Uncommon Sense

No checkout time in Cuban gulag

Tonight nor tomorrow night nor any night soon, Fabio Prieto Llorente will not get to stay at the Hotel Nacional or any of the Melia's resorts on the Cuban beachfront. No featherbeds or hot showers for him.

Instead, Prieto, as he has for most nights during the past five years, will try to catch a few hours of sleep in a dark, dank, insect-infested cell in the Guayabo prison on the Isle of Youth. The only mattress, a 1-inch thick cushion set on a concrete slab, the only warmth coming when he folds the cushion onto himself. He must sleep on his stomach or on his right side, otherwise, the pain in his back is unbearable, according to a report posted today at Payo Libre.

Prieto, an independent journalist, has paid a heavy physical and psychological price for his opposition to the Cuban dictatorship. He suffers from emphysema, hypertension and other ailments; and many times during his imprisonment, his guards have held him in isolation, denying him not only contact with other prisoners but any exposure to fresh air or sunlight.

I have no quarrel with Cubans with the cash to take advantage of new rules allowing them to vacation in previsouly tourist-only hotels. What they spend will enrich the dictatorship, but it's their beach and their country. Just don't confuse their new privilege with real freedom.

But as for the foreigners who treat Cuba as their playground and Cubans as their servants, may their night's sleep at the Nacional or other hotel be interrupted frequently by thoughts of Prieto and others that their vacations help enslave.

On second thought ...

What the dictator giveth — the chance to buy cell phones, DVRs, computers, microwave ovens, etc. — he can surely taketh, which is another reason to be skeptical, if not outright cyncial about recent annoucements of impending arrivals on Cuban store shelves.

But presuming that at least some Cubans can somehow scrounge up the cash for these big-ticket purchases, is it possible the dictator is putting himself closer to his eventual demise, by giving the people a chance to acquire powerful weapons of information in the war against tyranny?

Just imagine what a resourceful Cuban equipped with nothing but a cell phone camera and a You Tube account or MySpace page could do to undermine the regime?

A blogger with intimate knowledge of the situation on the island put it this way:

In the meantime, the Dry Foot Wet Foot is still in place, Radio Marti is jammed, TV Marti is not seen anywhere in the island, other than in places which only exist in the fantasies of some, and nothing is being done to provide internet access to the Cuban people, which is a formidable weapon in the struggle for democracy and which is technically possible. At the same time, there are some who decry that Cubans can now buy PCs and cell phones, instead of trying to use those opportunities to breach, destroy and tear down the barriers erected around the Cuban people to prevent them from gaining access to free flowing information.

Instead of just dismissing the potential wiring of Cuba as a propaganda ploy, maybe it's better to view it as a powerful opportunity.

Just a second thought.

Notes from the gulag, 3/30/08

It's hard to excited about microwaves, DVD players and cell phones for Cubans, knowing that the same dictator that is promising these goodies is the chief warden of one of the world's most horrific gulags.

Here are a few examples of men suffering at the hands of the beast, Raúl Castro, at the provincial prison in Guántanamo, where guards are doing whatever it takes to enforce a prison dress code:

— Political prisoners Carel Albares Rodríguez, 24, and Roberto Tapia Ferrer, 29, were stripped naked and thrown into a punishment cell, because they refused to wear prison uniforms. They have been held there since March 17.

— Political prisoner Aurelio Antonio Morales Ayala has been the target of threats from guards. They threatened to strip and beat Morales, 38, after a disciplinary committee found him in violation of several prison procedures, including refusing to wear the inmate uniform and not standing at attention when guards count prisoners. Morales, who is serving a 5-year sentence for participating in human rights protests, was also accused of being the ringleader of prison troublemakers.

— Guards have denied medical care for political prisoner Ernesto Lucas Corral Cabrera, who is suffering from a cyst on his back and who needs physical therapy for an injured ankle. "But for his dissident ideas and his refusal to wear a prison uniform, they have denied him all types of medical assistance until he changes his ways of thinking and acting," wrote independent journalist Jorge Corrales Ceballos, in a report posted at Miscelaneas de Cuba. Corral is serving a 4-year sentence handed down after he was found to be a "social danger."

