The (South Florida) Sun-Sentinel's man in Havana, Ray Sanchez, this morning has an interview with Cuban journalist Oscar Mario González, who was released from prison on Monday after 16 months of being held without charges ever being filed against him.
The man is an inspiration, a true profile in courage.
Here's an excerpt of the story:
Havana · Independent journalist Oscar Mario González said he was quietly whisked away from one of Havana's most notorious prisons Monday for a meeting with state security agents."We hope we never have to detain you again," González, quoted one of the officers as saying. "You're an old man. You're sick. We advise you to stay home, stay calm and stop writing."
González, 62, said the agents were cordial and respectful before releasing him from 16 months of detention without formal charges or even a trial. He said he tried to be cordial and respectful but direct in his reply.
"I don´t plan to stop writing," he said. "I'm a journalist. I'm committed to my work."
Meanwhile, there's word about yet another independent journalist, Julio Aleaga Pesant, being arrested and detained.
Read the whole story about Gonzalez below the fold.
Writer tells of dire days in jail
Cuban journalist was detained for 16 months after rally
By Ray Sánchez
Havana Bureau
November 23, 2006
Havana · Independent journalist Oscar Mario González said he was quietly whisked away from one of Havana's most notorious prisons Monday for a meeting with state security agents.
"We hope we never have to detain you again," González, quoted one of the officers as saying. "You're an old man. You're sick. We advise you to stay home, stay calm and stop writing."
González, 62, said the agents were cordial and respectful before releasing him from 16 months of detention without formal charges or even a trial. He said he tried to be cordial and respectful but direct in his reply.
"I don´t plan to stop writing," he said. "I'm a journalist. I'm committed to my work."
With that, González was driven to his house in the Playa neighborhood on the eastern outskirts of Havana. In the quiet community of mostly single-family homes, he waited outside a locked gate for Mirta Wong, a biologist and his wife of 22 years, to come home from work. Some neighbors who saw him waiting stopped to greet him, others walked by without saying a word.
On Monday, González was released along with a 40-year-old dissident, Santiago Valdeolloa. They were among more than two dozen others arrested on July 22, 2005, before and during an anti-government protest outside the French Embassy in Havana. Three other dissidents connected to the protest were released in October.
A mechanical engineer trained in the former Soviet Union, González was working as a journalist with the independent, Web-based news agency, Grupo de Trabajo Decoro, whose founder, Manuel Vásquez Portal, was sentenced to 18 years in prison during a crackdown on journalists in 2003.
In this communist-ruled country where all media are state run, González started writing about politics, history and Cuban society for the news agency in 2001. The Cuban government has long shielded its citizens from outside sources of news and other information. Independent journalists such as González have increasingly demanded the right to communicate openly about their society.
González said he spent his first month shuttling among several filthy, vermin-infested police lockups in Havana. He was treated for hypertension during a two-week hospital stay in mid-October.
"The latrines overflowed with feces that floated around in the putrefied water within the cells," González said. "You are filled with a sense of total abandonment," he said. "You are nobody."
González said he lost 20 pounds while in jail and occasionally received medication for high blood pressure. He suffered memory loss after a nearly three-month stay at the notorious 100 y Aldabo prison in Havana, where he was kept round-the-clock in a tiny windowless cell with up to six other inmates. The light was never shut off.
"From 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., they gave you an inch-thick mat to sleep on the floor," he said. "Ants and roaches crawled over you at night. We ate what the poorest Cubans eat every night: shredded soy, rice and a little broth."
His final 10 months of incarceration were spent at Havana's barracks-style Prison 1580, where, he said, living conditions improved considerably. He was allowed visitors every 21 days, including three-hour conjugal visits.
"I had no bed for two months and slept on the floor," he said. "I was housed with common criminals -- murderers, swindlers and rapists."
González said he planned to start writing again after regaining his health. "I will be a journalist until the day I die," he said. "It is the most noble profession."
He appeared frail, his speech punctuated with a chronic cough. The euphoria of his release on Monday has given way to sadness, he said, "for those to remain behind bars."
"It is lamentable that decent and honorable men who express their ideas as independent journalists must go to prison," he said. "They are, for the most part, forgotten. That is the lesson of my incarceration."
Copyright © 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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