Yosvani Melchor Rodriguez on conditonal release after 1991 days of arbitrary detention

"Finally with his family after 5 years of unjust imprisonment Yosvani Melchor on probation. Enough blackmail end the impunity."  - Rosa María Payá

Yosvani Melchor Rodriguez, unjustly detained

 Five years, five months and 12 days after he was arbitrarily detained Yosvani Melchor Rodriguez was freed on probation on August 30, 2015. He should not have spent one day in jail and has suffered in order to make his mother suffer for not agreeing to become an informant for the Castro regime's state security services against the Christian Liberation Movement. 

Last month on June 24, 2015 Rosa María Rodríguez Gil addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva and called for the release of her son, Yosvani Melchor Rodriguez, unjustly imprisoned since March 19, 2010. In her statement she outlined the circumstances that led to his arbitrary detention:

My name is Rosa Maria Rodriguez Gil, I am a member of the Coordinating Council of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) and I live in Havana, Cuba. For my activism and commitment to the MCL ... because I refused to collaborate with the Cuban political police, my son Yosvani Melchor Rodriguez, a young man with psychological problems, was arbitrarily arrested, subjected to a show trial, where the prosecution was unable to demonstrate evidence of an alleged crime of trafficking in persons that he did not commit, they sanctioned him to 12 years in prison and he has spent 5 years in the prisons of Cuba. My son is being punished as a vendetta for my participation in the civic and constitutional campaign for a referendum where the people can freely decide whether if they want democracy. Not content to kidnap my son, the Cuban authorities denied Yosvani even the right to parole, that all inmate has on the island once they have passed the half way point of the sanction imposed, in this case unjustly. 

Oswaldo Payá died in a suspicious car accident on July 22, 2012 along with another member of his movement, Harold Cepero, but months earlier in an interview with the Associated Press he addressed this case:

"There are political prisoners in Cuba; the son of a member of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) was sentenced to 12 years in jail for the sole reason of being the son of a MCL member. His name is Yosvany Melchor Rodriguez and he was artificially condemned in Santiago de Cuba on November 30, 2010, after his mother was threatened by state security forces for not wanting to cooperate against us."

 It is important to celebrate Yosvani's freedom and continue to demand that his freedom not be conditional. Furthermore, it is important to remember the circumstances under which this young man was denied his liberty in order to terrorize his mother into spying on a nonviolent dissident organization. 

Yosvani Melchor Rodriguez together with his mom