Guards at the maximum security Boniato prison in Cuba recently removed the light bulb from political prisoner Randy Cabrera Mayor's cell. They told him he could get it back when he developed a "communist attitude."
Despite the effect it has had on Cabrera's eyesight, he has remained defiant.
"The strength of my heart and mind near leave me and I continue struggling, but it bothers me to hear (Cuban singers and dictatorship supporters) Silvio Rodríguez and Amaury Pérez tell prisoners' families that this is a comfortable and healthy life," Cabrera recently wrote in a letter to fellow political prisoner Alfredo Domínguez Batista and his wife Melva Santana Ariz.
The blackout is the latest "torture" guards have used to try to break Cabrera, who has been imprisoned since 1999 for trying to illegally leave the country. Cabrera also wrote in his letter that for about 18 months now, he has been forced to sleep on a concrete slab because guards have refused him a mattress. They also have limited his access to the telephone and intercepted much of his mail, Cabrera wrote.
For more about Cabrera, read his Political Prisoner of the Week profile.
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