Elizardo Sánchez
Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz-Pacheco is a former philosophy professor at the University of Havana, president of the Cuban Commission for National Reconciliation and Human Rights, a human rights organisation founded in 1987 whose work has been recognized internationally by receiving the Human Rights Watch prize in 1991 and the Human Rights Prize of the French Republic in 1996.
A member of the coordination council of the Cuban Patriotic Union, which has been described by the United States State Department as the "largest group of Cuban opposition", the organization pursues a peaceful opposition to the repression of civil liberties in Cuba.
As a notable dissident and human rights activist in Cuba, he has been declared numerous times to be a prisoner of conscience since 1989. He has become over thirty years a worldwide reference for human rights organizations and international press about the state of human rights in the island nation and the situation of prisoners of conscience.