A mother pleads for her son's life

Ariel Sigler Amaya

U.S. Rep. Lincoln DIaz-Balart has asked the U.S. Interest Section in Havana to grant a visa to Cuban political prisoner Ariel SIgler Amaya so he can receive desperately needed medical care.

Of course, getting Sigler the help he needs is not as simple as that, but Diaz-Balart deserves congratulations for doing what he can to try to raise awareness about what is happening.

Cuban political prisoner Ariel Sigler Amaya is dying in the Castro gulag.

His family, starting with his mother, implores you, and the world, to not forget him.

Capitol Hill Cubans reports:

Ariel Sigler Amaya, one of 75 Cuban pro-democracy leaders imprisoned during the repressive "Black Spring" crackdown of 2003, is gravely ill at the Ariza Hospital in Cienfuegos. His condition has seriously deteriorated in the last few months. Ariel’s mother, Gloria Amaya, was able to see him briefly last week and was devastated by his frailty. Shortly after her visit, she recorded the following heartbreaking statement (the original recording can be heard in Spanish below):

“My son is dying... my son is dying... please don’t let my son die... Mommy, he says, there's no place left for them to inject me anymore…. he is a cadaver... I plead for justice… for justice to be made... because my son is going to die there, and before my son dies, I ask this government here, this government that does not deserve anything, to issue a parole to all the sick prisoners, because there are many who are sick, a lot of them... they say that there are none, that there are no political prisoners of conscience, that there are none, that all of them are common prisoners... that’s a huge lie, my God... let a human rights observer come here... and let them visit the jails, let them come to the hospitals... and let them see the way they are dying... not for lack of things that one brings to them, because we take whatever we can... but for lack of medical assistance, they have to give it to him, it's the way it should be, they have to give it to him because he is a human being... it is a human being, not an animal... they have my son in a hole, they have him in a part of the hospital, where they are not permitted to see anybody, not to talk to anybody, so no one can communicate with him... I was allowed to see him for only twenty minutes and they didn’t let me talk anything with him... this is criminal... it’s criminal what they are doing... my son, who had always been as strong as an oak, my son went in there strong, big and in good shape, and now he is weak, skinny, he is a skeleton... I implore you, all the community outside Cuba, to please do something for him... to President Barack Obama, to the European Union, to all the Congress people there... this government here is trying to finish them, they are being killed slowly... I am a mother who has been suffering since my son was imprisoned... he entered healthy and now look at the way my son is... my son is dying... my son is dying... don’t let my son die."