CUBA NEWS
March 18, 2004

The struggle to defend political prisoners in Cuba

Yolanda Huerga Cedeño. IHT, Wednesday, March 17, 2004.

HAVANA - Thursday is a very sad day for me and for many other Cuban families. It marks a year since my husband, Manuel Vázquez Portal, and 74 others - opposition activists, independent journalists and librarians - were taken from their homes by agents of Fidel Castro's regime. Manuel was charged with exercising one of the basic human rights - the right to express his own opinion. In Cuba this is a crime. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Manuel is being held in the province of Santiago de Cuba, at the other end of the island, 800 kilometers, or 500 miles, from our home in Havana, where I live with our 10-year-old son, Gabriel.

My husband is considered a maximum security prisoner, kept in solitary confinement, though one does not know whether this is worse than being with others, because some of these political prisoners were put together with dangerous criminals.

His fellow prisoners from another prison protested the lack of medical attention and the detention conditions by going on hunger strike. Manuel joined them in solidarity. When Manuel stopped his protest, he told me he could have held out longer, but I do not know if this is true: His weight had dropped to a little more than 45 kilograms, or 100 pounds.

A month ago I received a smuggled message from him that started:

"I received a visit that was somewhere between merry and threatening. For its utter lack of subtlety, I suppose I would describe it as more threatening than anything else. For now, of course, it is impossible for me to share the details with you. I'll just take this opportunity to repeat what I told you at the very start: I take full responsibility for anything that you might say or do. If anyone tries to use your words against you or fault you for anything, they will soon discover what I am truly capable of. This game of cultural trifles would become a bloody war without end."

I can hardly imagine what are the additional pressures and threats used against Manuel. He and the 74 other victims of the crackdown last March are already suffering sufficiently from the fact of being imprisoned without any justification. The conditions in the prisons are unbearable, the hygiene is nonexistent, the food is inedible, rats and mosquitoes infest most of the cells. People outside do not know about it because for many years now no group - not even the International Red Cross - has been allowed to visit those dungeons. And now he tells me about new threats. I thought it could not get any worse.

In order for our men not to die from hunger or infections, we take them food, medicine and personal hygiene products. With visits permitted only four times in a year, it needs to be nonperishable food. This is not easy either, because some of us are not allowed to take in more than 13 kilograms, or 30 pounds, of food, and no canned items are accepted. It makes feeding of our dear ones also extremely costly: I spend $150 for the things I carry him every three months, and he was the one who provided income in our family.

We wives of Cuba's political prisoners are trying to stand up in defense of our men. We cannot do much. We march every Sunday in Havana outside the church of Santa Rita - the patron of lost causes - on Fifth Avenue in our white dresses to prevent the fate of our men from being forgotten. Government security agents also come every Sunday, to watch us, photograph us and intimidate us. Some of us are called in for interrogations or "talks." One of the wives was picked up by the police for several hours and asked repeatedly whether she really loved her little son.

Manuel tells me to be brave and not to stop speaking up in his defense. I try to, but will anyone listen?

In Cuba everybody is simply busy finding enough to feed their families - with salaries at $10 a month this is not an easy task.

Meanwhile, in the United States, people interested in Cuba are busy discussing the maintaining or lifting of the trade embargo on their exports to our island and the travel bans for their citizens wanting to come on vacation to our island.

I will continue to defend my husband because I cannot do otherwise. He wrote to me: "Your crime is to love me, my crime is not to have given you, when I should have, a homeland where it is not a crime to defend love."

Yolanda Huerga Cedeño is the wife of Manuel Vázquez Portal, a political prisoner sentenced to 18 years in prison who was awarded the 2003 Press Freedom Award by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.


 

 


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