Released political prisoners vow to fight on for the freedom of Cuba
posted on Friday, July 16, 2010
The article quotes them describing the conditions on which they were kept, the abuses they suffered in prison, and the lasting consequences of their unjust imprisonment:
[…]here in Spain, the former prisoners have been giving disturbing details of their years behind bars.
"I spent 18 months in solitary confinement," Lester Gonzalez told the BBC, showing a court paper which detailed his 20-year prison sentence.
"[I was] in the dark, with my hands tied; with rats and cockroaches and excrement everywhere. That was all I could smell."
[…]they've described crowded and filthy prison cells where they were denied drinking water for days; often, the only food was "giraffe soup" - so watery, the prisoner stretched his neck searching for some kind of nutritional content.
"I went into prison weighing 86kg, now I'm 48kg," said Jose Luis Garcia Paneque, one of several men now suffering serious medical complaints.
"That's the effect of my prison time: chronic illness for rest of my life," explained Mr Garcia Paneque, now a shrunken figure with hollow cheeks.
[…]The men, who were held with ordinary Cuban criminals, recounted how prisoners routinely inflicted serious injuries upon themselves to get even basic medical attention from prison staff.
In one case, they said a man jabbed needles in his eyes but was left unattended for two days.
They denounced their forced exile, and that although released from jail, their sentences are still in effect, and they could be imprisoned should they ever be able to return to Cuba (something for which the regime has said they will need a permit):
"The Cuban government has been categorical: we have to get permission to return to the place we were born in," said Julio Cesar Galvez, who describes his arrival in Spain as deportation.
"We are not free. We are not immigrants here. Quite simply, we are refugees."
Cuban Church officials say 20 prisoners have agreed to come to Spain. As their criminal convictions have not been overturned, they say exile was the only option.
"If I leave prison, but I can't work to support my family, that's not freedom," explained Mr Galvez, who was sentenced to 15 years for his work as an independent journalist.
"If I'm still harassed, if they follow us, listen to our phone calls and want to know where we're going and what we're doing - we're not free," he said.
The opposition activists warned the EU and the rest of the international community against being too optimistic and seeing the move by the regime as a sign of change:
[…]the former prisoners say it would be "unacceptable" to see their release as proof that the Cuban government's approach to human rights has improved.
"Real improvement would mean new laws, no more repression or arrests of human rights activists," one said, adding that included his own right to return home without fear of prison again.
Another mentioned freedom of speech, and a third called the government's move a "smoke-screen" ahead of an EU review of its common position on Cuba this autumn.
Entire article with more pictures at the link.
The Canadian Press reports that Manfred Nowak, the U.N.'s independent torture investigator, "is deeply disappointed by Cuba's decision to block him from visiting the country for the first time."
[...]the Cuban government informed him it was unable to accommodate his visit before the end of his term on Oct. 30.H/T Babalublog
Nowak said Wednesday that he had received a "clear invitation" from the government earlier this year and had hoped to investigate allegations of torture and ill-treatment in the communist country.
The U.N.-appointed human rights expert has made several fruitless attempts to visit the island since 2005.
Cuban Ambassador in Geneva Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez declined to comment, saying he was awaiting instructions on the matter from Havana.
They tortured him, but he didn’t surrender: Testimony about Orlando Zapata Tamayo
posted on Thursday, April 15, 2010Efrén Fernández Fernández, Cuban prisoner of conscience
April 13th, 2010
Guanajay Prison, Havana, Cuba via www.PayoLibre.com
I was brought here in May, 2004. I remember the stories that common prisoners told me when I arrived about the beatings to Orlando Zapata Tamayo perpetrated by the authorities in the penitentiary.
Every day I could see from my window the window of his cell, which is 30 meters away from the place where I am still kept captive. We used to speak to each other through shouts and we even exchanged correspondence with the help of common prisoners who were able to avoid the close vigilance from the prison guards. This is how Zapata himself told me, in very detailed account, what “the commons” had already told me: “when I was brought to this prison in 2003, I was placed in bunker #6, where First Lieutenant Emilio Guilarte Ramírez and Sub-Officer Leonel Torres Reñí beat me savagely, causing me heavy bruising.”
And that was just the beginning of the long story of abuses against Zapata. Many times I saw his jailers take him out handcuffed and shirtless, throw him on the floor, and drag him by his feet on all 200 meters of rough concrete to the military area. This inhumane trip passed even through a graveled basketball court that would break his skin.
By the end of 2003, during a requisition, the prison guards chained Zapata, and threw him on the floor so that First Lieutenant Quintana could give him a huge kick to the head. Right after that, a swarm of guards fell on him beating with all their hatred and sadism. Around that same time, several guards handcuffed him again, and the prison warden, Lieutenant Colonel Wilfredo Velásquez Domínguez, punched him in the mouth and made him bleed while his subordinates savagely clubbed Zapata.
Our late brother was the victim of many assaults and beatings in this Prison of Guanajay. They were so widespread that even female Captain Delia, Chief Comptroller, slapped him. He was also assaulted by officer Felito, and sub-officers Alejandro, Orestes, Pileta y Reinier, among many others.
During one of the darkest nights in the Taco-Taco prison in 2006, they tortured Zapata in the punishment cell for shouting slogans and conducting a hunger strike against the mistreatment, the horrible sanitary conditions and for the respect of the prisoners’ rights. They applied the torture technique known as “la sillita”, the little chair. After beating him, they shackled his feet, pushed his arms behind his back and cuffed him, and then used another pair of cuffs to link both the handcuffs and the shackle. With his body arched in that extreme position, they left him lying on the floor for several days. He, however, did not surrender, and continued shouting: “Down with Fidel! Down with the dictatorship! Long live our human rights!”
The swarm of mosquitos and bugs, and the rats made his torture even worse, so bad that common inmates Ramón Acosta Moreno, Michel Jáuregui Pérez, Enrique González Silva, Michel Rodríguez Roldán y Jesús, aka Monín, who inhabited the surrounding punishment cells, asked the military personnel to stop it. Major Orlando, penal comptroller, promised them that he would take their request to the provincial level since, as he stated, the order to punish Zapata had come from his superiors.
Hours passed, and Major Orlando did not come back, so the inmates started shouting and making noises by beating empty plastic containers against the floor, forcing the guards to return. The prisoners threatened with joining Zapata’s hunger strike. For this reason, the guards took Zapata’s cuffs off, but that night, while everyone else slept, they surrounded his cell with guard dogs while an entire platoon of guards gave him another beating.
Nevertheless, the Cuban government was never able to silence the human rights defender, Orlando Zapata Tamayo who never faltered in his peaceful struggle for the freedom of Cuba. Even today, within this blood spattered walls, his strong voice echoes and seems to rise every day against the regime’s abuses and to defend the right of common inmates to be treated as human beings.
Efrén Fernández Fernández, 47, is a member of the Movimiento Cristiano Liberación (Cristian Movement “Liberation”). He was condemned to 12 years of imprisonment during Cuba’s Black Spring in 2003. His family lives in Calle Clavel #582 e/ Tulipán y Concepción, Cerro, Ciudad de La Habana, Cuba.
This testimony was recorded by phone and transcribed by Tania Maceda Guerra, with the Center of Information for the Human Rights Relators Council of Cuba. It was told by Fernández on March 1st, 2010 from the maximum security prison of Guanajay.
