Interviews with Regis Iglesias Ramirez
Cuba
Message to Dissidents
Message to Dissidents
Transcript
Because of my principles I can only relate to people who fight within their own reality and situations, first for their individual freedom and then for the freedom of their people. My message would be that we are a community, we are a group of people who belongs to a universal spirit that is very special to me. A spirit of people who have not only freed themselves but who have also had the humility, the generosity, and the solidarity towards their fellow men to fight, sacrifice, and give their all for the freedom of their fellow men.
My message to all my brothers, be they Chinese, Burmese, Syrian, Venezuelan, or from any corner of the world, from anywhere that someone who decides to fly the flag of individual and collective freedom, is that they are not alone. They’re not alone even when they’re thrown in a dark, isolated cell. All the people of good faith, all the free spirits of the world will be with them, and God will be with them as well. That is my message and also my hope for everyone.
About Regis Iglesias Ramirez
Regis Iglesias Ramirez is a Cuban political and civil society activist and a former prisoner of conscience. He was born in Havana in 1969.
He became a member of a dissident group, the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), in 1989. The MCL was founded by the late Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya, who died under mysterious circumstances in a car accident in 2012. Regis Iglesias Ramirez became the MCL’s spokesman and a member of its Coordination Council in 1996. He was nominated as a candidate to the Cuban Parliament in 1997, but his candidacy, along with those of colleagues from the MCL, was rejected by the regime’s electoral authorities.
He is a member of the National Executive of the Citizens Committee of the Varela Project, a civil society initiative advocating for free elections and improved human rights in Cuba. The Varela Project gathered signatures from Cuban citizens in favor of a plebiscite, as permitted by the Cuban constitution. The communist government refused to call the plebiscite.
In 2003, Regis Iglesias Ramirez was among 75 nonviolent dissidents and activists arrested by the Cuban regime in what became known as the Black Spring. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison for crimes against the state. In 2010, he was released in a deal brokered by the Roman Catholic Church and was sent into exile in Spain, where he remains as a political refugee.
Regis Iglesias Ramirez has published several books of poetry and contributed to various literary anthologies. His articles have appeared in various publications in Spain and elsewhere. Since the mid-1990s, he has been associated with the Independent Press Bureau of Cuba, the New Cuban Press Agency and the Manuel Marquez Sterling Society of Independent Journalists in Cuba.