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Uncertainty haunts 6 dissidents
released from Cuban prisons
By Vanessa Bauzá.
Havana Bureau. Posted July 1 2004 in the
South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
HAVANA · In the first few days of
his fragile freedom, Carmelo Díaz
Fernández was plagued by nightmares.
After 15 months in prison, the 67-year-old
former accountant and independent journalist
had trouble sleeping in his bed.
"At night I would see the bars and
the locks and hear the opening and closing
of the prison gates," said Díaz
Fernández, the oldest dissident in
the group of 75 who were sentenced in April
2003 on charges of collaborating with the
U.S. government to topple President Fidel
Castro.
Venturing out into the bustling streets
surrounding his Old Havana home also took
some getting used to.
"For the first few days I didn't feel
secure going out alone," he said. "I
saw ghosts everywhere and didn't feel confident.
The impact of prison remains."
So too does the threat of arrest.
For Díaz Fernández and five
other peaceful dissidents who have been
released conditionally from prison because
of their deteriorated health, the joy of
being home with their families is marred
by fear and uncertainty.
In some cases state security officers have
warned the men that they could be arrested
again if they rekindle their opposition
activities. Some suggested the men leave
Cuba permanently.
Caught between exile and the possibility
of serving out the rest of his 15-year prison
sentence, Díaz Fernández said
he, like some others, will seek asylum abroad.
"I can't have an active political
life because I could be taken back to prison,"
he said. "With those conditions I can't
live."
Cuba's crackdown on dissidents sparked
criticism from the Vatican, some leftist
intellectuals, the U.S. Congress and European
Union, which downgraded its diplomatic ties
to the Cuban government in response. In
a statement last month, Foreign Minister
Brian Cowen of Ireland, which currently
heads the European Union, said the release
of imprisoned dissidents on medical grounds
was "a positive signal" and called
for all remaining political prisoners to
be released.
Havana has defended the sentences and refuted
charges that the jailed dissidents were
suffering from poor prison conditions and
inadequate medical care.
While some dissidents such as Roberto de
Miranda, 59, who was released on June 23,
called the decision to free him a "good
will gesture," others said the Cuban
government wanted to avoid a potential international
relations disaster if their health continued
to deteriorate.
"I think this is a maneuver of the
Cuban government to silence public opinion,"
said Miriam Leiva, whose husband, independent
economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, was sentenced
to 20 years in prison and remains hospitalized
for liver problems. She said she had no
expectations he would be released.
Independent journalist Manuel Vázquez
Portal, who served one year, three months
and four days of his 18-year sentence, said
he was surprised by his release June 23.
He suffers from high blood pressure but
says other dissidents who are still behind
bars are in worse health. He is deliberating
with his family whether to leave Cuba.
"I haven't been freed, I've been transferred
from a small cell to a larger one,"
he said. Prior to his arrest he had been
granted a U.S. visa.
A former writer for state-run children's
publications Vázquez Portal, 52,
was found guilty in April 2003 of providing
"subversive" information to Miami-based
news outlets and thereby contributing to
destabilize Cuba, according to court records.
In Santiago's Boniato Prison, about 500
miles east of Havana, he communicated with
other prisoners along a corridor of solitary
confinement cells by passing notes inside
a slipper. He struggled against the mind
numbing monotony of prison life by writing
a diary, which he smuggled out inside a
hardbound copy of War and Peace.
Before his release, a state security captain
asked, "If we freed you someday, what
would you do?"
When Vázquez Portal told him he
would go back to being a journalist, he
recalled the captain responded, "If
I were you and they freed me I would go
into exile."
De Miranda, a former teacher, who was released
on the same day as Vázquez Portal,
said he may seek asylum abroad because he
was fired from his job teaching math and
geology several years ago and is unable
to make a living.
"I don't want to abandon my country,
but what am I going to live from?"
de Miranda said. "If they incarcerate
me again I don't know that I will resist
because my health is deteriorated."
Like some other dissidents, he lives off
remittances sent by relatives in the United
States and from contributions by exile groups
in Miami.
The Cuban government describes dissidents
as puppets manipulated by the U.S. government
and says the fractured internal opposition
movement is fueled by federal funds.
Tensions between Havana and Washington
are high as the Bush administration has
implemented tough new measures aimed at
ending Castro's 45-year rule. They include
up to $29 million in new funding over two
years for democracy building and assistance
to dissidents in Cuba, much of which is
funneled into Miami exile organizations.
De Miranda and others reject the Cuban
government's assertion that dissidents are
"mercenaries."
"If I were a mercenary I would be
a masochist to have my house in these conditions,"
he said pointing to his bare Central Havana
living room, where slats are missing from
the windows and ceiling tiles are coming
loose.
Like some of the other dissidents released
recently, de Miranda had spent months in
a prison hospital for his ailments, which
included cysts in his kidneys, an ulcer
and high blood pressure.
He said prison doctors were respectful
and responsive and state security officers
seemed preoccupied with his deteriorating
health.
"They wouldn't leave my side until
I had stabilized," he recalled.
Dissident Miguel Valdés Tamayo,
47, who had suffered two heart attacks prior
to his arrest in March 2003, spent several
months in a solitary prison cell in Camaguey's
Kilo 8 prison, about 300 miles east of Havana.
He was transferred to a prison hospital
in Havana when his heart condition worsened.
On June 9 a prison official surprised him
with the news that he had been released
on probation.
"They came to my bed and said 'pick
up your things, you're free,'" he recalled.
This week Valdés Tamayo turned in
his application seeking refugee status in
the United States.
"I have no guarantees, at any moment
I can be returned to prison," he said
from his wooden, blue-painted home in the
broken down Havana suburb of Parraga. "They
didn't let me go as a humanitarian gesture,
or a good will gesture. They let me go because
they were afraid I would die."
Copyright
© 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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