Despite the martyrdom to which he is being subjected in prison, the political opponent José Daniel Ferrer says that he does not hate the jailers who have been merciless with him. ‘He is the Cuban Gandhi,’ he said on the show paris america Javier Larrondo, president of Prisoners Defenders. We also interviewed Ana Belkis Ferrer, his sister, about the serious situation in which this famous Cuban opponent finds himself.
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“Since March 7, we know absolutely nothing about my brother José Daniel Ferrer,” says his sister Ana Belkis Ferrer. she explained in the paris america program that that day “Monsignor Dionisio García Ibáñez was authorized by the dictatorship to give him religious assistance.”
According to this Cuban who currently resides in Texas, the opposition leader “remains in a punishment cell fully prepared to torture him both physically and psychologically, seeing absolutely nothing. He is totally isolated from the prison population, remains half-naked, exposed to the aggressive mosquitoes that they accompany him all the time and bite him. He suffers from a bacteria on his skin, he has gastric problems, which have intensified because he eats very little. He suffers from cramps and momentary paralysis in his hands. Also with deafening noises in his ears which decrease and intensify, as well as strong pains in the head, which also decrease and intensify. He also suffers from high blood pressure, among other problems that were acquired in previous prisons,” adds Ana Belkis Ferrer.
Among the almost 1,300 political prisoners currently in Cuba’s prisons, the vast majority are people with no experience as militants who were detained in the wave of repression unleashed by the July 2021 protests. This is not the case, instead, by José Daniel Ferrer.
On May 30, Prisoners Defenders presented the “First Comprehensive Report on Torture in Cuba.” The president of this organization, Javier Larrondo, said in Paris America that before the wave of repression against the demonstrations in July 2021 “the vast majority of those detained in Cuban prisons were activists, human rights defenders, that is, people a little ‘more prepared’, let’s say, to endure this type of situation Now, the 1,277 detainees who have been in Cuban jails in the last 12 months are civilians who were not prepared at all, neither mentally nor in any other way, to face what has fallen on them. The worst thing is that all of them are being tortured,” says Cuban-Spanish Javier Larrondo.
“José Daniel Ferrer, on the other hand, has been put in prison many times,” says Larrondo. In 2003, during the Black Spring, Ferrer obtained 50% or 60% of the signatures that helped Oswaldo Payá to win the Sakharov Prize within the framework of the Varela Project. During that time he spent eight years in prison and was released in 2011.
“Ferrer in Santiago de Cuba fed hundreds of people, gave them medical attention, organized crews to clean the streets, to carry out bridge works, to bring some towns together with others. He was a super-loved person, a very social person , very focused on the social,” recalls Larrondo.
José Daniel Ferrer was put in jail without him having participated in the demonstrations of July 2021, he adds. “They have him completely isolated in a white cell, completely diaphanous, with a light on, with a constant vibration. Constant sonic attacks. They have tried to progressively poison him with water. He is in circumstances of brutal neurological psychomotor degradation. They are slowly killing him And yet, when he manages to speak with his wife, which is once every very long time, he launches some words of encouragement, encouragement, to the rest of the Cuban population and to the world in general that are impressive. He doesn’t hate his jailers, he wants to free them. They are precious words that only a great person like him can pronounce. The energy he brings out to send out good feelings is impressive, despite all the degradation he is experiencing and everything the pain and all the martyrdom to which his jailers submit him, who also do it viciously.
