I knew they would go after him. When I spoke with José Daniel Ferrer for the first time, by phone, I immediately noticed his exceptionality. Shortly after, we talked around the table in our house and this impression was further confirmed. While outside night was coming on, the man from Palmarito de Cauto told us of the years he spent in prison, from the Black Spring of 2003 to mid-2011. The beatings, the denouncing, the inmates who respectfully called him "the politician" and the guards who tried to crush him by force. We spent hours listening to those stories, at times of horror and at others of true miracles. Like when he managed to hide a small radio, his most precious possession, from the searches until he himself smashed it against the floor, seconds before a guard confiscated it.
José Daniel, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), is today State Security's main headache in the east of the country. He occupies that place -- admirable but dangerous -- in part because his every word projects honesty and determination. Good-natured, young, conciliatory, he has managed to revive a dissident movement languishing between repression and the exile of some of its members. His drawing power, and the respect many have for him, comes also from his perseverance and, in particular, from the fact that he is quicker to embrace than to distrust. He has become a human bridge between several citizen projects and, right now, that makes him a sharp stone in the Cuban government's shoe.
For 23 days this tireless Santiaguan has been detained. He can no longer traverse the steep roads connecting the towns of his region, nor respond to interviews, nor send messages via Twitter from his cell phone. Last Monday he declared a hunger strike in the police station where they are keeping him incommunicado. His wife, Belkis Cantillo, still has no information about how much longer he will be under arrest, or even if they plan to file legal charges. Some of us, his friends, have a bad feeling. José Daniel Ferrer has come to have an ability to call people together that frightens the Cuban authorities and they will punish him harshly for that. They fear him because he could give Santiago de Cuba's slogan, "Heroic City," a new meaning in these times.
Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.
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HAVANA – Cuban dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer has ended the hunger strike he launched to protest his arrest early this month, his wife told Efe on Friday.
Coinciding with the end of the fast, Cuban authorities formally charged the detainee with creating a public disturbance in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba on April 2, when he was taken into custody along with other government opponents, Belkis Cantillo said.
Ferrer, the leader of the outlawed Patriotic Union of Cuba dissident group who had begun the hunger strike on Monday, received notification from the authorities of the “public disorder” charge.
Cantillo added that when she visited him at the detention facility he told her not to obtain an attorney for him.
The dissident is one of 12 Group of 75 members who refused to travel to Spain as a condition of his release.
In recent months, the 41-year-old Ferrer had been briefly detained in Havana and the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba, where he lives, but subsequently released on both occasions without charges.
Amnesty International had adopted all of the Group of 75 as prisoners of conscience and Havana came under international pressure to release them after one member.
But the Castro regime says there are no political prisoners on the Communist-ruled island and does not acknowledge the existence of an authentic internal opposition
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=498731&CategoryId=14510
Cuban government critic José Daniel Ferrer García has been detained without charge for more than 10 days. Amnesty International considers him to be a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression. 42 others arrested at the same time have now been released. José Daniel Ferrer García, the coordinator of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) has been detained without charge since 2 April when he was arrested by security forces along with 42 others as part of a crackdown on government critics in the province of Santiago de Cuba. The others detained – who included his wife Belkis Cantillo Ramírez, a member of the protest group Ladies in White – were all released without a charge a few days after their arrest. José Daniel Ferrer García is being held at the provincial headquarters of the Department of State Security in the neighbourhood of Versalles, on the outskirts of the city of Santiago de Cuba. He has yet to be charged and has not had access to a lawyer. José Daniel Ferrer García was previously declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, along with 74 others who were imprisoned in 2003. He was granted conditional release in March 2011, having served eight of his 25 year sentence.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR25/015/2012/en/795e7fcb-f384-42f9-8bca-40b24e2471ad/amr250152012en.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfKW7ZJyDgc