He denounces that the political prisoner Mario Alberto Hernández Leyva was brutally beaten
EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 28 June 2024 — Political prisoner Yasmany González Valdés (“Libre Libre”) who is serving a four-year sentence in Combinado del Este in Havana, is “thin, emaciated, and toothless.” According to what she told Martí Noticias, his wife, Ilsa Ramos, went to visit him in prison on Wednesday and confirmed that González was only taken to the dentist once, but “they didn’t do anything for him.”
Ramos said that González Valdés “started losing his teeth during a demonstration (…). He lost some “because they threw him to the ground,” so her partner had to wear a dental brace, from which “his teeth have also fallen out.”
In November 2023, his wife reported that González suffered a fractured rib, following a beating by guards and inmates
The 30-year-old has also suffered physical violence in prison. In November 2023, his wife reported that González suffered a fractured rib after a beating by guards and prisoners. For these reasons, Ilsa Ramos is waiting for her partner to be given a minimum-severity regime, a benefit which should already be his: “They gave him four years, he has already served one and has three left, and they haven’t moved him to the minimum,” she said.
Libre Libre was arrested in April 2023 accused of being the author of several anti-government graffiti with the slogan “No to the PCC” [Cuban Communist Party] in different places in Havana. On trial, he was sentenced to prison for propaganda against the constitutional order.
This is the same crime for which five other activists – William Cepero García, Josiel Guía Piloto, Lázaro Romero Piloto, Alain Yosvani Cruz Suescum and Jesús Alfredo Pérez Rivas – were sentenced on June 20 to terms of five to seven years in prison.
On February 13 of last year, the five made posters with phrases such as “Cuba failed state,” “Díaz-Canel murderer” and “Patria y vida” and took to the streets to shout “down with the dictatorship,” while at the same time they moved the banners from one place to another, which was recorded and spread on social networks. The next day they were arrested.
Cubalex documented 706 incidents in 50 categories of repression, with 291 victims (207 men and 84 women) during May
The legal organization Cubalex documented 706 incidents in 50 categories of repression, with 291 victims (207 men and 84 women) during May. “Although these data represent under-recording, they demonstrate the systemic nature of rights violations in Cuba,” it noted in a statement issued this Friday.
A notable fact, the organization added, “is that there was not a single day in May without at least one repressive event being recorded. Among the main incidents documented are violations against persons deprived of liberty, arbitrary detentions, threats or coercion, acts of violence or harassment, police surveillance or monitoring operations, selective communications cuts, arbitrary summons and violations of religious freedom, interrogations and house arrests.”
Regarding the violations against people deprived of liberty, Cubalex also reported, also this Friday, that Mario Alberto Hernández Leyva, vice president of the Opposition Movement for a New Republic, was brutally beaten by other inmates of Prison 1580, “under the orders of the guards” and reported that he has not received medical attention after the attack.
During a visit on Thursday, Hernández Leyva’s wife, Maritza Concepción Sarmiento, found him with “obvious signs of beatings, swollen, with blood on his face and his head split open.”
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