Cuba Imprisons a Humanitarian José Daniel Ferrer threatens the regime because his group serves Cuban needs. By Mary Anastasia O’Grady
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cuba-imprisons-a-humanitarian-11575229476?mod=opinion_major_pos7
When Nelva Ortega Tamayo visited her husband José Daniel Ferrer in a Cuban prison in early November, she found him emaciated, hunched over and covered with bruises. He had a laceration on his face.
The Cuban dissident had been in custody for five weeks; the dictatorship had yet to announce charges against him. But his wife, who is a medical doctor, came away convinced that her husband was in grave danger of losing his life. Her concern is justified.
This isn’t Mr. Ferrer’s first time behind bars. He was named a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International during a 2003-11 incarceration. Now he is again jailed, and again drawing global attention.
Last week the European Parliament approved a joint resolution condemning the 49-year-old’s “arbitrary detention” and calling for his “immediate release.” The European body further denounced the dictatorship’s use of torture and expressed concern over continuous “attacks against peaceful dissidents, independent journalists, human rights defenders and political opposition.”
The resolution noted that there are an estimated 120 Cuban political prisoners. Three fellow members of the Patriotic Union, which was founded by Mr. Ferrer in 2011, were arrested with him. The whereabouts of two of them—José Pupo and Fernando González—remain unknown.
Dr. Ortega Tamayo had only five minutes with her husband at the Aguadores prison near Santiago de Cuba. But it was long enough to assess his condition.
Mr. Ferrer told her, according to a Patriotic Union press release, that the rancid prison food made him sick. He said he is confined, half-naked, to a wet, cold punishment cell that he shares with a violent criminal. In addition to the cuts and bruises, he had injuries from being dragged and caned. His voice and his vision are failing.
Mr. Ferrer is an unrelenting dissident and a capable leader, making him a candidate for a shortened lifespan in totalitarian Cuba. History shows that when the regime fails to convince someone like Mr. Ferrer that he should go into exile, it finds other ways to silence his opposition voice.
Oswaldo Payá, the founder of Cuba’s Christian Liberation Movement, was one such dissident. In 2012 he was killed when a car he was in was run off the road by a suspicious vehicle. The leader of the Ladies in White, Laura Pollán, was intelligent and charismatic. A mysterious illness took her life in 2011.
There is an inverse relationship between the stability of the dictatorship and its brutality. The less stable the regime feels, the greater the repression.
Memorable crackdowns coincide with internal unrest. In February 1996, on the same day that a network of pro-democracy groups prepared to convene under the banner of Concilio Cubano, Cuba downed two light aircraft belonging to the pro-democracy group “Brothers to the Rescue” over the Florida Straits. The regime simultaneously blocked dissident leaders from attending the convention, putting some in prison.
In March 2003, as pro-democracy activists were again growing bolder and more organized, Castro unleashed a series of raids against the households of activists, jailing 75. Mr. Ferrer was one of them. When the regime tried to exile him—calling it “liberation”—he refused.
The Patriotic Union of Cuba advocates “a non-violent democratic transition through political activism, community-based projects and dissemination of information.” The group has been expanding despite regime threats and harassment, in part because it is effective in helping Cubans with daily problems that are worsening.
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