Released Independent Labor Activist: “There is a Better World, and it is not Fidel Castro’s Dictatorship.”
By Cuban Democratic Directorate

From left to right: Lázaro González Adán (back left) junto a Carlos Serpa Maceira (front left), his wife and independent journalist Marilín Díaz Fernández, a human rights activist, and exiled independent journalist Farah Armenteros. (Archive photo, courtesy of Carlos Serpa Maceira)

Camagüey, August 14, 2007. Lázaro González Adán, an independent librarian and labor union activist was released from Cuban prison today. He had been imprisoned in 2004 for painting a Cuban flag and two quotes from Cuban independence hero José Martí on the front of his house.

González Adán, age 37, was imprisoned without trial from October 2004 until December 2006 when he was tried and sentenced to three years under charges of “contempt, disobedience, and resistance.”

“I have spent these past three years in prison conducting myself in a patriotic manner, with moral and ethical conviction, not collaborating with the regime. I was the victim of many instances of mistreatment, and beatings, both from regime repressors and prisoners who lend themselves to the dictatorship in order to receive preferential treatment and all kinds of benefits for their immoral conduct,” said “Lazaro González Adán in a statement to the Cuban Democratic Directorate three hours after leaving Cerámica Roja Prison in Camagüey.

In June 2006, Lázaro González Adán was attacked by a common prisoner who stabbed him in the groin with a sharp metal object. The prisoner was transferred from Cerámica Roja to another prison and González Adán was charged for damages and disorder in the prison, despite his having been the victim of the attack. These charges remain pending for him.

 
”I want to tell the Cuban people and the State Security that Lázaro González Adán is in the streets again. I want to ask all those who hurt me, to think of freedom for the Cuban people, that there is a better world that is not the world of the Castro brothers; that there is a world better than Fidel Castro’s dictatorship; that there is a better world that is coming to us, we are already touching it with our hands. I want to take this message of peace, love to them, so that they can think of the fact that we will soon be free. The only thing I ask is for unity, for entertainment and for us to unite as one people,” affirmed González Adán with emotion from a telephone at the city of Camagüey.

“Thank you to the Cuban Democratic Directorate, those brothers who, from exile, make this struggle more fraternal, more bearable. Thank you to the Cuban people who, from exile, are today aware of my release. We will all be one people, one family, working for a better country and always struggling for the freedom of the Cuban people. Thank you and may God bless you all,” he concluded.

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Directorio Democrático Cubano
P.O. Box 110235
Hialeah, Florida 33011
Tel. 305-220-2713
info@directorio.org

In Memory of Mario Manuel de la Peña