Uncommon Sense

Miguel Díaz Bouza, Cuban Political Prisoner of the Week, 8/31/08

Miguel Díaz Bouza

It is the responsibility of every Cuban in exile, whether with words, prayers or something much more tangible, to work for the liberation of the island from the scourge of the Cuban dictatorship. Some of us blog, others, like Miguel Díaz Bouza, take up arms against the regime and act.

In October 1994, Díaz and six other exiles — including former Political Prisoner of the Week Humberto Eladio Real Suarez, infiltrated Cuba with a landing in Villa Clara province. During an ensuing firefight, a Cuban guard was killed. The exiles were soon captured and brought to trial. Díaz was convicted of "acts against the security of the state" and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

There is not much information available on the Web about Díaz's fate, except for a few reports on official Cuban Web sites describing "terrorist" attacks by Cuban exiles. But in April, Cuba-Miami Information Bridge reported that prison officials were giving Díaz the run around on whether his mother would be allowed to visit him.

One of the surest indicators of the repressive nature of the Castro regime is the jailing of 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 at [email protected]

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

Gorki is free!

In Cuba, being "free" means something much less than in the United States, but there is still plenty of reason to feel good about the news that Cuban punk rocker Gorki Aguila has been released from jail after he was fined 600 pesos for playing his anti-Castro rock and roll too loud, or other such nonsense.

He had gone to trial earlier today on an original charge of "pre-criminal social dangerousness," which can carry a prison term of 1 to 4 years, but the charge was reduced "disobedience," no doubt because of the international attention the case had drawn. For once, the world was noticing, and the Castro dictatorship, veterans of numerous propaganda/public relations battles, always knows how to cut its losses.

The coverage and attention are welcome, but some clarification is needed about what the dictatorship calls "pre-criminal social dangerousness." Reuters says the charge "pertains to people who authorities believe are likely to commit crimes, and can include such things as habitual drunkenness, drug addiction and anti-social behavior."

Maybe so, in part, but the most nefarious use of this bit of Orwellian doublespeak is to silence critics of the Castro regime. (Just click on some of the names on the right sidebar to learn their stories.) Hundreds, if not thousands of Cubans are imprisoned under this law, not because they are criminals, but because, like Gorki Aguila, they choose to live as if they are free.

In Cuba, that, indeed, is a very dangerous thing.

This is why Gorki is in trouble

Cuban punk rocker Gorki Aguila will reportedly stand trial today in Havana on charges that he is a "pre-criminal social danger."

Gorki, the lead singer for Porno Para Ricardo, is dangerous, indeed, but not for any reasons the dictatorship might have you believe. He is dangerous because like any punk rocker deserving of the description, he sings truth to power.

He did just that in the 2007 hit, "El Comandante," a denunciation of the decaying dictator Fidel Castro and his "delirious shit."

Listen and watch here:

El Mizzoubanazo has the lyrics, in both Spanish and English.

Free Gorki!

Rock and roll music, especially punk rock, is dangerous for the Castro dictatorship for how it rejects conformity and promotes the free spirit of man. Musically, I can do without most punk rock, whether from the Sex Pistols or Porno Para Ricardo, the Cuban punk group. But even a cursory listener must acknowledge how dangerous it is for the established order, especially an order as illegitimate as that in Havana.

So it is no surprise that the Cuban secret police have arrested Gorki Aguila, the lead singer of Porno Para Ricardo. Musically, I can do without much of his music, but he is deserving of praise and solidarity for how he sings brutal truth to power.

Aguila has been charged with "pre-criminal social dangerousness," the dictatorship's Orwellian — or maybe it's Dickensian — weapon for choice of silencing its critics. He has committed no crime, but as the dictatorship sees it, the danger is there — dangerous to the dictatorship — and it must be preempted by a jail term of between 1 and 4 years. (The list of names on the right side of this blog includes numerous examples of other Cubans who have been similarly silenced.)

A court hearing for his case is set for Thursday, and his trial convenes Friday.

Gorki's predicament, regardless of what you think about his music, is vital for how it reveals the truly repressive, truly evil nature of the Castro regime. It cannot stand its critics, even those armed only with a microphone or electric guitar, and it cannot stand those Cubans who like Gorki, stand up for themselves, and for their freedom.

