The family of a prominent political prisoner in Cuba, Loreto Hernández García, accused prison guards on Monday of asphyxiating him, beating him, shoving him into solitary confinement, and hurling racist epithets in response to a protest inside the prison.
The abuse, his family denounced, was particularly harrowing given his delicate state of health. Relatives say he suffers from diabetes, heart problems, hypertension, and other issues, but the Castro regime has repeatedly refused to offer him proper medical care while in custody.
Hernández is the vice president of the Association of Free Yorubas of Cuba, an organization for followers of the Lucumí, or Santería, Afro-Cuban faith. Santería is a syncretic Cuban religion primarily based on Nigerian Yoruba beliefs. The communist Castro regime has for decades portrayed concern with the well-being of Afro-Cubans and tolerance of their religious practices, but the Castro regime elite are disproportionately white, and black Cuban dissidents have denounced abuse against them since the 1959 communist coup.
Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the communist mass murderer Fidel Castro appointed to run the Cuban economy, prominently wrote racist screeds against black people as well as other societal minorities.
The Yoruba leader was arrested, along with his wife and fellow Free Yoruba leader Donaida Pérez Paseiro, in the immediate aftermath of the July 11, 2021, anti-communist protests across the island. Hernández does not deny his participation in the protests, but he and his wife insist they demonstrated peacefully. Hernández was sentenced to seven years in prison for protesting, while Pérez is serving an eight-year sentence after being convicted of “disrespect” and “public disorder,” among other communist “crimes.”
The Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, a coalition of anti-communist organizations on and off the island, denounced the abuse against Hernández at the Guamajal prison in central Villa Clara, Cuba, in a statement on Monday, citing his daughter Rosabel Sánchez Correa for the account of what transpired. Jorge Luis García Pérez, Hernández’s brother and a former political prisoner himself, known commonly as Antúnez, told Martí Noticias the same account on Monday; Antúnez spent 17 years in prison for opposing communism.
“Our family is extremely alarmed with the new repressive actions that are taking place against him,” Antúnez, who is now based in Florida, told the U.S. outlet.
Political prisoners at the penal facility reportedly organized a protest on Sunday, shouting anti-communist slogans such as “patria y vida” (“fatherland and life,” a play on the communist slogan “patria o muerte“, meaning “fatherland or death”). The guards blamed Hernández for organizing the protest despite his current bedridden state and barrelled into his cell, handcuffing him forcefully, shoving him, and beating him.
“He was handcuffed behind the back, he was strongly shoved by the neck and hauled to the punishment cell [solitary confinement],” Antúnez told Martí Noticias. “The other prisoners started shouting for them to get him out of there, that if anything happened to him, since he was sick, they [the guards] are responsible.”
Antúnez noted that Hernández “has been sick for many days with a high fever in bed, with a hypertension crisis; they don’t give him the treatment he needs and, despite that, they repress him violently.”
According to the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, the guards shouted verbal abuse at him, particularly fixating on his identity as an Afro-Cuban.
“Look black guy, we are tired of you stirring things up in this prison,” the guards reportedly said, vowing, “for every little [protest] sign calling for a general strike that keeps showing up in this prison, for every little ‘fatherland and life’ shout, we’re going to apply it [punishment] to you for counterrevolutionary and figurehead.”
Sánchez, Hernández’s daughter, also told the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance that the guards mocked the Yoruba religion.
“Never forget, shitty black guy, that we wipe our dicks with your religion … the only god for us is Fidel and revolution is our religion,” the group quoted the guards as saying.
“You and your wife will die in prison,” the guards reportedly warned.
According to both accounts, Hernández spent eight hours in the prison’s penitentiary cell before being freed.
Hernández is one of a little over 1,000 confirmed political prisoners in Cuba, according to the NGO Prisoners Defenders, which tracks politically motivated arrests. The group regularly warns that its calculations are likely a severe undercount of the actual number of political prisoners in Cuba, as it contains only those known to be in police custody accused of “disrespect” or other “counterrevolutionary” crimes, not the many who are missing or are believed to be in police custody for unclear reasons.
Prisoners Defenders, citing research into the treatment of prisoners in Cuba, asserts that “all” political prisoners in the country are subject to torture. Among these individuals, in addition to political dissidents with no record of violence or other threats to society, are a large number of children and disabled people.
“Hundreds of thousands of youths have spent time in prison for pre-criminal behavior,” Javier Larrondo, the president of Prisoners Defenders, said during an event to announce the publication of a new study of political prisoners in Cuba in March.
Cuba is a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.