Prisoner calls for Castro to open his jails

Alfredo Domínguez Batista

Cuba is a nation of contradictions.

The dictatorship likes to paint a rosy picture for the world, what with the "free" education and "free" health care, and its success in standing up to the big, bad Americans.

But the reality, especially for Cubans who have to live under that dictatorship, the reality is something worse.

That's especially true for the political prisoners in Castro's gulag.

Which is why one political prisoner, Alfredo Domínguez Batista, is calling on the regime to open its prisons to international observers, like the International Red Cross, which it has long rejected.

In prison, according Domínguez, prisoners are constantly mistreated, the food is lousy and the vaunted health care is not so much.

"When a prisoner demands these rights, the guards refute them and prosecute them for being undisciplined. Meanwhile, we see compatriots serving long and unjust sentences, solely for defending the rights of the whole nation," Domínguez said, according to a story by journalist José Ramón Pupo Nieves posted at Payo Libre.

Domínguez, 45, a member of the Christian Liberation Movement, was arrested during the "black spring" of March-April 2003, and sentenced to 14 years in prison. He is serving his time at the provincial prison in Holguín.