Cuban State Security has tried to boycott the award that the Patmos Institute grants annually. This Tuesday, and at the same time of the ceremony that the religious organization had planned to celebrate for announce the winners, in the neighborhood of La Palma, in Havana, the host, the evangelical pastor Luis Maldonado, was summoned by the Police. The religious received the same summons Alejandro Hernández Cepero, who is detained.
Those who received the Patmos Prize this year are the sisters María Cristina and Angélica Garrido and the brothers Jorge and Nadir Martín Perdomo, all of them political prisoners in Cuba. This is an award that, since 2014 and coinciding with the day of the Protestant Reformation, October 31, honors “believers consistent with their faith” on the Island.
In an audio sent to his friends, Maldonado says that agents and police vehicles surround the meeting place. However, some of the prisoners’ relatives have managed to arrive, such as Jorge and Nadir’s mother, Marta Perdomo.
As indicated by the organization in a statement, it is the first time that it has been granted to more than one person. In this case, four Cubans imprisoned for their participation in the historic demonstrations of July 11, 2021 (11J) in San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque.
“Among the thousands of prisoners of the historic days of 11J, the names of these four fervent believers stand out for their strong convictions of faith”
Jorge and Nadir Martín Perdomo were sentenced, respectively, to eight and six years in prison for attack, contempt and public disorder; María Cristina Garrido, to seven years in prison, and her sister Angélica, to three. Both dams planted, They have also reported torture and ill-treatment in prison.
On the other hand, the relatives of the four have been harassed by State Security, which, for example, keeps the mother of the Martín brothers, Marta Perdomo, regulated.
“Among the thousands of prisoners of the historic days of 11J, the names of these four fervent believers stand out for their strong convictions of faith, which has been confirmed in these more than two years of imprisonment,” says the Patmos Institute in a statement.
“Although such virtues have not been exclusive to them, because Cuban prisons for more than six decades have been overcrowded with women and men,” the NGO continues, they have wanted to “symbolize in these two pairs of evangelical brothers all believers, who , because they are consistent with their faith convictions, were in the past or remain today in any of the Cuban prisons.”
Since its creation, Patmos has awarded both Catholics, such as Dagoberto Valdés, Amador Blanco Hernández, José Conrado Alegría, Eduardo Cardet Concepción, Roberto de Jesús Quiñones, Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello and Ernesto Borges Pérez, and evangelicals, such as Oscar Elías Biscet or Lorenzo Rosales Fajardo.
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