ForCuba
10-21-2003, 02:31 AM
PLEA FROM A BLIND CUBAN POLITICAL PRISONER AND HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST
Holguin, March 2003.
To Sylvia Iriondo:
Beloved sister in Christ, may the peace of our Lord and Father and our Lord Jesus Christ be with you and all my brothers and sisters in exile. What follows is the description of my current situation here. After 13 months in prison, I have not been tried or sentenced by any court while efforts have been made to persuade me to betray God and human rights and to collaborate with the government. Since mid December, the state security used inmate Joel Prado de la Torre (as he called himself) to throw in my cell a substance that produced a burning sensation on the skin and caused nasal congestion, a great deal of phlegm, and bronchial inflammation. This situation still continues.
On December 3, while I slept, this inmate threw in my face sawdust from a kind of wood unbeknown to me, and its splinters went into my nostrils and my mouth. When I protested and informed my family, they took him away December 4; then I was alone for 19 days. Now they’ve put in my cell a guy named Roberto, but I hear the guards call him by other names. He continues to do the same things the other inmate did to me. Since the month of January, they have added another substance to the sawdust they throw at me. This one gives me the sensation of millions of bugs constantly running all over me. It causes a great deal of itching and prevents me from sleeping. I don’t know if this is a biological substance or a chemical agent; but I know it is not insects because when I touch my skin there are no actual bugs that I can feel although the sensation is palpable.
Normally, the sawdust shower is a daily occurrence. Yesterday it started around 6 p.m. when I was on my knees praying. The sensation is that of a multitude of bugs suddenly coming down on my face and my body. This torment continues until 2 or 3 in the morning at which time the substance amount is increased. The inmate follows me everywhere. I have to eat out of a can that I try to keep covered all the time, because he will throw the nausea-provoking substance into the food. Sometimes I feel like I have a chain attached to my body and the weight of the world on my shoulders. I feel I am going to collapse, that I cannot take this any more; but I pray to God, and Jesus Christ gives me strength. It is a constant struggle, a constant torture.
On February 1, I placed my mattress in front of the cell’s iron-bar doors to get some fresh air. Officer Fabú, unit chief, snatched the mattress away from me, threw me on the floor, took me by the neck and dragged me. He told me that if I wanted to sleep, I could sleep in the bare floor with the dirt, the other prisoner’s shoes, roaches, ants, mice, etc. One night they threw so much of the substance in the cell, that it was as if the walls were boiling. So I had to retreat to my bed and resign myself to do without the little bit of fresh air that I was getting through the iron-bar door. The substance also causes acute pain in both of my eye sockets. The pain is so severe that at times it seems my eyes are popping out. Everyday, the unit chief threatens me with death if I continue the hunger strike to protest the prosecution’s request of eight years in prison. They do not allow me to speak to my attorney; and I do not have religious assistance or access to any information. I am only allowed to listen to the “round tables” and the state-run newscasts. For the skeptics, I can say that hell does exist, and Satan shows in here all of his faces.
In here, I listen to the weeping of young and old women; their terrible and frightful laments forever embedded in my mind. They plead because they are locked in cells that are like drawers where they hold men, women, the elderly, the sick, and the incapacitated. They plead because the four walls become a gravesite. These are catacombs where people scream but the sound is drowned out by a hermetically sealed metal door. When the women plead, the prison guards laugh and say: “what they want is a man.” If prisoners go into crisis, they inject them with tranquilizers; and they do not move them out until they force a confession from them whether they are guilty or not. This is a dismal world that one cannot realize what it is like unless one lives it first hand. I beg of you my beloved sister to publish this letter. I trust God and our Lord Jesus Christ to give me the strength to face any situation whether to live in squalor as I live now or to die and meet my Lord and my God. A kiss in Christ to Marisol and my beloved Janissett, Conchi and all the others; and to my dearest Laida, I send all of my heart.
Juan Carlos González Leyva, President of the Cuban Human Rights Foundation in Prison. (Recorded in the voice of Maritza Calderín, his wife.) This letter was presented in the II Parallel Forum on Human Rights and to the member countries of the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Recording available, M.A.R. por Cuba, Tape #104.)
