In the United States, there is a virtual blackout — albeit, I believe, more out of ignorance than intent — on news and information about Cuban political prisoners. Whether it's because they are busy chasing Paris, Britney or Lindsay, or, more likely, because they buy the Castro line that political prisoners are really "mercenaries," too many of my colleagues in the MSM give short, if any, shrift to stories from the Cuban gulag.
Shining light where it otherwise would remain dark, is former poltical prisoner Martha Beatriz Roque, who regularly provides dispatches updating the world on the condition of those still imprisoned.
Today, at Misceláneas de Cuba, you can read about:
— Normando Hernández González, who tells human rights activist Jorge Alberton Liriano Linares, the author of the piece, that he is fighting for his life, because of the various digestive and other illnesses that have ravaged his body. Hernández, a prisoner at the Kilo 7 prison in central Cuba, is an independent journalist who was arrested during the "black spring" of 2003 and sentenced to 25 years in prison.— Alejandro González Raga, who reports that he is being denied treatment for heart, lung and other medical problems. González, an independent journalist, was arrested during the "black spring" of 2003, and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Like Hernández, González currently is in the Kilo 7 prison.
"I am becoming a victim of a very well-planned assassination," González told Liriano Linares, the author of the piece. "Slowly, the government is trying to kill me."
Roque also has sent Misceláneas de Cuba dispatches written by imprisoned journalists Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta and Pedro Argüelles Morán. That's right, despite their own tortures and other sufferings, they are remaining true to their journalistic craft, and to their cause, to report on what they have witnessed in prison.
Herrera reports on the abuses being suffered by political prisoner Eduardo Gamboa Suárez. Argüelles reports on Jorge Luis Echemendía Solano and Edrín Alfonso Ruiz, two American residents imprisoned at Canaleta provincial prison in Ciego de Avila — Echemendía for smuggling Cubans off the island, and Ruiz for illegal entry to the island.
These imprisoned journalists are not mercenaries, but witnesses to what Fidel Castro has done to Cuba. Even from behind bars, they have remained committed to the truth.
If only more journalists in the United States had a similar passion when it comes to Cuba, maybe then more would understand what is at stake in Cuba, today and in the future.
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