José Daniel Ferrer — the leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), the nation’s largest dissident organization — described the inhumane torture the communist regime subjected him to in the weeks leading to his forced banishment from Cuba this week.
Ferrer spoke at a press conference on Wednesday hosted by the human rights organization Prisoners Defenders, which documents the imprisonment and torture of anti-communist dissidents on the island.
Ferrer, exiled by the Cuban regime to the United States this week, was one of the most prominent political of the Cuban regime prior to his freedom. Over the past two decades — since the events of the 2003 “Black Spring” dissident repression wave — Ferrer suffered a litany of repeated unjust detentions, torture, and degrading and inhumane treatment.
Ferrer was briefly “ex-incarcerated” by the Castro regime in January and re-imprisoned three months later in April after the Castro regime raided and ransacked Ferrer’s home, which doubles as UNPACU’s headquarters. Last week, Ferrer’s family published a handwritten letter penned by Ferrer in which he announced that he had accepted his forced banishment from Cuba after pressure from the Castro regime.
On Wednesday, Prisoners Defenders President Javier Larrondo hosted a hybrid physical-virtual press conference in Madrid, Spain, in the company of Luis Robles Elizástigui, a 32-year-old former political prisoner who arrived in Spain this week after spending more than four years in prison for peacefully holding a cardboard sign in December 2020 calling for freedom and the end of repression in Cuba. Ferrer participated in the conference online from Florida. Larrondo introduced Ferrer as the “most tortured prisoner in Cuba.”
Ferrer prefaced his participation by saying that he feels fine despite the circumstances and extended a warm salutation to Robles and all Cubans, stressing that he will converse with Cubans no matter where they are with the objective of bringing a “free, democratic, just, and prosperous Cuba,” first through a transition, and then through a process of rebuilding the country.
Ferrer lamented that the only thing that seems to function in Cuba is the regime’s repressive apparatus, which inflicts terror on Cubans to the point that they have to choose between fleeing or possibly ending up in prison among dangerous criminals “with mental disorders, and bought by the dictatorship to do its dirty work” against dissidents.
Asked by Larrondo on the circumstances that led to him leaving Cuba, Ferrer answered that the decision stemmed from a combination of factors, but clarified that it was not the “beatings, torture, and humiliation [he] endured over the last five months” what led him to leave because “the decision had already been made before the intense and cruel plan of torture, beatings, and humiliation.”
Ferrer denounced that the Castro regime sought to humiliate him by coercing him to intercede on behalf of the ruling communists with the Catholic Church and the U.S. government for negotiations, which he refused. Ferrer detailed that the Castro regime, through him, sought to claim that it was “willing to release political prisoners requested by the U.S.” in exchange for sanctions relief and the removal of Cuba from the United States’ list of state sponsors of terrorism (SST).
“They also wanted to humiliate me as much as possible because I didn’t want to leave as the political prisoner who never wore the uniform, who didn’t stand up for the prisoner roll call, who didn’t accept impositions, who preferred to spend two years without seeing his family rather than have all those mechanisms of humiliation imposed on him that they impose in prisons,” Ferrer said.
Ferrer recounted that he spent ten days subject to brutal beatings and torture during his imprisonment — including violent forced-feeding torture procedures, in which the regime would have 11 inmates hold him while two more punched him, forcing him to ingest rotten food while his nose was covered. Ferrer said that he would then forcefully throw up the “food” in defiance.
He then recounted the “greatest humiliation” that he went through. Ferrer detailed that on that day, he was beaten inside the prison cell and dragged in front of a camera managed by the regime’s political police in Santiago de Cuba, where he was restrained and had his private parts squeezed before a dirty stick was shoved up his mouth, injuring his jaw and throat. A funnel was then shoved up his mouth next to the stick, which was used to forcefully introduce “three quarters of a liter of rotten soup, the stench could be smelled for more than ten meters away.”
“Since they knew I would throw it up, the order was that if I threw up, they would pick it up from the dirty floor and reintroduce it again, so I had to accept that I would either die or accept that that I would wear the uniform and eat rotten food from the prison,” Ferrer said.
Ferrer further explained that his decision was a matter of survival and because “the struggle must continue until we triumph.” Ferrer also stressed that he has young children and he would have been a terrible father if he had not guaranteed their safety in exile. Ferrer vowed to return to Cuba to witness the “final days of the regime” and as soon as an effective structure was established to bring democracy to Cuba and end the repression and misery.
Ferrer said that he will not request permission from the Castro regime to return to Cuba by plane, as he knows the Cuban consulate will not grant such a request and will thus “board a boat” alongside any other Cuban that wishes to return with him, carrying only a white rose, the verses of Cuban founding father José Martí, and “a satellite phone to let everyone know that I have arrived to the Malecón” in Havana. The white rose is a symbol of Cuban resistance as the subject of one of Martí’s most famous poems.
Luis Robles Elizastigui, who participated in the press conference, recounted that he was subjected to “rape, repression, persecution,” and other inhumane punishment during the years he spent unjustly detained for peacefully holding a cardboard sign calling for freedom in 2020. He thanked everyone for the help and support that allowed him to arrive in Spain with his mother Yindra and child, and pointed out that his brother Lester remains unjustly detained in Cuba as a political prisoner of the communist regime.
In May, the U.S. Department of State imposed sanctions on the Cuban judges and prosecutors involved in the unjust conviction and sentences against José Daniel Ferrer and Luis Robles Elizástigui.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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