Cuban independent journalist José Daniel Ferrer García survived eight years in the Castro gulag.
He survived to tell stories like this, as reported by fellow journalist Luís Felipe Rojas on his blog:
You have returned from hell, you bring the chronicles of horror. What can you tell us?
“I went through various prisons. What shocked me the most when I got to Pinar del Rio was that the common prisoners carried the scars from prison on their faces and bodies. The torture methods most used are those known as “The Little Chair” and “The Shakira”, both of which have been described so many times before. After being in Aguadores, in Santiago de Cuba, I heard of cases where prisoners had their feet and hands cuffed for up to three days. While they are being kept in these positions, they have no other option but to urinate and defecate on themselves. Over there in Kilo 5 1/2 Prison of Pinar del Rio they even went to the extreme of shoving dirty clothes into the mouths of those being tortured so that we political prisoners would not hear the screams and report such horrific acts.
On July 29, 2007, in Kilo 8 Prison of Camaguey, the jailers assassinated three prisoners after savagely beating them because they had gotten into a fight with another prisoner. They announced that the victim was already dying, but instead of tending to his wounds they handed out knives and began to attack those who committed the crime. There were more than 40 guards in a matter of 3 or 4 minutes and they all unleashed their anger using sticks and iron bars against these three men. Two of them died instantly — one of them was beaten so hard that pieces of his brain filled the hallway. As far as I have understood, the only one who survived was left completely insane. Those killed were Amaury Medina Puig, 25 years of age, and Carlos Rafael Labrada Oses, who was also very young. And what happened to the police guards? They got away with all of it thanks to the complicity of the authorities. They ended up accusing the only survivor of causing the fight, stating that any deaths were the sole products of that quarrel.
José Daniel Ferrer García and Luís Felipe Rojas
In Pinar del Rio, one prisoner threw his own excrement at one of the penitentiary chiefs, and as punishment, the latter sent the prisoner to the cell of his worst enemy. The corpulent man who was kept in that cell saw this incoming prisoner as a prize and he quickly began to beat him. He also raped him, ate his food, and ended up killing him and buried him under sheets until his stench became unbearable for the other prisoners. The guards made all prisoners evacuate the cell, but in the end nothing happened. Cases such as this one can be found in the dozens and dozens. I have a heavily detailed written report, and will find time to denounce it”.
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