Nelva Ortega, wife of the political prisoner José Daniel Ferrer, denounces that she has gone a year and six months without the right to phone calls or family and conjugal visits because her husband has been locked in a punishment cell for all this time. She asserts that he is the prisoner of conscience who "suffers the most confinement and repression in Cuba." "They are burying him alive and killing him slowly."
In the audio accessed by CiberCuba, Ortega defends the isolation to which the general coordinator of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), arrested on July 11, 2021, is being subjected. This was the day when the people of Cuba took to the streets to peacefully protest against the dictatorship. According to the explanation provided by José Daniel Ferrer's wife, he has not only been isolated from his family but also from the penal community.
Nelva Ortega has not grown tired, during all this time, of denouncing that her husband is imprisoned "under cruel, inhuman, and degrading conditions" and is being "the victim of physical and psychological torture, food of very poor quality, non-potable water, without access to medical or dental care."
The wife of the political prisoner, for whom several organizations of the Cuban exile community are requesting the Sájarov Prize, added that no one from the family has had contact with him, so they are not certain that, as the prison authorities of the Cuban dictatorship claim, José Daniel Ferrer is in the feared Mar Verde prison in Santiago de Cuba.
In fact, she spoke with her husband "for two minutes" that confirmed he was alive on April 1st of this year, following "strong rumors about his death," and since then she has not seen him again. "That same day he completed his unjust sentence imposed by the murderous Castro-Canel dictatorship to keep him off the streets, and for which he has still not been released. Since March 3, 2023, they have been denying and violating his right to the scant ten minutes that they are required to give him weekly for telephone calls."
Neva Ortega went to Mar Verde on Tuesday, September 3, 2024, with her stepdaughter Fátima Victoria and Daniel José, the youngest son of the political prisoner, for the family visit that they were entitled to according to regulations. For the eighteenth time, the prison authorities and the "so-called" State Security denied them the visit. They were only allowed to deliver the bag with food, hygiene products, and some medications.
"Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel, you, dictators, are the main responsible for his physical and psychological integrity. We will continue to demand not only to be able to hear him, to be able to see him, the cessation of abuses, torture, and reprisals against him; as well as his immediate and unconditional freedom. We will continue to call for solidarity from the entire international community; to all people, organizations, and institutions, parliamentarians, democratic governments; supportive sympathizers, lovers of freedom and democracy and justice to join this campaign for the freedom of my husband. We continue to demand proof of life and the restoration of all his human and prison rights; as well as his immediate and unconditional freedom."
Finally, Nelva Ortega thanks, on behalf of the family of José Daniel Ferrer, all the people who have supported her husband's nomination for the Sájarov Prize for Freedom of Thought and who support her in the demand for proof of life. "All of this can help save my husband's life. Actions like this force the dictatorship to show him to us," she concluded, demanding the release not only of her husband but also of all Cuban political prisoners.
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