“They want to end his life,” Amelia García Vega, mother of opposition figure José Daniel Ferrer, denounces on the other end of the phone, in conversation with ABC, from Florida. “He is killing him with hunger, with torture… They are doing him a lot of harm because he is harming them.” García Vega refers to the Cuban regime that arrested the dissident on July 11 of last year when he was preparing to participate in the historic protests that spread to dozens of cities in Cuba, and that have led to hundreds of convictions against peaceful protesters. . Since then they have kept his son in prison, after reactivating a suspended sentence, after the intermediation of international organizations.
During this last year, both Ferrer’s family and the NGO Prisoners Defenders have denounced the conditions in which the opponent lives: confined to a punishment cell, in total isolation, without windows or ventilation, exposed to high temperatures and disorientation.
«Access to the outside and human contact are prevented. The cell is illuminated 24 hours a day by a powerful artificial light that, in addition to affecting his vision, makes it difficult for him to fall asleep; the food it receives is in a state of decomposition…».
Ferrer’s wife, Nelva Ismarays, has repeatedly denounced the impossibility of seeing or speaking on the phone with her husband, for which she has asked for a life certificate to know his physical condition. According to soldiers from the Mar Verde prison, where Ferrer is, he would not want to talk to his family. His wife, in statements to the independent media ‘CiberCuba’, has pointed out that this is an excuse that the regime has previously used to mask a hunger strike by the dissident.
