"They are holding him hostage!" With a trembling voice and a broken spirit, Jenni Taboada, mother of the Cuban political prisoner Duannis Dabel León Taboada, has made a desperate plea for help to the world.
His son, imprisoned for participating in the protests of July 11, 2021, is entering his sixth day of hunger strike this Thursday. His health condition is serious and could deteriorate irreversibly.
From the Combinado del Este, the maximum-security prison in Havana, Duannis has decided to stop eating as an extreme form of protest against his prolonged sentence: 14 years of deprivation of liberty.
The young man, who is only 24 years old, has been accused of sedition and damage to a police patrol during the protests on July 11. However, both he and his family insist that he is innocent.
In an audio shared by the Cuban Human Rights Observatory (OCDH), Jenni Taboada recounts between sobs that “it will be six days of my son’s hunger strike. My little boy is good; they have him as a hostage. They won’t let me see him, they won’t let me do anything.”
Another recording released by Martí Noticias shows the level of desperation of this Cuban mother. “I am very scared, and I don’t want the world to know that I am scared, but it does exist… this is an SOS”.
Jenni claims that she only learned about the start of the strike three days after it began and that the prison authorities refuse to provide her with clear information. Despite promises of contact, she has only received vague responses. “They have no willingness to save lives,” she denounces with a mix of anger and helplessness.
A sentence that feels like a life sentence
Duannis was arrested for participating in a peaceful demonstration in the Diez de Octubre municipality. The Prosecutor's Office initially requested 21 years in prison for sedition. After a cassation hearing, the sentence was reduced to 14 years, but for a young man who has already spent four years in conditions described as inhumane, the future seems like a dead-end tunnel.
In previous letters from prison, Duannis wrote to his mother: “I feel empty… I miss the family… my heart is heavy. I am your greatest worry. But you will keep fighting until death.”
Words that, now more than ever, resonate with a devastating weight.
Organizations such as the Observatory of Cultural Rights and the OCDH have raised alarms about the imminent risk to the young man's life. His prior kidney condition, they have stated, makes him even more vulnerable to lethal consequences from lack of food. Requests for medical transfer or family visits have been ignored. He has not even been allowed to see his mother, who has waited for hours outside the prison without achieving contact.
Activists, family, and friends assert that Duannis's case symbolizes the repression against those who, in their youth, chose to speak out.
"They see him as a number, not as a human being," his mother laments.
This is not the first time that Jenni Taboada has raised her voice. Back in 2022, after the final sentence against her son became known, she publicly held the appointed ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel responsible for any harm that Duannis might suffer.
"I'm ready for anything. Come find me at my house, I don't care about anything anymore," she shouted through her tears.
The case of Duannis León Taboada is not just a story of injustice and pain. It is also the story of a Cuban mother who refuses to give up hope. Of a young man who, despite being behind bars, resists with the only thing he has left: his body. And of a country where, for many, freedom is still paid for with their lives.
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