Political prisoner Carlos Michael Morales was hospitalized in Santa Clara on the 21st day of his hunger strike
14ymedio, Madrid, July 11, 2024 — Activist Angélica Garrido was released on Wednesday, July 10, a day before the third anniversary of the 11 July 2021 (’11J’) anti-government protests for which she was imprisoned and after having served her sentence in full. Her sister, the writer María Cristina Garrido, still has four of the seven years of her sentence left to serve. “I have just served three years of an unjust sentence for crimes manufactured by State Security. I leave with my sister María Cristina my soul, my heart and my spirit,” she said in a video shared on Facebook from her home.
The activist also sent regards to all the 11J prisoners as well as to the common prisoners, “victims of this nonfunctional and tyrannical system that has kept the people in constant misery and repression.”
Garrido emphasizes that the struggle of political prisoners is, despite being “non-violent” – she says it several times – “illegal and prohibited” by the Government, which prohibits free expression, demonstrating that in Cuba there is no democracy and that exercising rights is punished with imprisonment.
“Our non-violent struggle is to raise our voice for an entire people who urgently demand change and ask for a life in freedom,” she says, ending with a call for the liberation of political prisoners and of Cuba.
She ends by saying, “Don’t be discouraged, my brothers and sisters, the homeland is proud of us.”
She ends by saying, “Don’t be discouraged, my brothers and sisters , the homeland is proud of us.”
Garrido has served the three years in prison confirmed by the Provincial Court of Mayabeque, ratifying the sentence imposed in the first instance after rejecting an appeal. The activist and her sister participated in the 11J demonstration of San José de las Lajas and were later arrested and accused of contempt and attack for Garrido, and of double attack for her sister; hence, the difference in the penalty.
Since then both have remained in the Guatao prison, in Havana, where they have denounced torture and repression and have led some protests, such as the one they carried out in September 2022, refusing to wear the uniform of common prisoners and initiating a hunger strike.
A few days later, both partially lifted the protest, refusing to eat the prison food, only what their families could bring them. Luis Rodríguez Pérez, Angélica’s husband, was able to go in to give her some food and explained that she was “plantada. She rejected the food of the prison, a mattress and the common prisoner’s uniform, and she would not live in the barracks with the common criminals,” he said.
In November, the activist (now 42 years old) was punished and put in an isolation cell, where she spent more than 50 days, according to her family, who said that the Criminal Code provides for a maximum of 10 days of imprisonment in these cubicles.
“In that cell, the water she has for bathing and drinking comes from a small pipe that is a few centimeters from the latrine; that is, from the hole in the floor where she takes care of her needs – it mixes there,” her husband told the press. He was able to take Garrido medicines and said that her cell was “the smallest and roughest of all,” and the lack of hygiene was causing her health to deteriorate.
In 2023, when Angélica Garrido began to get passes, both she and her sister received the Patmos prize, along with the brothers Jorge and Nadir Martín Perdomo, also 11J prisoners. The award, which the religious organization presents annually at the end of October, was awarded for the first time to more than one person, and although none of the winners could attend the ceremony, State Security tried to sabotage the announcement, which mentioned several of the organizers.
Garrido’s release took place just one day after the hospitalization of political prisoner Carlos Michael Morales, due to a hunger strike that lasted 21 days. This Wednesday, the CubaDecide platform warned of his critical state of health.
[[“The deterioration is progressive and could be irreversible. We hold Raúl Castro, Díaz-Canel (president of Cuba) and the Minister of the Interior, Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas, responsible for the life and physical integrity of Carlos Michael Morales”]]
“The deterioration is progressive and could be irreversible. We hold Raúl Castro, Díaz-Canel (president of Cuba) and the Minister of the Interior, Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas, responsible for the life and physical integrity of Carlos Michael Morales,” said the organization, which accuses State Security of having kept the prisoner incommunicado in a punishment cell because of his strike.
The opponent’s family has not been able to see him or talk to him since the beginning of his hunger strike, and doctors have warned about the consequences to his health.
Morales was transferred this Tuesday to the Provincial Hospital of Villa Clara from the Guamajal prison and is, they warn, in danger of suffering a cardio-pulmonary arrest or kidney failure and dying.
CubaDecide denounces that Morales “has been unjustly imprisoned since May 4, 2024, in retaliation for his publications on social networks,” and he has been subjected to “constant rape and torture, which forced him to start his second strike on June 19, with a single demand: his immediate release.”
The platform has asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the international community to support his demand.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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