|
Dissidents'
Anguished Accounts
From Cuba's jails come tales of agony
By Letta Tayler. Latin America correspondent.
July 21, 2003. Newsday.com.
Havana - His ceiling leaks. His primitive toilet
"regurgitates its fetid contents around the
clock." Screams echo through the cellblocks,
and rats and cockroaches roam with impunity.
"The meals are almost indescribable,"
Manuel Vázquez, a journalist and poet,
continues in a diary smuggled out of prison. "Even
pigs would vomit."
This is life, according to accounts emerging
from Cuban prisons, for 75 poets, journalists,
economists and other dissidents thrown behind
bars four months ago in Fidel Castro's biggest
crackdown against his critics since the 1959 revolution.
Three young men who hijacked a passenger ferry
in April in a failed attempt to flee to the United
States didn't fare any better: They were executed
by a firing squad.
Less than a year ago, momentum was building dramatically
across the United States and Europe to increase
ties with Cuba. But the crackdown has provoked
an unprecedented world outcry, quelling hopes
for a thaw.
"The Cuban government's recent actions are
the latest evidence that as long as Castro is
in power, there will be no improvements in U.S.-Cuba
relations," said Brian Alexander, former
director of the Cuba Policy Foundation. The group,
one of the main U.S. business lobbies opposing
the decades-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba's
communist government, disbanded in the spring
to protest the crackdown.
Cuban officials counter that they're combating
"Nazi-fascist" schemes hatched by Washington
and backed by Europe to overthrow the government.
The dissidents - who were sentenced to up to 28
years in one-day trials - are "mercenaries
paid by the United States to subvert the revolution,"
said Luís Fernandez, a Foreign Ministry
official.
The executions of the three hijackers, Fernandez
said, were "extreme" but "necessary"
to stem an exodus of citizens that he blamed on
U.S. laws granting Cubans residency if they reach
U.S. shores.
Three more hijackers were shot dead Tuesday while
trying to seize a boat in southwest La Coloma.
The Interior Ministry said the hijackers killed
themselves in a scuffle, but one victim's mother
told international reporters she believed police
shot the men.
Cuban officials also insist the imprisoned dissidents
aren't living in squalor. "They enjoy good
health and have not suffered any violation whatsoever
of their rights," said José Luís
Toledo Santander, who heads the National Assembly's
constitutional affairs panel. However, the government
has refused to let international observers or
journalists visit the prisons.
Over the past year, the dissidents had become
increasingly vocal - and gained increasing international
attention - in their calls for reforms of Castro's
one-party system. They were convicted on charges
including working with a foreign power to undermine
the government. U.S. officials acknowledge they
have met repeatedly with the dissidents but deny
paying them or fomenting unrest. The dissidents
also deny the charges.
"They have sentenced me to 18 years of deprivation
for the simple act of practicing journalism,"
Vázquez, 51, wrote in his diary.
In a harshly worded report last month, Amnesty
International concluded the dissidents were innocent
and declared them "prisoners of conscience."
Their imprisonment swells to 321 the number of
political prisoners on the island, according to
the nongovernmental Cuban Commission on Human
Rights.
Many Cubans continue to staunchly defend Castro
and the crackdown, and the government here is
busy rallying more. Last month, authorities released
with great fanfare a paperback titled "The
Dissidents" that chronicles the alleged transgressions
of the 75 prisoners. State-run media are packed
with information about rallies slated for Saturday
commemorating the 50th anniversary of the first
battle of the Cuban revolution. Billboards scream
that Cubans are "Always United, Defending
Socialism."
But the mood among others in this sultry Caribbean
nation evokes what one Western diplomat called
"the big chill."
"A lot of people were outraged by the arrests
and the executions," said Rosa Perez Lara,
75, a widow, as she sat in a shady park. "People
want change but they're afraid to say so. If I
could, I'd pack up my family and go. After 40
years of the same promises, you can't even find
thread in the stores here to mend your clothes."
The crackdown doesn't sit any better with many
foreign governments.
Last month, the U.S. government nixed plans for
a second annual U.S. agricultural fair in Havana,
an event to which U.S. businesses flocked last
year. What had been a growing, bipartisan movement
in Congress to lift bans on travel and trade with
Cuba appears dead in the water.
In May, the European Union rebuffed Cuba's bid
to join a preferential trade pact, and last month
it restricted political and cultural contact with
the island. Like the United States, Europe has
infuriated the Cuban government by inviting the
few prominent dissidents who aren't imprisoned
to diplomatic functions.
Some of those dissidents are continuing to operate
openly and criticize Castro's government, though
they said they've received threats for doing so.
And in letters, journals, rare phone calls and
conversations whispered into spouses' ears as
"re-educators" hover nearby, imprisoned
dissidents are decrying their conditions.
In separate and group interviews, more than a
dozen dissidents' wives said their husbands had
lost 20 to 40 pounds in prison, gotten acute diarrhea
and other illnesses, and been denied adequate
medical care. Nearly all 75 dissidents are locked
in solitary confinement with no access to television,
radios or newspapers, and some reported other
political prisoners had been beaten, the wives
said.
"My husband said dogs in prison are treated
better than the inmates," said Dolia Leal,
the wife of dissident Nelson Aguiar Ramirez, 58.
Prison officials forced human rights activist
Angel Juan Moya Acosta, 38, to walk naked and
handcuffed in a tiny cell for three days after
he demanded to wear his civilian clothes instead
of a prison uniform, the wives said.
Journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, 62, one of the
most prominent dissidents, has acute liver disease
and kidney problems, according to his wife, Miriam
Leiva. Her face livid, she showed a visitor a
plastic bottle of water filled with slime and
bits of insects that she said had come from a
drinking faucet at one prison where her husband
had been held.
Leiva said she recently traveled 16 hours by
bus to see her husband in Boniatico Prison. Prison
authorities not only denied her a visit, they
also refused to accept the food and disinfectant
she had taken him.
They said, "Next visit is in August,"
Leiva recounted. "I told the warden, 'By
August he won't need this stuff. He'll be dead."
Copyright © 2003, Newsday,
Inc.
|
