WIFE’S URGENT TESTIMONY FOR POLITICAL PRISONER NORMANDO HERNANDEZ GONZALEZ

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WIFE’S URGENT TESTIMONY FOR POLITICAL PRISONER NORMANDO HERNANDEZ GONZALEZ
By Yarai Amparo Reyes Marín

"My name is Yarai Reyes Marín, I am the wife of political prisoner and prisoner of conscience Normando Hernandez González, independent journalist, Director of the School of Independent Journalists from here in Camagüey, he was sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment. Simply for saying what he thinks and for wanting to freely express the mistreatments committed here in this country.

Normando is serving out his sentence at Kilo 5½ prison in the province of Pinar del Río, and at the moment is traversing a difficult situation, because he is extremely ill and he considers it as a premeditated and subtle murder. Normando presents a difficult disease, a syndrome of bad intestinal absorption, which is the reason why he does not absorb any nutrients provoking many diarrheas and every day he becomes thinner. Now, at this moment, he is denied the food given in the penitentiary and also denied the medical assistance that they could give him in the penitentiary. He should have a hyper-protein diet, a diet based on proteins: red meat, chicken, and fish, but they are giving him terrible food made up of rice, split peas, him, and eggs, that for his illness he should not be eating.

Also they do not have medicines for the medical plan that he should be under. On November 19 of last year I took his medicines to him, and was not allowed to pass them to him, and this led to his then refusing the medical aid. At the moment he feels very badly, feels like he is dying, and says to me that he is becoming thinner day by day, the diarrheas are more abundant; he also suffers at other times from constipation, because when has many diarrheas apparently it inflames his colon to him, then he suffers from constipation. His body is wracked with pains in the joints, headaches, and stomach. He is suffering from acidity, desire to vomit, great weakness, practically cannot stand. He is in a detachment located on the second floor. Going up and down the stairs gives him tachycardia and all this affects him badly. I believe that he has been seriously affected physically and psychologically with this confinement. Add to that for the disease that he is suffering from stress does not allow for improvement, and he will not be cured. Normando is drinking water that has not been boiled, something that is terrible for him since his illness is product of parasites that are eating his intestinal lining. There is no hygiene and exquisite hygiene is needed as well as decent care as much medical as personal and he does not have that there. It is for this reason that Normando must leave the prison soon or he is going to die. In the last telephone call made last Thursday he said to me that he felt terrible, that he was preparing me because he felt like he was going to die, and this has me very worried.

I wanted, I know that like Normando there are other prisoners of conscience who are in difficult situations, but I have hope, and much faith that God is going to put His powerful hand and he is going to help Normando. As I believe that he is going it to do with other prisoners, and I want other relatives, that have this faith that I have, don’t lose hope. Hope is the last thing that is lost when everything is lost, and everything is not lost. It is necessary to have much hope and much faith."

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