For more on Gorki, read Porno Para Ricardo's Web site Babalú, Review of Cuban American Bloggers and especially Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, who writes:

They took him because nothing destabilizes the intransigents more than a man in his most free state. At the Fifth Police Station, 3rd and 62nd in Playa, where the criminals take turns and a toilet is a painful illusion, Gorki rips the strings of his rebelliousness. He is a weird guy, everyone notices it, even more weird in a society where the model of the “New Man” is the coloring book version of the idiot in the classroom.

Gorki concentrates the attraction that his critics do not have; he sings, sways, and shouts in his bloody rock lyrics what others mutter with fear. He has a room lined with egg cartons somebody gave him, because if we added up all the eggs he’s entitled to from the rationed market he would not have been able to wallpaper even a closet. He is accused of a crime from the script of the film “Minority Report,” charged under the euphemism of “pre-delinquent dangerousness.” Translated into the language of reality, it means they put you behind bars so you don’t commit the mischief that others see coming.

In the case of Gorki, the charge has been led by a delegate of the constituency with delusions of James Bond, a neighbor woman they “advised” to make the accusation, and by a community that avoids interceding for the “uncomfortable.” On Thursday he will have his preliminary hearing and only some clothes and toiletries brought by his father have managed to make it to him where they have him “guarded.” There is little chance of the defense lawyer convincing the strict prosecutor that Gorki’s long hair, his rock songs, and the noise of his guitar, are not more dangerous than the inertia, conformity and double standard in which everything is wrapped.

Cuban student leader arrested (Updated)

Néstor Rodríguez has been released. See the update below.

It has been a long, hot summer for Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina, president of the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy. In July, he went on a hunger strike after the authorities blocked him from traveling from Baracoa in far eastern Cuba to Havana. Additionally, the dictatorship unleashed goons from its "rapid response brigades" to harass and threaten Rodríguez and other activists. Officials finally relented and said Rodríguez could travel, for whatever that was worth.

Apparently, it wasn't worth much. Reports — here (in Spanish) and here (in English) — are that Rodríguez was arrested Aug. 20 after one of the thugs who harassed him last month accused Rodríguez of "threatening" him, as if government opponents in Cuba have any such ability.

The day after Rodríguez's arrest, his brother, Rolando Rodríguez Lobaina, said the real reason Nestor was arrested is that he had carried out a protest in front of his apartment building in Baracoa.

"He yelled anti-government slogans like 'Down with Fidel and Raúl,'" Rolando said, according to a report from human rights activist Juan Carlos González Leiva.

As of late last week, there was no word on Nestor Rodríguez's whereabouts.

Meanwhile, about 20 members of the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy on Aug. 22 marched in Guantanamo to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which crushed the "Prague Spring" softening of communist rule.

In the town of Banes, police arrested three activists who had participated in a similar demonstration. One of the protesters, Ángel Luis Santiesteban Rodés, remained in custody as of last week, according to Cuban Democratic Directorate.

(Cross-posted at Babalú.)

UPDATED, Aug. 25, 2008

Néstor Rodríguez was released on Aug. 23, but not before police fined him 1,000 pesos.

For what, as is common under the communist "justice" system, was not clear. Independent journalist Tania Maceda Guerra reports that despite the fine, Rodríguez was released with no charges being filed. Of course, in Cuba that is only a technicality, as the dictatorship always reserves for itself the whens, wheres and whys of how it metes out "justice."

What is known is that Rodríguez, who has been imprisoned on three separate occasions for a total of 10 years, is not in the clear.

Diagzán Saavedra Prat, Cuban Political Prisoner of the Week, 8/24/08 (UPDATED)

Updated, Jan. 20, 2009 Diagzán Saavedra Prat was released from prison after completing his 1-year prison sentence.

The political prisoner profiles and other reports posted here about the Cuban gulag would not be possible without the assistance of the political prisoners themselves.

