Uncommon Sense

Dr. Darsi Ferrer faces up to 8 years in prison

 

Darsi Ferrer shows injuries he suffered while in police custody earlier this month.

Cuban human rights activist Dr. Darsi Ferrer faces up to 8 years in prison if convicted of trumped-up charges of assault and receiving stolen property, according to El Herald Nuevo.

Ferrer, one of the Castro dictatorship's more forceful and effective critics, was arrested July 21, after he allegedly went on the black market to buy construction materials to repair his home. His residence had been damaged earlier in the month during a police raid while he and his wife were detained.

During that detention, officers assaulted and beat Ferrer.

Ferrer's wife ridiculed the notion that her husband, who has started a hunger strike to protest his treatment as a common criminal, now faces an assault charge.

"This is a work of theater, as they are the ones who beat Darsi and now they want to prosecute him," said Yusnaimy Jorge Soca. "But I am not going to stay with my arms crossed.

Another human rights activist, Elizardo Sánchez, said it is clear that Ferrer was arrested in order to stifle his human rights work, which has included various protests against the Castro regime.

Former Cuban political prisoner Pedro Pablo Álvarez starts a blog

Pedro Pablo Álvarez Ramos has stood up to the Castro dictatorship on several fronts, as an independent librarian, independent labor unionist and democracy activist.

And for almost 5 years as a political prisoner.

Now, out of the Castro gulag for almost 18 months and living in exile in Spain, Álvarez is taking his struggle to the Internet, with the launch of a blog, Libertad Sindical, or "freedom association."

In the video above, taken from his blog, Álvarez explains why he started this new endeavour.

"With this new window we want to reflect the reality of Cuba, to inform the world what our workers are suffering and the struggle to bring our activities to achieve a free trade unionism within the island," Álvarez said.

Political prisoner Alfredo Domínguez on hunger strike

Alfredo Domínguez Batista

Cuban political prisoners don't have the time to be afraid. Their circumstances, and the challenge of standing up to their captors, despite the odds against them, won't allow it.

Alfredo Domínguez Batista does not know how to be afraid. Just consider how he marked Sunday, July 26, the 56th anniversary of the start of the Castro "revoultion."

"Down with communism!" "Down with Fidel Castro Ruz!" read the placards in his cell at the Las Tunas Provincial Prison, where he is serving a 14-year sentence handed down during the "black spring" of 2003.

The same day, Domínguez started a hunger strike to protest the awful conditions in the prison. For example, guards have not allowed him to go outside each day for time in the sun.

Radio Martí, which interviewed Domínguez's wife, has the story.

And read my Political Prisoner of the Week profile of Domínguez, here.

Cuban political prisoner in third week of hunger strike

Cuban political prisoner Juan Luis Rodríguez Desdin has been on a hunger strike since July 14, to protest officials' refusal to let him make telephone calls and send and receive mail, according to a report from independent journalist Carlos Serpa Maceira.

Former political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez," president of the Pedro Luis Boitel Political Prisoner Movement, implored the international community to stand with Rodríguez.

"The Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoner organization is issuing a wake-up call to alert international organizations and democratic governments to pressure the Castro regime so that this emblematic political prisoner is restored the human rights to which he is entitled," Antúnez said.

Rodríguez in May was sentenced to 2 years in prison, after he was convicted of "disrespect" and "resistance." He had been arrested after someone assaulted and injured him while he was walking in the town of Banes, in eastern Cuba.

That's right. Someone assaulted him, and for that Rodríguez, who at the time was a delegate for the Pedro Luis Boitel Political Prisoner Movement, was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to time in the gulag.

More people, on and off the island, need to follow Antúnez's example and protest this injustice, so that we can save Rodríguez's life.

Read my Political Prisoner of the Week profile of Rodríguez, here.

All Cubans must demand release of political prisoners

The Castro dictatorship may be holding Cuban human rights activist Dr. Darsi Ferrer in jail, but that is not keeping other government opponents from expressing support for him.

So what is keeping you from doing the same?

The Viva Cuba Libre Movement in Holguín is well familiar with Ferrer's work, which it said is example of the highest patriotism.

"Dr. Darsi is a great man struggling for human rights in Cuba. That is why the authorities should release him immediately, because he has not committed any crime," said Rafael Leyva Leyva, president of the group. "He is only expressing of what thousands of Cubans feel, but who can't or are afraid to."

Ferrer's example is one all Cubans should follow, but so is the example set by the Viva Cuba Libre Movement. I understand the fear, but what Cuba needs is for more Cubans to speak up with and on behalf of leaders like Ferrer. Break the fear, and the dictatorship becomes that much weaker.

This type of resistance is happening every day in Cuba. Another example is detailed in this report, about a fast underway to show support for political prisoner Ariel Sigler Amaya, who reportedly is near death.

And those of us not on the island but who love Cuba and freedom, must do the same. We must shout from our homes and our workplaces, and through our computers and whatever means available to us, demanding the dictatorship relent and release Ferrer, Sigler and other political prisoners.

That is our responsibility, our duty, to Cuba and to our own liberty.

Political prisoner Juan Bermúdez punished for protest

Juan Bermúdez Toranzo

The cruelty of the Castro dictatorship has no bounds.

