Dania Virgen García
Whether it was because the authorities realized they had no case or because of the international attention on an obvious injustice, Cuban independent journalist/blogger/human rights activist Dania Virgen García this morning is a free woman.
Segundo Miranda, president of the Miami-based Center for Human Rights and Democracy — Brigade 2506, spoke with García on Friday evening, two weeks after she had been arrested, tried and sentenced to 20 months in prison. Some reports have said her arrest was related to a dispute with her daughter, but other dissidents have said they think she was targeted because of her journalism and for her support of the Damas De Blanco.
García was released just as a group of Cuban dissident lawyers filed an appeal on her behalf.
Here is Miranda's report based on his conversation with García. Note that she obviously was not cowed by her two weeks in one of the Castro gulag's most notorious prisons and that she plans to write and report on what she heard and witnessed, about the death of political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo and other stories:
Dania Virgin Garcia, sentenced on April 23 to a year and 8 months to the sinister prison of Manto Negro, has been released. A few minutes ago I spoke with a shaken Dania who briefly narrated the horrors she witnessed and experienced during the 17 days she was incarcerated.
Among the things Dania expressed, overcome emotionally and stressed by what she experienced in jail; was a story about the martyr Orlando Zapata Tamayo told to her by Miriam Rondón, an inmate at the same prison. In a testimony from the inmate (Miriam Rondón) herself, who says she was in the cell next to Zapata, she told Dania about the prison guard’s cruelty and how they left breakfast and lunch near Orlando Zapata Tamayo, and observed him through cameras to see if he ate anything.
She recounts how she was notified by a guard “hey, gather all your things and don’t talk with anyone”, and how the female inmates there for 20 and 30 years shouted to her “denounce what happens here and the conditions we endure”.
Soon Dania will resume her work as a journalist, and in her blog she will reveal in detail the horrors that take place in Cuban prisons.
We are pleased that Dania has been released, it is a victory against injustice, thanks to the pressure placed on the regime by the international press and the free world that demanded that she be set free.
We thank the Lord, for through his will and deed, Dania Virgin Garcia has been freed and returned to us.
To the free world and organizations that defend human rights, we plea that they do not forget about Cuba, nor its daughters and sons who bravely raise their voices to denounce the horrors they endure.
Read Miranda's report en español, aquí,
And for more about the supposed legal "case" against García, and efforts to help her, read Cuban dissident lawyer Laritza Diversent's blog.
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