— Guards blocked a Roman Catholic priest from visiting political prisoner Osmani Fuentes García, telling the priest that Fuentes' opposition to the Castro dictatorship was proof that he did not have religious faith.

Elsewhere in the gulag, political prisonerOsmany Espada Rodríguez is in poor health, waiting since January to be seen by medical specialists. A member of the Eastern Democratic Alliance, Espada is serving a 5-year sentence at the Cuba Sí prison for being a "social danger."

Víctor Yunier Fernández Martínez, Political Prisoner of the Week, 3/30/08 (UPDATED)

UPDATED, March 1, 2009 Víctor Yunier Fernández Martínez was released from prison in February 2009, after completing his sentence.

Víctor Yunier Fernández Martínez is a young man, only 23 or 24.

But already the Cuban dictatorship has declared him to be a "dangerous," deserving of prison time, although it couldn't come up with a more specific charge. The only evidence it could muster against Fernández was its obvious discomfort with his opposition to tyranny.

That was enough in February 2006, however, to convict Fernández, a member of the Popular Republican Party, of being a "pre-criminal social danger" and to sentence him to 3 years in the gulag.

Fernández already had long established his bona fides as a troublemaker, at least in the eyes of the dictatorship. For example, in May 2004, when Fernández was only 20, he and other leaders of the Frank Pais November 30 Democratic Party were rounded up by the Cuba secret police. He was held and interrorgated for six hours at a Havana police station, then released — but not before being warned that he risked a prison sentence of up to 4 years in prison if he continued with his activism.

While his prison time isn't up until next February, Fernández's mother earlier this month expressed hope that he would soon be released because he has completed more than half of his sentence. Minerva Martínez Tamayo said the prospects for an imminent release had left her son in good spirits.

Fidel Castro used to ramble on about the Cuban "new man" who would stand with him at the vanguard of the revolution or other such nonsense. However, the new man, the "new men" with the potential to make history in Cuba, to serve at the vanguard of freedom on the island, are young Cubans like Fernández who recognize that the dictatorship offers them nothing but misery and who dare to stand in opposition.

Dangerous men, indeed.

One of the surest indicators of the repressive nature of the Castro regime is the jailing of several hundred political prisoners. To illustrate that reality, Uncommon Sense each week profiles one prisoner. There also is a Political Prisoner archive on the right sidebar. To suggest a prisoner for a profile, send me an e-mail.

For profiles of imprisoned Cuban journalists and related information, read the March 18 Project.

Courtesy of the U.S. of A.

In one small corner of Cuba, at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanmo Bay, George W. Bush and Raúl Castro are partners in tyranny.

Andreivi Castillo Pérez could tell you all about it, except that he was just sentenced to 3 years in a Cuban prison, in large part because of the complicity of American officials who turned him over to Cuban police after he crossed on to the grounds of the base. Whatever happens to him in prison — independent journalist Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez reports that a prison official has threatened Castillo because he refuses to wear a prison uniform — will be the responsibility of Raúl Castro,

And of George W. Bush.

Bush has drawn attention to the plight of Cuban political prisoners on numerous occasions, and even awarded the nation's highest civilian honor to Oscar Elias Biscet. Welcomed attention for sure, but at the end of the day, only words.

As for actions, well, almost two years after Fidel Castro fell ill, the coronation of a new dictator is complete and the prospects for real change, for real liberty, are dim, at best. The better-termed "inaction" of the Bush administration has helped ensure that.

However, there is one pro-active policy that Bush has not flinched from enforcing: the deplorable wet-foot, dry-foot policy, which for more than a decade has made the United States partners in crime — or better termed, "partners in tyranny" — with the Castro dictatorship. Under that policy, which Bush has enforced longer than its creator, Bill Clinton, we ship fleeing Cubans back to the island only because they hadn't made it to dry American land.

Castillo, who was convicted by a Cuban court of being a "social danger," a charge reserved for Cubans who reject tyranny, didn't even have to get his feet wet to feel the sting of the American rebuke.

This is not one of my regular Political Prisoner of the Week profiles, but the circumstances of Castillo's case and the urgency of making sure readers learn of it as soon as possible, require that I A) add him to the roster of names on the right sidebar; and B) publish this immediately. A regular Political Prisoner of the Week profile will be published Sunday.

