An extraordinary event will take place at 8:30 p.m. in Little Havana: A candlelight vigil to show support for and solidarity with Cuba's political prisoners. I cannot be there in person, but my spirit, as it is every day with those locked in the gulag, will be in Miami tonight.
Two men who will be remembered tonight are Luis Campos Corrales and Nelson Vázquez Lima.
Luis Campos, a Cuban political prisoner in jail for almost 13 years, has been denied adequate medical care for a variety of ailments for two months, his mother reports, according to a story by journalist Luis Esteban Espinosa, posted at CubaNet.
Gregoria Corrales, Campos' mother told Juan Carlos González Leiva, a leading Cuban human rights activist, that her son suffers from hypertension and bleeding hemorrhoids, and that he has lost much of his sight. He walks the halls at the Agüica by holding onto the walls and dragging his feet. Recently, Corrales reported, a common criminal named Juan used a chair to beat her son.
Campos has been imprisoned since the attempted hijacking of the ferry Baraguá on July 26, 1994. Two weeks later, a court convicted Campos of piracy and "disrespect," and sentenced him to 25 years in prison.
Nelson Vázquez Lima has been imprisoned since 1991, when he was sentenced to 30 years for “attack, disrespect and rebellion in penitentiary establishments." As an inmate, Vázquez helped start a chapter of the Pedro Luis Boitel Political Prisoners Association at the Ariza prison.
Recently, officials at the Kilo 8 prison in Camagüey, where he is now jailed, refused to allow Vázquez to visit his dying mother, according to a story by journalist Guillermo Fariñas, posted at Payo Libre.
Former political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez (Antúnez), national coordinator for the Pedro Luis Boitel Political Prisoners Association, told Fariñas said prison officials are not following rules that allow for a prisoner to visit close relatives if they are dying.
“We make a call to national and international public opinion that they influence the conduct of the penitentiary authorities and take the prisoner Nelson Vázquez Lima to his mother before she passes away,” Antúnez said.
Antúnez added that Vázquez, like Campos, has been denied adequate medical care for chronic bleeding gastroduodenitis.
Tonight's vigil will be a version of similar demonstrations take place across Cuba, with family members and others standing up on behalf of prisoners of conscience. For example, on June 30 activists with the dissident Cuban Foundation for Human Rights in the town of Florida, in Camagüey, held an event to show support for political prisoners.
One of the participants, Rubén Marín Cárdenas, told journalist Tania Maceda Guerra, that they prayed for the health, life and quick freedom for political prisoners. They also sang the Cuban national anthem and discussed the human rights situation on the island.
I'm guessing there will be a lot of that, too, tonight in Miami.
(Cross-posted at Babalú.)
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