Cuban Americans may be about to flood the island with cash and visits, but political prisoners in the Castro gulag are not likely to enjoy any benefits of the largesse.
Instead, they will continue to suffer like this:
- Six members of the Group of 75 - Víctor Rolando Arroyo, Eduardo Díaz Fleitas, Horacio Piña Borrego, Diosdado González Marrero, Nelson Molinet Espino and Fidel Suárez Cruz — were not allowed to attend Holy Saturday services last week at the Piñar del Rio provincial prison because they refused to wear prison uniforms.
- In a telephone interview with independent journalist Tania Maceda political prisoner Maikel Bencomo describes conditions at the Melena del Sur prison, where he was held for a year before being transferred to a forced labor camp: "The defendants are hard at work in farming, in rags, without shoes and without many tools. They earn almost nothing, barely 40 or 50 pesos ($2) per month. ... The work begins at 7 a.m. and ends at 6 p.m.. Breakfast is a mix of water and chocolate, and lunch and dinner and have no fat. Recently, we were given new mattresses, which was a relief."
Sometimes, however, political prisoners in the gulag achieve small but significant victories against the Castro regime. For example, independent journalist Jorge Alberto Liriano Linares, who was beaten and thrown into a punishment cell because of his reports detailing human rights abuse, was allowed back into the general population.
Liriano, who spent two days in the punishment cell, attributed his release from the punishment cell to attention brought by "the national and international press."
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