It's not that I have a direct conduit to them — they don't know me from Adam or José. But they make what I do on this blog possible by every day stepping out from within themselves and their own suffering to report, whether via telephone, a smuggled letter or the word-of-mouth of a visitor, what they are witnessing. I rely on Web sites like Miscelaneas de Cuba and Payo Libre for much of my information, but that information would never be available if not for the courage of their "prison correspondents" reporting from the depths of Castro hell itself.

One of those correspondents is Diagzán Saavedra Prat, who recently reported on the poor conditions at the Cuba Sí prison in Holguín.

Via human rights activist Martha Díaz Rondón,Saavedra reported that he has been forced to sleep on the floor since his imprisonment in January after being found guilty of being a "pre-criminal social danger. Saavedra reported that as a result he is suffering from tonsillitis and asthma — followed by being denied access to adequate medical care. (Saavedra in June started a hunger strike to protest his sleeping arrangements and lack of medication for his ailments.)

The desperation felt by Cuban prisoners is exhibited by the case Yulián Rodríguez Fernández, who is ill with HIV/AIDS. After a prison guard told Rodríguez he could not stay in the prison infirmary and had to go back to his cell, despite the severity of his illness, Saavedra reported that Rodríguez stabbed himself 22 times in the right leg and abdomen, injuring his liver and a kidney.

I don't know what Saavedra, an activist for the Eastern Democratic Alliance, did for a living before he was sentenced to 1 year in prison. But with these reports, he exhibited a journalist's eye for detail. But it's likely he is not a journalist.

He's probably just another Cuban storyteller, like other prison correspondents, with too many stories to share about the hell he has witnessed. I am grateful to Saavedra and the others because without these storytellers, this blog would not exist.

One of the surest indicators of the repressive nature of the Castro regime is the jailing of 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 at [email protected]

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

Antúnez, wife arrested (updated)

Former political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez “Antúnez”; his wife, Iris, who has had her own troubles with the Castro dictatorship; and a third dissident, Ana Margarita Perdigón, were arrested early this morning in Havana.

Their whereabouts were unknown, according to a report from former political prisoner Martha Beatriz Roque, posted at Plantados.org.

Updated, Aug. 24, 2008

Antúnez, his wife Iris and Ana Margarita Perdigón were kicked out of Havana, and sent back to to Placetas, in Villa Clara and Sancti Spiritus provinces, respectively, according to independent journalist Tania Maceda Guerra.

Notes from the Cuban gulag, 8/22/08

"We're just following orders from Havana."

Or with some similar pass-the-buck excuse, the warden at the Nieves Morejón provincial prison in Trinidad, Sancti Spíritus, explained to Nélida Lima Conde why her husband, political prisoner Jorge Ramírez Calderón, was being permanently held in a tiny punishment cell. And why for five days recently he didn't have any access to sunlight. And when he did get to go outside, his hands were shackled.

"We're just following orders from Havana."

Fortunately, that will be no excuse when justice finally comes to Cuba.

Ramírez, a member of the Frank País Democratic Movement, was arrested last month and sentenced to 2 years in prison for the supposed crime of "disrespecting authority."

Elsewhere in the gulag:

— Blas Giraldo Reyes Rodríguez, who was imprisoned during the "black spring" of 2003, was transferred Aug. 20 to a hospital in Sancti Spíritus, suffering from symptoms related possibly to onset diabetes. In the previous 10 days, he had lost about 15 pounds, according to a Payo Libre report. Reyes, 53, also suffers from hypertension, arthritis, chronic gastritis, a hardened prostate and hemorrhoids.

— Political prisoner Roberley Villalobos Torres has started a hunger strike, to protest being denied adequate medical treatment for more than six months for pulmonary emphysema.

— It has been more than two weeks since Melba Santana Ariz has heard from her husband, the political prisoner Alfredo Rodolfo Domínguez Batista, one of a handful of prisoners who recently ended a hunger strike at Holguín Provincial Prison to demand greater respect for their human rights. Another of the protesters, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, was recently assaulted by a common prisoner, on orders from the prison warden, according to a Payo Libre report.

— The ringleader of the Holguín protesters, the imprisoned journalist Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta, apparently is ready to start a new hunger strike.

