoners and persecuted people", of the harassment of their families, of the forms of torture and degrading treatment to which they are systematically subjected, of the lack of access to a fair and independent defense of the State, of the criminalization of civil rights and political participation," he said. Barrero at the end of October.

After the meeting, the activist expressed her hope that Gilmore's visit "will be an opportunity for the EU to explicitly express its support for those who suffer oppression and fight every day for a Cuba without dictatorship, just and free, where the “worship of human dignity be the first law.”

This Tuesday, the pressure on the EU human rights rapporteur came from the daughter of the Sakharov Prize, the opposition leaderOswaldo Paya, died under suspicious circumstances in Cuba. The platform coordinatorCuba Decide advocated for Ferrer and the more than 1,000 political prisoners that the Cuban regime keeps imprisoned afterthe historic protests of 11J.