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE VISIT: WWW.NETFORCUBA.ORG
Holguin, March 2003.
To Sylvia Iriondo:
Beloved sister in Christ, may the peace of our Lord and Father and our Lord Jesus Christ be with you and all my brothers and sisters in exile. What follows is the description of my current situation here. After 13 months in prison, I have not been tried or sentenced by any court while efforts have been made to persuade me to betray God and human rights and to collaborate with the government. Since mid December, the state security used inmate Joel Prado de la Torre (as he called himself) to throw in my cell a substance that produced a burning sensation on the skin and caused nasal congestion, a great deal of phlegm, and bronchial inflammation. This situation still continues.
On December 3, while I slept, this inmate threw in my face sawdust from a kind of wood unbeknown to me, and its splinters went into my nostrils and my mouth. When I protested and informed my family, they took him away December 4; then I was alone for 19 days. Now they’ve put in my cell a guy named Roberto, but I hear the guards call him by other names. He continues to do the same things the other inmate did to me. Since the month of January, they have added another substance to the sawdust they throw at me. This one gives me the sensation of millions of bugs constantly running all over me. It causes a great deal of itching and prevents me from sleeping. I don’t know if this is a biological substance or a chemical agent; but I know it is not insects because when I touch my skin there are no actual bugs that I can feel although the sensation is palpable.
Normally, the sawdust shower is a daily occurrence. Yesterday it started around 6 p.m. when I was on my knees praying. The sensation is that of a multitude of bugs suddenly coming down on my face and my body. This torment continues until 2 or 3 in the morning at which time the substance amount is increased. The inmate follows me everywhere. I have to eat out of a can that I try to keep covered all the time, because he will throw the nausea-provoking substance into the food. Sometimes I feel like I have a chain attached to my body and the weight of the world on my shoulders. I feel I am going to collapse, that I cannot take this any more; but I pray to God, and Jesus Christ gives me strength. It is a constant struggle, a constant torture.
On February 1, I placed my mattress in front of the cell’s iron-bar doors to get some fresh air. Officer Fabú, unit chief, snatched the mattress away from me, threw me on the floor, took me by the neck and dragged me. He told me that if I wanted to sleep, I could sleep in the bare floor with the dirt, the other prisoner’s shoes, roaches, ants, mice, etc. One night they threw so much of the substance in the cell, that it was as if the walls were boiling. So I had to retreat to my bed and resign myself to do without the little bit of fresh air that I was getting through the iron-bar door. The substance also causes acute pain in both of my eye sockets. The pain is so severe that at times it seems my eyes are popping out. Everyday, the unit chief threatens me with death if I continue the hunger strike to protest the prosecution’s request of eight years in prison. They do not allow me to speak to my attorney; and I do not have religious assistance or access to any information. I am only allowed to listen to the “round tables” and the state-run newscasts. For the skeptics, I can say that hell does exist, and Satan shows in here all of his faces.
In here, I listen to the weeping of young and old women; their terrible and frightful laments forever embedded in my mind. They plead because they are locked in cells that are like drawers where they hold men, women, the elderly, the sick, and the incapacitated. They plead because the four walls become a gravesite. These are catacombs where people scream but the sound is drowned out by a hermetically sealed metal door. When the women plead, the prison guards laugh and say: “what they want is a man.” If prisoners go into crisis, they inject them with tranquilizers; and they do not move them out until they force a confession from them whether they are guilty or not. This is a dismal world that one cannot realize what it is like unless one lives it first hand. I beg of you my beloved sister to publish this letter. I trust God and our Lord Jesus Christ to give me the strength to face any situation whether to live in squalor as I live now or to die and meet my Lord and my God. A kiss in Christ to Marisol and my beloved Janissett, Conchi and all the others; and to my dearest Laida, I send all of my heart.
Juan Carlos González Leyva, President of the Cuban Human Rights Foundation in Prison. (Recorded in the voice of Maritza Calderín, his wife.) This letter was presented in the II Parallel Forum on Human Rights and to the member countries of the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Recording available, M.A.R. por Cuba, Tape #104.)
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE VISIT: WWW.NETFORCUBA.ORG