Cuban Diary XIX: What the UN Rapporteur Should See / Angel Santiesteban

If the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva saw through a crack the horrors that occur in Cuban prisons, surely it would do two things:

1 – Expel Cuba from the United Nations.

2 – Knowing the alleged violations that are occurring in the prison of Guantanamo Bay, according to accusations from the Castro government, they could send the directors who lead the prisons in Cuba — true concentration camps — to pass a course at Guantanamo, in order to improve their behavior.

The dictatorship, always obsessed with attacking the United States, transmits TV images denigrating what is allegedly happening in Guantanamo Bay.

It’s not my job to defend it or make value judgments about it, this is the role of the American people; my obligation as a Cuban and intellectual is to denounce the terrible tortures that take place in the prison where I have been held and of which I am not a witness.

At present, in the cell, there is a young man with his mouth sewn shut with wire. Today he passed through the prison before the frightened looks from the other inmates.

There are daily fights between prisoners and between them and the guards. I guess this is common in any prison in the world but I am not a specialist to confirm that. But here, when the guards confront a prisoner, the ratio is ten to one, along with their batons and pepper sprays.

The food they serve is a tiny amount and badly prepared. It consists of a few grams o rice, a boiled egg, and a colorless and odorless but always disgusting soup.

The barracks are populated by prisoners who have completed their sentences, and who, because of bureaucratic problems, remained locked up without any consideration. The constant beatings and dungeons are increasing their sentences along with the blackmail to not demand their “rights.”

Silence is the only ally of the Cuban prisoner; talking could lead to a new condemnatory charge in the most arbitrary of decisions.

They wait and resign themselves. They have no alternatives.

That is the stark reality of the Cuban prisoner, who lives without guarantees of his rights or the chance to make demands. Even without reviewing the records of those processed in light of international guarantees applied to the condemned, I can say without any fear of being mistaken that if that were to happen half of the prison population would be freed.

A court that has before it a young man without hope, who, unfortunately, is a part of the children nobody wanted, who has left school and has no place to be nor can he be offered a reliable life project that invites him to get on track that isn’t emigration, the place he can best be held is in jail.

A great part of Cuban youth that has not found a way to go into exile is in prison; and I say this with total confidence, they are following there a criminal course for their future as thugs.

Hopefully the Rapporteur who is sent to Cuba will be able to meet with the people who so greatly suffer the need for him.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Prison 1580
May 2013

18 May 2013

Prison Diary XVIII: Those Who Live Off The Government / Angel Santiesteban

A few days ago it was suggested to me in a letter that someday, in another government of course, I could be Minister of Culture, which I doubt because I think politics is not my thing. But if being a politician is saying what you think and going against the interests of the current president, then I am a politician, or a romantic risking that I don’t get tired of suffering until the coming of the happiness to this country that it has deserved for so many years.

In this future government I don’t doubt that there will be the same people who now support the dictatorship.

Unfortunately they are corks*, intellectuals without honor, allying themselves for their personal benefit to communism and fascism.

We see them there, and they, as usual, extend a greeting to me that if I escape they will label me spiteful and say that I cannot adjust to the new national force for a better country.

Those of us who were born to suffer, those of us who do not accept gifts from wherever they come, those of us who think first of Martí, we never enter into these political alliances.

For me, a president is nothing more than a good administrator, and if we get one, then we will see our economy and our culture flourish. What more can we ask for? With that I will be deeply happy. I want a participatory democracy, a country without a secret police that persecutes the opposition and a culture that is not censored for expressing ideas contrary to the State.

In short, I want a free country and that’s why I wake up every morning in this prison completely sure that José Martí’s dream is coming. I am happy in the place that I am. I am at the side of the suffered with Bishop Espada, Father Jos” Agustín Caballero and Félix Varela; I am where I am because I am continuing along the path laid for us by Martí, Céspedes, Agramonte, Maceo. And accompanying me on this path are hundreds of Cubans like Antonio Rodiles, Jose Daniel Ferrer, Guillermo Fariñas, Berta Soler, Hector Maseda, Angel Moya, Cuesta Morúa, Antunez, Manzano and Palacio, among many, who risk their lives and those of their families to achieve our longed for freedom, not to mention the community of bloggers and independent journalists.

