Uncommon Sense

Orestes Paino Viera, Cuban Political Prisoner of the Week, 2/1/09 (UPDATED)

UPDATED, March 16, 2011 — The Catholic Church announced that Orestes Paino would be released and take exile in Spain.
|———|

Cuban independent labor unionist/human rights activist Orestes Paino Viera on Dec. 26 was sentenced to 6 years in prison for the supposed crimes of "contempt" and "attacking."

Paino's sister reported that the "trial," closed to the public except for family members, lacked any semblance of due process.

Other details of the supposed crimes were not reported, but Paino's sister told independent journalist Tania Maceda Guerra that he had been arrested a total of seven times in 2008, and beaten at least three times by police because of his human rights work.

Understatement of the week

"The visit could be positive if the government is sincere, something which I do not see at this time." Cuban human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez, on report that Castro dictatorship has invited a United Nations envoy on torture to visit Cuba.

The other Guantánamo (UPDATED)

Former Cuban political prisoner Pedro Pablo Alvarez Ramos is too familiar with the reality of the Castro gulag.

(When I get a chance, I will try to translate into English.)

UPDATED, Feb. 1, 2009 To read it in English, read below the fold.

Cuban political prisoner assaulted, punished

Here's a pop quiz about the Castro gulag:

If a common criminal — in this case, a thug nicknamed El Chino — assaults and robs political prisoner Rolando Jiménez Pozada, who ends up getting sent to a punishment cell?

That's right, Rolando Jiménez Pozada.

An offer I bet the Castro dictatorship refuses

The Cuban foreign minister this week renewed the Castro dictatorship's ridiculous suggestion that it would release dissidents imprisoned in Cuba because of their political beliefs if the United States were to release the "Cuban 5" spies rightfully convicted of espionage.

Since the United States was quick to dismiss the offer — thank God! — lawyers for the Cubans said they planned to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here's my suggested counter-offer to the dictatorship's original proposal:

The Cuban 5 get a Supreme Court hearing, if political prisoners like Oscar Elias Biscet, Normando Hernandez Gonzalez and Fabio Prieto Llorente also get a hearing — before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Cuba needs hope and change

President Obama, meet Lázaro Manuel Echemendia, 27, and Julio Carrasana Hernández, 22, two black Cubans who were arrested in a Havana park on Tuesday, Jan. 27, after they were heard making favorable comments about your presidency.

"We know who you are," a Cuban cop shouted as he and others arrested Echemendia and Carrasana, "you are Obamistas."

They were released a couple hours later, but only after being warned that they should keep their political views to themselves.

Mr. President, please do not let their faith in you, and their faith in real hope and change for their country, be in vain.

In Cuba, women are political prisoners, too

Cuba under Castro is an equal oppression society. If you dare stand up the dictatorship and call for CAMBIO, regardless of whether you are a man or woman, chances are good you will end up in jail. The regime does not allow its agents to show any chauvinism.

Most Cuban political prisoners are men, but that does not mean women, like Rosa Escalona Gómez, who actively oppose the regime are immune from persecution if the dictatorship determines they might be a threat.

Escalona, a member of the Federation of Latin American Rural Women (FLAMUR) - one of the more active opposition groups in Cuba - was arrested Jan. 21 when she went to a government official in Holguin to apply for a building permit. The official verbally abused Escalona, but Escalona is the one who ended up in jail, facing a charge of "attacking". At some point, officials delivered a beating to Escalona, injuring her leg.

Two days later, Escalona was transferred to a women's prison in Holguin.

In Cuba, free speech is against the law

Sometimes, it is the small stories that best reveal the nature of the Castro dictatorship.

Consider what is happening to Rafael Moulton Vargas, a resident of Jobabos in Las Tunas province.

Moulton faces up to 4 years in prison, after he was convicted Jan. 23 of the supposed crime of "attacking." He is free on a 500-peso bond, pending a final determination of his sentence, according to a dispatch from human rights activist/independent journalist Juan Carlos González Leiva. There was no word on when Moulton might be sentenced.

So what exactly did Moulton do?

He got in trouble last October when he questioned a national police official about, among other things, why workers in Oriente earn less than in other parts of the country, and complained he does not agree with the Castro brothers as "everyone who speaks is in jail."

With its response, the dictatorship again showed its hatred of freedom, and its cowardice in the face of those Cubans demanding change.

Notes from the gulag, 1/28/09

The suffering of Cuban political prisoners continues:

• Juan Antonio Bermúdez Toranzo is on a hunger strike, demanding his captors provide him with the medical attention he needs. Out of solidarity with his compatriot, Arturo Pérez de Alejo joined the protest with his own hunger strike. (To learn more about the prisoners, click on their names.)

• Carlos Martín Gómez was recently convicted of anti-Castro "crimes" for the seventh time, bringing his total prison sentence to 30 years. (He has been in jail since 2000.) Despite the injustices and brutality he has suffered, and his poor medical condtion, Martín has remained a proud opponent of the dictatorship, knowing he will leave prison only as a dead man or as a free Cuban.

• Fabio Prieto Llorente is the target of various forms of repression from guards at the El Guayabo prison on the Isle of Pines, working with the thugs from State Security. Among the measures used to keep the pressure on Prieto include blocking him from sending and receiving mail, and the censoring of newspapers he is allowed to read — including the Cuban communist shitrag also known as Granma.

• Rafael Ibarra Roque is going blind, thanks to the neglect of his captors, and if they have their way, Ibarra will go crazy, too.

• Jorge Ramírez Calderón has been locked away in a punishment cell since November, when he was severely beaten by guards in the Nieves Morejón prison in Santa Clara. He is in considerable pain, but he has been denied needed medical are.

Please keep these and other Cuban political prisoners in your prayers, and remember them during the inevitable coming debate about whether to change American policy on Cuba.

The torture of Normando Hernández González

Slowly and painfully, the Castro dictatorship is killing political prisoner Normando Hernández González.

Hernández's health has deteriorated to the point that his wife worries that the general anesthesia required so doctors can perform a needed procedure on his throat, may kill him, according to a report filed by Eduardo León López, president of Brothers United, a prisoners support group. Among other ailments, Hernández suffers from nutritional malabsorption and a total deterioration of the total esophageal sphincter, which causes him gastric reflux.

As I written before, Hernández's poor health is not of his doing, It is a product of the poor living conditions he has suffered while imprisoned since the "black spring" of 2003. Throw in the malignant neglect of his jailers — specifically, the poor medical care found in Cuban prisons and the refusal to let him travel to Costa Rica, which has granted him a visa, for adequate treatment — and the only conclusion is that the dictatorship wants Hernández dead.

We've heard a lot lately about the torturing of suspected terrorists held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, and rightfully so. The United States is better than that.

But what the world must also understand that in the parts of Cuba not under the American flag, greater abuses, greater tortures go unchecked in the Castro gulag. And as long as the world, whether because of ignorance or indifference, stays silent, the suffering, the torturing of Normando Hernández González and other Cuban political prisoners will continue.

Read more about Hernández, an independent journalist, here.