Antúnez: The gulag is the "crudest of pains"

Antúnez longs for "change" in Cuba. (Reuters photo)

If you read nothing else about Cuba this week, make sure you don't miss this interview in a Chilean newspaper with former Cuban political prisoner Jorge Luis García Perez, also known as Antúnez.

Cuban Democratic Directorate has translated it into English.

The three questions and answers that show why this man deserves your respect:

José Martí stated that the pain of the political prisoner is the most cruel and devastating because it leaves scars that can never be erased. Do you agree with him?

"The pain of the political prison system is the crudest of pains. It is a pain that kills intelligence, dries the soul, humiliates and never goes away. It is so certain that today I look at the pain of my brothers that are still in prison. I also see my body with scars from the tortures and beatings. But when one fights for a just cause, for a noble ideal, it is a driving force to continue in the fight."

How does one live with those scars?

"I think of my nieces and nephews, of my children if I have them one day. i think of the future generations of Cubans that will feel proud of the many people that have made such a painful sacrifice.”

In "Boitel Vive" the book that you wrote in prison, you tell about the solitary confinement cells in which you were held on many occasions and for prolonged periods of time, naked, without food, and surrounded by rats. What does a human being think scout in those circumstances?

"One asks himself can it be possible that the leaders of my country can submit a person to such treatment? Are they so ignorant to think that these tortures, this nudity can break down a person? But, quite the contrary. The more repression intensifies, the more they resort to cruelty, all the more reason to continue in the struggle.”

Read the whole thing here.