14ymedio, Havana, 1 March 2024 — Cuban dissident Martha Beatriz Roque, director of the Cuban Center for Human Rights (CCDH) and former prisoner of the Black Spring, has been one of the winners of the 2024 International Prize for Women of Courage, awarded by the United States Government . But she will not be able to go to the awards ceremony next Monday.
In conversation this Friday with 14ymedio, the historic dissident says that the news was communicated to her last January. “They told me that the prize consisted of 15 days of vacation in Los Angeles, 15 days in Washington and then the awarding of the prize.” Roque, who is regulated — the regime’s euphemism for not being allowed to travel — went to the Emigration offices in Havana, where State Security agents were waiting for her.
There they told her to return in 15 days to resolve her case. She hoped that, as has happened recently with other opponents, such as Julio Ferrer and María Cristina Labrada, the ban on leaving the country would be lifted. However, when she returned two weeks later, the response was blunt: “You are still regulated, period.” That time, she says, “the treatment was completely different, I can say that they treated me badly.”
“I think ‘they’ prefer the empty chair to my words. So, well, there will be my empty chair. The hatred they have for me is terrible”
And she says: “I imagine that the United States Embassy, at the request of the Government, has asked to let me travel, but I think ‘they’ prefer the empty chair to my words. So, well, there will be my empty chair. The hatred they have for me is terrible.”
Roque’s case has been similar to that of Yoani Sánchez, director of this newspaper, who was prevented by the regime from leaving the Island when she was also awarded the Women of Courage Award, in her case in 2011.
This year, in its eighteenth edition, the p
