Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta
Cuban independent journalist Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta during the "black spring" of 2003 was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for what amounts to treason — his opposition to the Castro dictatorship.
There may be a set length of time Herrera spends in jail, but he is, in fact, serving what amounts to a death sentence.
Herrera may not face a firing squad or the needle, but the malignant neglect of his many medical problems, most of which are products of being unjustly sent to prison in the first place, makes clear the dictatorship's desires for Herrera.
The bastards want him dead.
In a report posted at Payo Libre, Herrera's mother describes his latest ailments, which have left him hospitalized in the infirmary at the Holguín provincial prison — a swollen foot and infected wounds. That's on top of chronic ailments like vitiligo, gastritis and prolapse.
Their basic cruelty leads the dictatorship to wanting Herrera and other prisoners of conscience dead.
But their instinctual sense of self-preservation — and not because it's the right thing to do — means they do just enough to let the prisoner survive, so as to spare it of the embarrassment of a prisoner of conscience dying in its care. Sometimes, they even let a sick prisoner go.
Hopefully, soon, Herrera and other political prisoners in the Castro gulag — all of which amounts to Cuba's death row, —will receive identical consideration and be granted their reprieve from their sentences.
UPDATED, 8 a.m. EDT — Political prisoner Eduardo Díaz Fleitas is ill, too, according to his wife.
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