WASHINGTON.- The United States Embassy (USA) in Cubaexpressed his shock at the death of Luis Barrios Díaz, a political prisoner imprisoned by the dictatorship of Miguel Díaz-Canel in the social demonstrations on July 11, 2021, when the people took to the streets to demand freedom on the island.
Barrios died after suffering from bronchopneumonia while receiving medical attention at the Salvador Allende hospital, known as La Covadonga, in Havana, where he was transferred two days before.
“We are outraged to learn of the news of the death of the political prisoner of 11J, Luis Barrios Díaz, while he was imprisoned in Cuba,” said the US Embassy in Cuba through a message spread on social networks.
The death of Luis Barrios Díaz has once again brought to the fore the insistent denunciation of the Castro regime due to the systematic violation of human rights on the island. This is the case of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which on Tuesday asked the Cuban regime to investigate “quickly and impartially” the recent death of the detained protester.
The NGO Prisoners Defenders updated the list of political prisoners, which included 14 new arrests for dissenting from the dictatorship of Miguel Díaz-Canel in Cuba. As a total number, 1,047 people remain detained on the island for political motivations.
“This month of July, another 14 Convicts of Conscience join our list of political prisoners. Since January 2023, the average number of political prisoners who enter our list is 17 per month, more than three times more than the figures from 2018 to July 2021, when everything changed, when an entire town, fed up with the repression that causes mistreatment and misery,” Prisoners Defenders notes in its report.
The document details that those arrested are people from civilian family units who are not active in political groups to any degree. “And just as we demonstrated with our First Comprehensive Study of Torture in Cubathrough the monitoring of 181 cases, among which 168 were taken randomly, in Cuba all prisoners of conscience and/or politicians are mercilessly tortured every day, but their families are equally tortured for defending their innocence or for denouncing the inhumane situation that their relatives are experiencing in prison,” the text details.
FOUNTAIN: DRAFTING
