Wilber Aguilar Bravo, father of the 11J prisoner Walnier Luis Aguilar Rivera, reported that the penitentiary authorities in Sancti Spíritus denied him the visit to his son after the family traveled more than 300 kilometers from Havana, spent over 24 hours without sleeping, and arrived at the prison by 7:00 am.
According to what Wilber recounts in a video on Facebook, the family waited in the prison until 11:00 am, when they were called to an office to be informed that "the visit had not been scheduled" and that they needed to coordinate it with State Security in Havana.
Wilber describes the sacrifices made before the journey: cooking with charcoal due to a lack of electricity, renting vehicles, and traveling with young children, all for the sake of receiving that answer after four hours of waiting.
"We couldn't see Guarnier; we arrived there at just after 7, as we always do. Time passed, and at 11 in the morning, they called us into an office and told us that we hadn't scheduled the visit, that we didn't have a visit, even after we had spent more than 24 hours without sleeping," he reported.
At the time of the recording, Walnier had not seen his father for over 44 days. That day, the young man called his aunt to convey a message that summarizes his state of mind: "Your son didn't want bags, he didn't want anything; what he wanted was to hug his daughters," the father recounted, quoting his son's words.
The man clarifies that the decision was not an administrative error, but a deliberate retaliation. "The order comes from Havana, from those who are in the weeds, from those who are hidden in the bushes, whose faces nobody knows, and they are the ones giving the orders against the people," he stated.
He also reported that while his family was denied access, other individuals were allowed into the prison that day: "Inequality among people, racism, everything—this is happening here in Cuba."
Walnier, 26 years old, was arrested in July 2021 for participating in the protests of July 11 in the neighborhood of La Güinera, Arroyo Naranjo. He was sentenced to 12 years for sedition—reduced on appeal, as the initial prosecution request was between 22 and 23 years—despite having a borderline intellectual disability caused by organic injury to the brain, a condition documented by specialists that the court ignored.
He is the only one of the 17 co-defendants in his case who remains incarcerated.
Since January, Nieves Morejón has been serving her sentence in prison in Guayos, Sancti Spíritus, marking her third transfer to facilities increasingly far from her family.
The harassment of the father is systematic: the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights has documented at least six repressive acts against Wilber just in 2026, including summons for interrogation, incidents where agents prevented him from leaving his home, and constant police surveillance in front of his house.
The authorities explicitly warn her that her activism on social media is harming her son's prison benefits.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights granted precautionary measures to Walnier in July 2022 and extended that protection to his father and family in January 2025, recognizing the seriousness, urgency, and risk of irreparable harm.
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