Temporary passes are increasingly frequent in Cuban prisons due to the shortage of food, explains Martha Beatriz Roque
14ymedio, Havana, September 2, 2024 — Political prisoners Sissi Abascal and Sayli Navarro were not included in the pass received this Monday by five other women convicted of demonstrating on 11 July 2021, who are serving their sentence in La Bellotex prison, in Matanzas. The activists did not benefit from the possibility of visiting their homes for four days, denounces oppositionist Martha Beatriz Roque.
“Today they gave a pass to five of the women convicted on 11J, but two of them were excluded,” the director of the Cuban Center for Human Rights told 14ymedio. “They have never been given a pass, so it is an absolutely discriminatory exclusion” against Abascal and Navarro, who are also part of the Ladies in White Movement.
The reasons for not being on the list of prisoners who can spend a few days in their homes, in this case from today until Thursday, point to the activism of both women and their membership in several dissident organizations. Also, their constant denunciations and statements from prison could have contributed to not being granted that benefit. Last July, the two opponents held a fast in commemoration of the third anniversary of the 11J demonstrations.
“They have never been given a pass, so it is an absolutely discriminatory exclusion”
“The events of 11 July 2021 left a trail of those who were arrested, beaten and finally sentenced to years in prison,” Sayli Navarro said in an audio sent to Martí Noticias. The daughter of political prisoner Félix Navarro was sentenced to eight years of deprivation of liberty for the alleged crimes of attack and public disorder. Abascal, for her part, is serving a six-year sentence.
Roque adds that “temporary passes have become increasingly frequent in Cuban prisons.” The reason that the prison authorities grant these passes points to the serious economic crisis that the Island is going through. “In prisons there is less and less food; sometimes the only thing they have throughout the day is a little rice.”
Other reports compiled by 14ymedio show that the supply crisis is more crudely acute in prisons, where prisoners are increasingly dependent on the food that their relatives bring them during visits. Without what is popularly known as “la jaba (the bag),” inmates depend exclusively on the meager standard ration that each time is smaller and of poorer quality .
“When prisoners go out on pass there are fewer mouths to feed,” explains Roque, convicted during the Black Spring of 2003 and currently
on parole. The activist, who is “regulated” and cannot leave the country, warns about the extreme situation experienced by common prisoners and, more seriously, by political prisoners.
“In prisons there is less and less food; sometimes the only thing they have throughout the day is a little rice”
The relief experienced by the authorities for not having to supply a plate of food has not weighed as much, in the case of Abascal and Navarro, as the reprisals against two of the most internationally known prisoners of 11J. In September 2023, the authorities denied Abascal a transfer from a maximum security prison to one of minimum security. Prison managers alleged “indiscipline” and “negativity” on the part of the prisoner.
In conversation with this newspaper, Annia Zamora, Abascal’s mother, said that although a judge is the one who should ultimately approve her transfer to minimum security, the report issued by the prison has a remarkable weight on the decision. “Sissi is currently in a prison uniform in a high security cell. They should have already put her in minimum security in another section of the prison, where the prisoners are in civilian clothes with other benefits, and receive passes every month to go home,” she said.
However, the prison authorities refused to grant the transfer to Abascal, alleging indiscipline: “Lieutenant Colonel Marta Cristina, director of La Bellotex, called Sissi to tell her that they would not change her situation because of her ’negative attitude’ and because she is not participating in political acts or shouting slogans.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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