Political prisoner Carlos Michael Morales was hospitalized in Santa Clara on the 21st day of his hunger strike
14ymedio, Madrid, July 11, 2024 — Activist Angélica Garrido was released on Wednesday, July 10, a day before the third anniversary of the 11 July 2021 (’11J’) anti-government protests for which she was imprisoned and after having served her sentence in full. Her sister, the writer María Cristina Garrido, still has four of the seven years of her sentence left to serve. “I have just served three years of an unjust sentence for crimes manufactured by State Security. I leave with my sister María Cristina my soul, my heart and my spirit,” she said in a video shared on Facebook from her home.
The activist also sent regards to all the 11J prisoners as well as to the common prisoners, “victims of this nonfunctional and tyrannical system that has kept the people in constant misery and repression.”
Garrido emphasizes that the struggle of political prisoners is, despite being “non-violent” – she says it several times – “illegal and prohibited” by the Government, which prohibits free expression, demonstrating that in Cuba there is no democracy and that exercising rights is punished with imprisonment.
“Our non-violent struggle is to raise our voice for an entire people who urgently demand change and ask for a life in freedom,” she says, ending with a call for the liberation of political prisoners and of Cuba.
She ends by saying, “Don’t be discouraged, my brothers and sisters, the homeland is proud of us.”
She ends by saying, “Don’t be discouraged, my brothers and sisters , the homeland is proud of us.”
Garrido has served the three years in prison confirmed by the Provincial Court of Mayabeque, ratifying the sentence imposed in the first instance after rejecting an appeal. The activist and her sister participated in the 11J demonstration of San José de las Lajas and were later arrested and accused of contempt and attack for Garrido, and of double attack for her sister; hence, the difference in the penalty.
Since then both have remained in the Guatao prison, in Havana, where they have denounced torture and repression and have led so