Can you hear me now? (UPDATED)

It's not about the cell phones. After all, which "ordinary Cubans" will be able to afford them?

It's not about the microwave ovens or the computers. Ditto.

It's not about the ability to pick up your medicines wherever you want. I can't believe this one was even a story.

It's about freedom. And until Raul Castro starts dispensing liberty — or better put, until he gets out of the way and lets Cubans use their God-given right to make their own economic decisions and pick their own leaders — all this talk of "reform" is claptrap designed to distract from the reality of Cuba one month after Castro was coronated dictator: Little has changed, and the prospects for real reform, real freedom, are nil as long as he and his cohorts are in charge.

These reforms, for Cubans who somehow scrounge up the cash to pay for them, may provide for a few creature comforts; and I do not begrude the Cubans for whom it means a better life.

But freedom is still outlawed and tyranny still reigns.

Nothing has changed.

UPDATED, 8:25 p.m. EDT

Granma reports that specific rules about how Cubans can acquire cell phones will be released soon. But there already is one telling detail: Cubans will have to pay with higher-value convertible pesos, and not the almost worthless pesos most Cubans earn. The apartheid of Cuban society goes on and on ...

(H/T Penultimos Diás.)

Propaganda pimp

The hacks in the Cuban dictatorship, I suppose, all have their roles to play in the theater of absurd that is Castroland.

Tubal Paez's is as a "journalist," as president of the communist journalists union. But Google his name and you quickly find he is no journalist. At best, he is a transcriptionist for tyranny, telling whatever lies the dictatorship needs him to tell in order to bolster its standing, and his own.

He is not a journalist, speaking truth to power, as real journalists in Cuba and elsewhere teach themselves to do. He is a propagandist, defending those in power because he and they are one in the same.

Understand Paez's true role, and it becomes easier to digest the comemierda he is spreading this week at some confab of commies called the "Latin American Meeting Against Media Terror," being held in Caracas (what a surprise!)

According to the Cuban news propaganda agency Prensa Latina, Paez claimed that there is "absolute respect for personal safety in the exercise of journalism in Cuba."

How would he know, because what he does has nothing to do with real journalism in Cuba, the practice of which is treated by the dictatorship as nothing short of traitorous.

The real journalists in Cuba, and not the typists Paez represents at the Union of Journalists, put their lives at risk every day telling the real stories of the real Cuba. They know that their reporting and their writing could at any moment land them in jail, where so many of their colleagues now reside, for speaking truth to the power that the propaganda pimp Paez so pitifully represents.

Antúnez takes a stand for Cuba (UPDATED)

Caridad García Pérez's home

Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez" is one of the giants of the Cuban opposition.

For more than 17 years, Antúnez was a political prisoner, withstanding the worst the dictatorship could throw at him. His guards tried over and over to break Antúnez, beating him and throwing him in punishment cells. But all they did was strengthen his resolve and his intransigience in the face of tyranny. More than once, he would go on hunger strike to demand that his human rights, and those of other prisoners, be respected.

Since his release last year, Antúnez has continued with the struggle for a free Cuba, despite the toll that prison took on his health. He has participated in numerous protests and other events, and the dictatorship has responded in kind on several occasions by arresting, threatening and then eventually releasing him.

Antúnez also loves his family, which is why on March 11 he started a hunger strike to demand that authorities allow his sister to move from her hovel of a home and into better quarters.

There has been no response from the government, which owns all the housing and controls where people can live, so Antúnez continues with his protest.

Antúnez told Encuentro En la Red that he started the hunger strike after he and his sister, Caridad García Pérez, exhausted all bureaucratic options to find better housing for her and her 11-year-old daughter. The protest also is on behalf of "the thousands and thousands of Cuban families living in difficult conditions for several generations."

Antúnez said his sister's house has tilted walls and dirty floors, and a roof that leaks.

"The key feature of the house is that it may collapse at any time and kill my sister and her young daughter, age 11. Both are sick, my sister has heart ailments, the girl is asthmatic. My sister does not sleep, afraid that the house will fall over.

