Cuban political prisoners dying for health care

There many fanciful myths about health care in Cuba.

And many more sad realities.

One of those realities I touch on too often on this blog is that whatever there is good about Cuban health care, it is not allowed for the dictatorship's political prisoners.

Fidel Castro's gulag is a sick place, and not just because of its immorality.

Many political prisoners, no matter their age nor how long they have been imprisoned, share a common problem: Their bodies are infested with disease — heart problems, diabetes, glaucoma, respiratory disease, gastrointestinal disorders, liver ailments and more. Just click on the names on the left, under "Political Prisoner of the Week," and "March 18 Project" for examples.

You name it, a political prisoner has it.

And Cuban medicine — in large part because that's how the dictatorship wants it — does nothing to help them, except maybe just enough to spare the regime the embarassment of them dying in prison.

Just consider a story just published this week, about imprisoned independent journalist José Gabriel (Pepín) Ramón Castillo:

He was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver in November 2005, and since then his family has requested he be granted conditional release (licencia extrapenal) by the appropriate prison authorities in order to attend to his health. Ramón Castillo was unjustly sentenced to prison in the crackdown on 75 opposition activists in the spring of 2003.

The regime met this request with silence until February 2007, when State Security agents told his wife, Blanca Rosa Echavarría Reoyo that they would have to perform a new laparoscopic biopsy of his liver in order to grant him conditional release. Ramón Castillo refused to undergo the procedure because he also suffers from other serious diseases, including diabetes.

“I was transferred out of Ambrosio Grillo hospital in Boniato prison on February 23rd. I do not feel well. I am not receiving treatment. I should not be here,” Ramón Castillo told a relative over a prison phone call. “That month, there was a meeting about whether I would under go another laparoscopy. I explained that test had already been performed on me and that it would be very dangerous to perform it again since I suffer from diabetes and hypertension.” He added that prison authorities have not provided him with adequate medical attention.

Cuban health care, with all its myths and the realities, is not about bettering the lives of the Cuban people, or the peoples of the nations to where the dictatorship has exported its doctors. It is about the dictatorship using old propaganda tricks related to its health care system, to score new public relations and diplomatic victories and to tighten its rule.

Health care is just another way the dictatorship projects sits power.

The patients be damned.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the gulag.

For more on the realities of Cuba health care, go here.