I am reluctant to call Fidel Castro or his little brother Raúl Castro the "Adolf Hitler of the Caribbean." It diminishes the suffering of Hitler's victims, to use their tormenter to make a mere rhetorical point.
And it hides the true magnitude of the evil wrought by the bastards in Havana. What they have done to Cuba and to Cubans should be an affront to all humanity, and it should be recognized as such without having to compare it to the experiences of the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and other murdered by the Nazis.
Cuban political prisoner Roberley Villalobos Torres is a witness to the Castro brand of evil.
Alfredo Domínguez Batista, another political prisoner, relayed to independent journalist Maria Antonia Hidalgo Mir what he saw when he ran into Villalobos in the infirmary of the Las Tunas provincial prison last month.
Villalobos was showing obvious signs of malnutrition because of a recent hunger strike he started to demand medical attention and other basic human rights. And he had wounds on his head and arms delivered by prison guards in an attempt to break his protest.
I don't like the comparison, but it does help paint a picture: Domínguez told Hidalgo it appeared as if Villalobos had just left a "Nazi extermination camp."
Domínguez offered a few more details about his conversation with Villalobos. At one point, according to Hidalgo's story, Villalobos put on a shirt adorned with anti-Castro slogans. In retaliation, guards unleashed a common prisoner — a slave, if you will — to attack Villalobos with a knife.
They didn't take Villalobos to the infirmary but instead tossed him into a punishment cell. While there, guards peppered him with death threats.
Villalobos' response was chilling. With his own blood, he scribbled on the wall the rallying cry of the struggle for Cuban freedom:
Abajo Fidel.
Down with Fidel.
Only when Villalobos gave into the tortures and physically collapsed, did his captors, perhaps realizing they had failed with their assigned task, provide him medical attention.
As during World War II, in at least one prison in Cuba, evil had been defeated.
For more about Villalobos, read my Political Prisoner of the Week profile.
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