I am going to be this: a citizen in the service of good causes, and I’ll be with the rest of the noble and honest intellectuals creating our works which is the best omen.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Prison 1580. May 2013

*Translator’s note: “Corks” in the sense that they keep bobbing to the surface.

17 May 2013

PEN Writers in Prison Ask for a Review of Angel Santiesteban’s Trial / Angel Santiesteban

The German PEN Center for Writers in Prison has pronounced its satisfaction with the release of Calixto Martinez Arias but is now asking for a review of the trials of Jose Antonio Torres, journalist, and of writer and blogger Angel Santiesteban Prats. We call on the authorities to provide legal guarantees that have not been respected and this is why the sentences are not related to the crimes they are accuse us. We also call for the evidence to be proceedings be made public.

Posted on 13 April 2013 by Writers in Prison

Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias

[The following is in English in the original]

The Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of PEN International welcomes the 9 April 2013 release of the independent journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, who had been detained without charge since September 2012. However, PEN notes that two other writers remain imprisoned in the country – state journalist José Antonio Torres and author and blogger Ángel Santiesteban Prats – and continues to call on the authorities to provide assurances that their sentences are not related to their reporting, and to make public details of their trials.

Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, journalist for the independent news agency Hablemos Press, was released from prison on 9 April 2013, after being detained without charge for almost seven months. Arrested on 16 September 2012 after covering a cholera outbreak which the Cuban authorities had reportedly been trying to downplay, he faced a sentence of up to three years in prison for ‘disrespect’ towards the head of state under Article 144 of the Cuban Criminal Code. The charges were never officially confirmed, his lawyer was not allowed access to his case file and he was never put on trial.

Martínez’ release eventually came amid growing pressure from Cuban civil society and international organisations and the day after he began his third hunger strike. He had called off his previous hunger strike on 28 March after the authorities indicated that he would be moved from Combinado del Este prison to Valle Grande prison and subsequently released. However, although Martínez was transferred he was not freed. As a result, he resumed his hunger strike on 8 April. A number of his colleagues and fellow dissidents joined the hunger strike, including Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez, director of Hablemos Press, which had launched a campaign on social media to push for Martínez’ release.

According to colleagues at Hablemos Press, Martínez has lost two teeth and has cuts on his lips and tongue. Previous reports indicate that he suffered ill treatment in prison, including assault, a ban on using the telephone, being placed in solitary confinement and denied medical attention.

Two other writers remain in Cuban prisons: José Antonio Torres, former correspondent for the government newspaper Granma, and Ángel Santiesteban Prats, award-winning writer and author of the blog ‘The Children Who Nobody Loved’ (‘Los Hijos que Nadie Quiso’). Little is known about the trial of either writer.

Torres, who has been detained since February 2011, is serving a 14-year prison sentence for alleged espionage. His arrest followed the publication of articles in 2010 detailing the mismanagement of an aqueduct project and the installation of fibre-optic cable between Venezuela and Cuba, in which Vice President Ramiro Valdés was named as responsible for supervising both projects. Torres was convicted in mid-June 2012 following a closed trial. Cuba’s state-run media has made only a few brief references to Torres’ case and little is known about the espionage charge, although there are rumours that he may have offered or given confidential information to the US diplomatic mission in Havana.

Santiesteban was imprisoned on 28 February 2013 after being sentenced to five years in prison for alleged assault and trespassing in a case involving his ex-wife. The writer maintains that the charges are fabricated and politically motivated, retribution for his blog which is critical of the Cuban situation and government. He also claims that he was informed of what the outcome of the trial would be on 8 November 2012, one month before the sentencing took place. Details of the case against Santiesteban have not been made public in state media, but according to the appeal lodged by his lawyer there were a number of serious irregularities in the trial and sentencing.

PEN holds no position on Santiesteban’s guilt or innocence. However, it is concerned that his trial appears to have fallen short of international human rights standards.