— Political prisoners Lázaro Alejandro García Farah and Armando Alcántara Clavijo were left battered and bruised after they were assaulted by guards at the Boniato prison in Santiago de Cuba, according to a Payo Libre report. The attack apparently was punishment because they had refused to participate in a political activity organized by the prison warden.

— Political prisoner Juan Bermúdez Toranzo was transferred to another prison this week, in an apparent attempt to silence his criticisms of the Castro gulag.

— An organization of independent Cuban lawyers has again expressed its support of and solidarity with and concern for their colleague, political prisoner Rolando Jiménez Pozada.

— Since early July when he was released from a military hospital, political prisoner Nelson Alberto Aguiar Ramírez has received neither adequate food or medicine, according to a report posted at Miscelaneas de Cuba.

Dissident ordered to pay fine or go to jail

Cuban Democratic Directorate has the details on what happened during today's "trial" of Cuban dissident Iris Tamara Pérez Aguilera:

Placetas. Cuban Democratic Directorate. August 20, 2008. Cuban opposition activist Iris Tamara Pérez Aguilera reported today that she intends to appeal a decision reached today by the People’s Municipal Tribunal of Placetas concerning an incident ocurred on August 6, 2008.

“I have no reason to pay a fine if I have committed no crime… My only crime, according to them, was to have defended Melquíades Hernández, a young man who was bleeding profusely, and on top of that, they were beating him,” stated Pérez Aguilera today by telephone to the Cuban Democratic Directorate.

Pérez Aguilera is maintaining her complete innocence of the charges of “resistance” and “contempt” with which she the National Revolutionary Police (NRP) intends to punish her for having interceded to defend the rights of Melquíades Hernández, the young victim of a brutal beating by the NRP on the streets of Placetas on August 6.

During a trial held this morning at the People’s Municipal Tribunal of Placetas in Villa Clara province, the activist was supported by Yaité Diaznegui Cruz Sosa, a resident of Placetas and eyewitness to the events of August 6. Cruz Sosa, who is not a member of any opposition organization, testified that Pérez Aguilera had been the victim of repression, and had not committed any crime.

According to the sentence imposed by the tribunal today, Iris will be forced to pay a total of 500 Cuban pesos or serve 250 days in prison (8 months and 10 days) under articles 143.1 and 144.1 of the penal code. The tribunal that handed down the sentence was presided over by Hugo Benavides Díaz. The day of the incident, Major Vilmariño of the NRP responded to Pérez Aguilera’s humanitarian effort with physical attacks, racist insults, arbitrary detention, and the leveling of these charges.

The opposition activist also enjoyed the support of about forty human rights activists from several parts of Cuba who managed to gather in Placetas to hold a peaceful march to the tribunal and to attend the trial.

The day of the incident, PNR officers slammed Pérez Aguilera against a police vehicle, calling her a “f------ black,” a “black monkey,” and later told her that what they needed was "an order to kill all these f------ blacks who stick their noses into everything," according to Pérez Aguilera’s husband, former political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez “Antúnez.”

Female dissident to stand trial on Wednesday

On Wednesday, please remember in your prayers Iris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, the wife of former political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez."

Perez, 38, is set to stand trial on a charge of "contempt of the proper authorities," arising from an Aug. 6 incident during which she tried to block Cuban police officers from beating a young Cuban named Melquíades Hernández in Placetas, in Villa Clara province. According to a statement her husband gave the Cuban Democratic Directorate, "officers flung her against a police vehicle calling her a 'f------ black,' a 'black monkey' and later telling her that what they needed was 'an order to kill all these f------ blacks who stick their noses into everything.'"

Fuck the police, indeed.

Say what you want about the Castro dictatorship but to call it a gang of misogynistic and racist fucks, from the Castro brothers on down, would be unfair to misogynistic, racist fucks elsewhere.

It is a special kind of evil that those thugs showed Iris Perez. The only proper response is our solidarity with this brave woman and her family, and our continued vigilance in exposing and denouncing the criminal Castro regime.

The authorities attempted to fine Perez 500 pesos — about two months salary — but instead, she went on a hunger strike for more than 10 days. She has since called off the protest so as to gather strength for her trial.

(Cross-posted at Babalú.)