"The case of my sister is representative of thousands and thousands of Cubans facing a situation similar or worse," Antúnez said.

Antúnez, who is taking in liquids during his protest, said he is not "an addict to hunger strikes. But when the formal channels are exhausted, when you see that there is not an understanding, you have to take a radical position."

To resolve the situation, a group of prominent Cuban dissidents has signed a letter promising to raise from overseas the money needed to repair Caridad García Pérez's home.

(Cross-posted at Babalú.)

UPDATED, March 28, 2008 Via Cuban Democratic Directorate, Antúnez offers a tour of his sister's house and other structures in a Cuban slum:

An act of resistance

Yoani Sanchez

Looking for an easy way to stick it to the Cuban dictatorship?

Visit Generación Y, the most popular Cuba-based blog.

Apparently, the dictatorship is so afraid of Yoani Sanchez and her writings, it using filtering software to restrict the ability of computer users on the island to visit her site.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Cuba appears to have limited access from within the island to the nation's most-read Web site, Generacion Y, a highly critical blog written from Havana.

The author of the Web site, Yoani Sanchez, complained in a post Monday that for the last few days, users on the island get an error message when attempting to access her writing. "Another site blocked for the 'monitored' Inter-nauts of the island," she wrote.

Internet users in Cuba confirmed that access to Ms. Sanchez's site, as well as a few others, had become excruciatingly slow, if not impossible, in recent days.

It wasn't immediately possible to verify whether the Cuban government had taken actions to restrict access to Ms. Sanchez's site.

Cuban authorities are believed to use filtering software and other techniques to reduce access to certain sites, effectively blocking them. Such a strategy allows the government to avoid the bad publicity of snuffing out Web sites.

Read more about Sanchez — a niece of imprisoned Cuban journalist Adolfo Fernández Saínz — here.

Also, Spain's ABC newspaper has an interview with Sanchez.

Mumblings of an old man fitted with an artificial anus (UPDATED)

I mean not to defend the detention of suspected terrorists at the U.S. Naval Bay at Guantanamo Bay — in some ways, it is indefensible. But few recent statements from the aritificial-anus-equipped Fidel Castro have been more ridiculous than his comparison of those detainees with the 56 Cuban journalists, librarians and other dissidents still in jail after Castro's "black spring" crackdown of March-April 2003.

"None of the mercenaries were tortured or deprived of attorney or trial," Castro wrote in his most recent commentary published in a Cuban newspaper. "They have the right to visits, access to (conjugal visits) and all the other legal prerogatives of all inmates."

Readers of this and other Web site that track the sufferings of the Group of 56 and other Cuban political prisoners can rightfully laugh at these remarks — if the suffering of the prisoners was not so tragic.

Maybe Castro is revealing some regret for unleashing the "black spring" by claiming that the dissidents are well-treated. But more likely, he is appealing to an audience as similiarly feeble-minded as he is, which believes there is no difference between what a democracy does to defend itself in a time of war and what a dictatorship does because it is a dictatorship.

As regrettable as some of the U.S. practices at Guantanamo Bay might be, they cannot compare with the tortures and abuses suffered by captives in the Cuban gulag. The courts have intervened to force the U.S. government to recognize some cursory rights for terrorist suspects in its custody. There is no such right of appeal in Cuba, except for that allowed by the dictatorship.

Also, and other inspectors have been allowed to visit Guantanamo Bay. No such scrutiny is allowed in the prisons on the other side of the fence.

Obviously, Castro's artificial anus was working overtime this past weekend.

UPDATED, March 25, 2008

Former political prisoners Martha Beatriz Roque, the only woman jailed during the "black spring," and Oscar Epinosa Chepe, expressed disbelief about what Castro wrote.

"He's lying," Roque told AFP. "My lawyer learned of my charges at the time of my trial." Later, "conditions in the prison were abysmal, awful."

"If the United States treats its prisoners like that, poor, poor them," Roque added.

Chepe, who also was arrested during the "black spring," told AFP that Castro was "not in tune with the situation in Cuba."

The "black spring" crackdown was "a farce and the accusation against us, a lie. At that moment, it was a judicial monstrosity to imprison peaceful people, but today it is much more so" to keep them there, Chepe said.