CFTU’s Chair, Thomas R. Donahue, recently contacted U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, for help in gaining freedom for Macdiel Bachiller Pedroso, the 21-year-old son of a Cuban labor union official now living in exile.
Pedroso has been imprisoned in Cuba for more than four years for the crime of “dangerousness.” The young man is the son of Aurelio Bachiller, the General Secretary of the Independent National Workers’ Federation of Cuba (CONIC). The elder Bachiller now lives in the United States.
“There is no doubt that the son is being punished for the sins of the father, the most recent of which was to testify before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and which occasioned Macdiel’s most recent arrest,” Donahue stated in a letter to Mrs. Clinton. “The Cuban government apparently is going to charge the young man with another false charge to extend his sentence.”
Donahue asked Mrs. Clinton to forcefully raise the issue of Macdiel’s imprisonment with the Cuban government, as well as the cases of the other independent trade unionists and democracy activists still suffering in Cuban prisons.
In a letter to Mrs. Clinton, Aurelio Bachiller stated that in March 2009, his son began the process of emigrating to the United States to join his family. Subsequent to his application, the young man was detained by the Cuban government many times, each time based on the testimony of false witnesses. All of that was preparation to send him to prison. Soon after receiving a visa to travel to the U.S., he was arrested and accused of violent robbery and possession of firearms.
“The Prosecutor is asking for 20 years’ imprisonment despite the fact that all the charges are false,” Bachiller told Mrs. Clinton. The only crime my son has committed was being the son of a father who is an independent trade unionist who continues to fight for worker rights in Cuba.
“My son is now being pressed to sign a declaration of guilt in exchange for his liberty – a common practice in Cuba for unjustly charged persons. My son is now alone, without support, in the hands of a government that will use any means to stay in power. By forcing him to sign this statement, the Cuban authorities wish to compromise Macdiel’s possibility to go to the U.S. to join his family so that they will be able to use him as blackmail to try to stop my work.”