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WSJ:
Don't Forget the Victims In Castro's Gulag
By Mary Anastasia O'grady. The
Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2003. Published
in NetforCuba
International.
"Kirkpatski, Kirkpatski," Andrei Sakharov
exclaimed when he met Jeanne Kirkpatrick in Moscow.
"I have so wanted to meet you and thank you
in person. Your name is known in all the Gulag."
The reason why, wrote National Review's Jay Nordlinger
when he related that incident in June 2001, was
because she had named names of Soviet prisoners,
"giving men and women in the cells a measure
of hope."
Mr. Nordlinger's piece sought to draw attention
to Cuban repression, more than a decade after
the Soviet system had collapsed. Two years later,
the situation is even worse. It's a good time
to remind Washington that, pros and cons of Wyoming
beef sales to Fidel aside, the innocents rotting
-- and getting beat up -- in Cuban jails must
not be forgotten.
Ms. Kirkpatrick, a former U.S. ambassador to
the United Nations, told Mr. Nordlinger, "This
much I have learned: It is very, very important
to say the names, to speak them. It's important
to go on taking account as one becomes aware of
the prisoners and the torture they undergo."
The regime "want[s] not only to imprison
them, they want no one to have heard of them,
no one to know who or where they are. So to just
that extent, it's tremendously important that
we pay attention."
Recall that in March a new wave of repression
swept Cuba. Seventy-five of the most important
dissident leaders were sent to filthy, rodent
infested prisons to serve sentences of 20 years
or more. The prisoners have been sited far from
where their families live and even when difficult
transportation can be arranged, they are often
denied visitors. When they are not in solitary
they are crammed in small spaces with common criminals
where the toilet is a hole in the floor. Some
of them are very sick and a few could die if they
are not granted decent medical treatment soon.
One seriously ill political prisoner is Oscar
Espinosa Chepe, a 63-year-old independent economist
who suffers from cirrhosis of the liver. By telephone
from Cuba on Wednesday his wife Miriam Leiva told
me that when he was arrested in March, he was
interrogated for hours at the Villa Marista state
security headquarters in Havana and suffered deep
psychological torture and sleep deprivation. The
regime refused to supply the medicine he needed
for his liver condition or to let his family bring
it to him. Without medical treatment and a proper
diet his condition worsened.
He was later sent to the western side of the
island, some 500 miles from home. Then he was
moved to several other locations without any notification
to his wife, who each time had to try to find
him.
For more than eight days in July Mr. Chepe was
locked in a cell with no windows in solitary.
He is now at a Havana "military hospital,"
in a small cell with tiny windows that do not
open and no running water. His wife has reason
to believe that psychiatrists are drugging him.
Another important Cuban economist that Fidel
has sentenced to his gulag is 58-year-old Marta
Beatriz Roque. This courageous woman has already
done years in the slammer for authoring, with
three others, a paper discussing Cuba's economic
problems. She is gravely ill with a heart condition
and has lost more than 40 pounds.
Oscar Elias Biscet is a devout Christian and
a pacifist whose work to teach Cubans about the
Universal Human Rights Declaration riles Castro.
He was arrested in March and no one has been allowed
to see him since April. In a June 1 letter to
his family he described his first 37 days in jail:
"They took away all my personal belongings
including my underwear and led me to a dark and
dirty cell with the only ventilation consisting
of the soot and petroleum smoke coming from the
prison kitchen."
Librado Linares lived in the province of Villa
Clara and became a threat to Castro because he
had such success in organizing intellectuals and
activists. He also led humanitarian efforts like
lunch programs for the elderly. He has played
an important role in the national dissident movement.
He was the first person arrested in March and
is in solitary confinement.
Roberto De Miranda is the head of Cuba's Association
of Independent Teachers, which seeks to provide
education without ideology. He is also "guilty"
of involvement in Cuba's grass-roots democracy
movement known as the Varela Project. Mr. De Miranda
has a very serious heart condition and has suffered
at least one heart attack in prison. As with the
others, his living conditions are not fit for
an animal.
Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva, a blind human-rights
lawyer and a Christian, has been in prison without
trial since March 2001. The regime now accuses
him of self-mutilation. In a letter he corrects
the record and appeals to the U.N. Human Rights
Commission. "In the 16 months I have been
confined in this dreadful place, I have suffered
the most savage physical and psychological tortures
. . . to force me to become a collaborator of
the State Security," including, he says,
attacks by the common criminal prisoners.
All this is classic Castro "justice."
His crimes against humanity have been reported
by hundreds of former prisoners. They are heartbreaking
to anyone with a heart. Yet there is also something
enormously empowering about these heroes. Roberto
De Miranda's wife put it well when she said, "I
felt such great pride when I saw him and when
I saw him I felt more courage to continue struggling
even more than I do now."
Dr. Biscet has written: "I say to my brothers
in exile, the international community and the
Cuban people that I feel kidnapped only for defending
the right to life and the right of all Cubans
to live in freedom. What inspires me is alive:
God and the great teachers of non-violence present
today more than ever. As Martin Luther King said:
'If a nation is capable of finding amongst its
ranks of people 5% willing to go voluntarily to
prison for a cause they consider just, then no
obstacle will stand in their way.'"
That is precisely what Castro fears. The Free
World has a moral obligation to pay attention
to the victims in his gulag.
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