Fortunately, so do the efforts of those who resist the dictatorship. Not even the bars of the gulag can silence those clamoring for justice and for freedom for their country.

For example, political prisoner Juan Bermúdez Toranzo, an inmate at the El Pre prison in Santa Clara, last week organized a fast as a way for prisoners to protest their living conditions. He timed the protest to coincide with the July 26 anniversary of the start of the Castro "revolution."

The authorities responded the only way they know how: By tossing him into a punishment cell, fearing that the prison's bad food, bad medical care and all around badness would give inmates plenty to protest.

A human rights activist and lawyer, Bermúdez in March 2008 was sentenced to 4 years in prison on a charge of "threatening." (There was a report that he also was sentenced to 12 years in prison for "revealing state secrets") Bermúdez has been in jail since the previous November, when he and other activists were arrested while fasting in support of political prisoners.

Read my Political Prisoner of the Week profile of Bermúdez, here.

Cuba blogger Yoani Sanchez's big prize is a big deal

I'm not sure what Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez will receive as a recipient of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize for outstanding reporting on Latin America and the Caribbean, but it is certain the rewards will include heightened credibility as one of the most eloquent, incisive critics of the Castro dictatorship and, hopefully, additional protection from that dictatorship.

This is a big deal for Sanchez. The Cabot Prize is one of the most prestigious in international journalism.

How big a deal depends on the dictatorship.

If it allows Sanchez to travel to the United States to accept the award, that would give her a wonderful platform for her wit and wisdom, elevating her profile to its highest level yet.

If it does not, as it has not for other prizes she has been awarded, that would only confirm her status as one of the regime's chief critics and reveal how very afraid it is of her.

For more on how and why this award for Sanchez matters, check out Cubanita in Colorado.

Dr. Ferrer faces charges of 'assault' and 'receiving stolen goods' — report

Dr. Darsi Ferrer

The Kafkaesque persecution of Cuban human activist Dr. Darsi Ferrer is getting even more bizarre.

Cuban independent journalist Juan Carlos Linares Balmaseda reported today that Ferrer's family was told over the weekend that Ferrer, who was arrested earlier this month, would be prosecuted on charges of "assault" and "receiving stolen goods."

Warning: Trying to understand what these charges are about may make your brain hurt, considering the contortions of logic and fact you have to make to make sense of them.

As Capitol Hill Cubans notes, Ferrer is in trouble, apparently, for illegally buying construction materials so he could repair his home, which was damaged during a police raid while Ferrer was under arrest earlier this month.

And as for the "assault" charge, it is Ferrer, as the photo above shows, who was the victim of a brutal attack by officers while in police custody.

Of course, the "charges" don't matter. This is just an exercise of tyrannical power, an attempt by a fearful dicatorship to silence one of its most effective critics.

That should be easy for anyone to understand

Dictatorship plays blackmail with Dr. Biscet's health

Almost a month after his wife delivered them to the Combinado del Este prison in Havana, Cuban political prisoner Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet has received much-needed medications.

Elsa Morejon tells Radio Martí that she took the drugs to the prison on June 29, but it wasn't until this past week that Biscet, probably Cuba's best-known political prisoner, received them.

Morejon speculated that the Castro dictatorship was playing games with her husband because it wants to provoke a protest for which it then can punish Biscet by throwing him into a punishment cell — as if there is any other type of cell in the gulag.

Political prisoners like Biscet are serving virtual death sentences. The dictatorship uses not a firing squad or electric chair to carry out its punishments, just a malignant neglect to first break its captives and then, eventually, kill them.

Cuban journalist arrested while covering a story

Carlos Serpa, left, interviews Antúnez for a previous story.

Carlos Serpa Maceira, like other Cuban independent journalists is a marked man.

Especially this weekend, as the Castro dictatorship commemorates the 56th anniversary of the start of its so-called "revolution."

The dictatorship doesn't want troublemakers carrying out "counter-revolutionary" protests, and they especially don't want journalists like Serpa reporting on them so that Cubans and the rest of the world know that not everyone on the island is celebrating this weekend.

The Cuban secret police launched a preemptive strike this past Thursday, when they arrested human rights activists Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez," Iris Tamara Pérez Aguilera and Carlos Cordero as they paid tribute at the gravesite of famed student leader Pedro Luis Boitel who died in the Castro gulag in 1972 after a hunger strike of more than 50 days.

Also arrested was Serpa, who also was at the Colón Cemetery in Havana to cover the event.

Serpa later told his colleague Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez that State Security agents grabbed him, tossed him in a patrol car and drove to a local police station. There, the thugs confiscated Serpa's camera, digital recorder, notebook and some other documents he was carrying.

He was then thrown into a jail cell for two hours.

Before he was released, officers told Serpa he would not be allowed to cover any anti-government activities tied to Sunday's anniversary of Fidel Castro's failed assault in 1953 on the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba, considered the start of the revolution.

Serpa said he and other independent journalists have noticed a recent uptick in police harrassment against them and the seizing of their cameras and other equipment.

Obviously, the dictatorship feels it has something very scary to hide.

Cuban Democratic Directorate has more on the arrests at the Colón Cemetery.