Normando HernándezThe health of political prisoners is of no concern to the Cuban dictatorship. The jailers and prison doctors do just enough to keep them alive, in order to spare the regime the embarassment, and possible international scrutiny, that might come if a prisoner of conscience were to die in jail. They'll do whatever it takes to prevent that, including releasing a prisoner. It happened this year with Hector Palacios, and it has occurred before.
Apparently, the regime believes there is no chance that imprisoned journalist Normando Hernández González, who earlier this month was moved to a hospital, will die soon. Journalist Tania Maceda Guerra is reporting that Hernández on Wednesday was returned to his cell at the Kilo 7 prison in Camagüey.
In another ringing endorsement for Cuban health care, Hernández, who suffers from a variety of gastrointestinal and other ailments, reported via telephone that doctors at the Amalia Simoni provincial hospital in Camagüey told him "that in the hospital the conditions do not exist that his delicate health requires," according to Maceda's story, which is posted at Payo Libre.
Hernández told officials with the non-governmental Cuban Foundation for Human Rights that his hospital room was nothing more than a prison cell, and that his guards denied him the food required to restore his health.
The cruelty of the Cuban gulag never ceases.
But it will never be a match for the courage displayed every day by Normando Hernández González and other political prisoners.
Hernández, 37, director of the School of Independent Journalists of Camagüey, was arrested during the "black spring" crackdown of March-April 2003, and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
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