A post on Santiesteban’s blog dated 9 April 2013 said that the writer had taken from La Lima prison to an unknown destination, and suggested that the reason for his removal was that the ‘Human Rights Commission’ (possibly the Comisión Cubana de Derechos Humanos) had been due to visit the prison that day. Santiesteban had previously reported in a statement published on his blog on 5 April that he had been told that he would be taken to the Salvador Allende military hospital for a check-up in relation to suspected skin cancer. He said that he would refuse to go as it was a military hospital.

For further details on Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, José Antonio Torres and Ángel Santiesteban Prats, see previous alert.

Please send appeals:

Welcoming the release of Hablemos Press journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias on 9 April 2013;

Noting, however, that two other writers remain in prison in Cuba, former Granma correspondent José Antonio Torres and writer and blogger Ángel Santiesteban Prats, and that their trials apparently failed to meet international human rights standards for fair trials, outlined in Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;

Calling on the Cuban authorities to provide assurances that Torres’ and Santiesteban’s sentences are not related to their reporting, and to make public details of their trials;

Urging the Cuban authorities to remove unlawful restrictions on freedom of expression, association and assembly in Cuba.

Appeals to:

Head of State and Government
Raúl Castro Ruz
Presidente de la República de Cuba
La Habana, Cuba
Fax: +41 22 758 9431 (Cuba office in Geneva);
+1 212 779 1697 (via Cuban Mission to UN)
Email: cuba@un.int (c/o Cuban Mission to UN)
Salutation: Your Excellency
Attorney General

Dr. Darío Delgado Cura
Fiscal General de la República
Fiscalía General de la República
Amistad 552, e/Monte y Estrella, Centro Habana, La Habana, Cuba
Salutation: Dear Attorney General
Interior Minister

General Abelardo Coloma Ibarra
Ministro del Interior y Prisiones
Ministerio del Interior, Plaza de la Revolución, La Habana, Cuba
Fax: +1 212 779 1697 (via Cuban Mission to UN)
Email: correominint@mn.mn.co.cu
Salutation: Your Excellency

Please send also appeals to diplomatic representatives of Cuba in your country.

***Please send appeals immediately. Check with the WiPC if sending appeals after 11 June 2013***

Published by PEN Zentrum Deuschtland

19 April 2013

Angel Santiesteban Harassed and Isolated in Prison 1580. Raul Castro Responsible for His Safety / Angel Santiesteban

After several days of staging a scene in the tropical paradise prison system for the accredited “press” and the examination of the UN Human Rights Council, where Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said he will accept the recommendations of the international body and apply them to the Castro prison system and he  said he will allow the Red Cross visits, everything is the same or worse. Nothing changed and never will change because changes will never come from those who have caused the Cuban tragedy. The only change possible is to root out the evil dynastic dictatorship of the sadistic Castro brothers.

Cuba is a small island in whose geography is the largest concentration of jails in the world. The Island of Happiness is a huge prison where, in its many overcrowded concentration camps live the tortured, humiliated and starved thousands of prisoners, guilty or not, who have rights like any human being; rights that the regime in Havana never respected. To the common prisoners must be added the more than hundred prisoners of conscience who are caged to silence them on false charges of common crimes, such as Angel Santiesteban.

Fortunately, through Angel — and despite the relentless efforts of his jailers to silence him — we know that in that grisly concentration camp in which he is located, the 1580 Prison in San Miguel del Padrón, Havana, on the 5th May there was the beginning of riot caused by the indignation of the prison population on seeing how two thugs torturing a young black man, mentally ill, whose humanity is locked in there. Thanks to the solidarity of all, they left the unfortunate boy in peace and the inmates calmed down. continue reading

But from this episode we must extract two important things. One is that not even in such terrible conditions of life do solidarity and values disappear. Although there will always be those who choose to ally themselves with their executioners, the majority will preserves and defend their dignity. If they are often silent it is just to avoid greater evils, but moments of maximum cruelty arrive, as Angel related, the principles take over from fear and all become a voice against injustice. This  stopped the savagery that might have killed the boy.

But, and no less important, is when barbarism is manifested with all the fury, the clamor of the prisoners is not limited only to scream against it and stop it, but it becomes a cry for freedom, for democracy, against the dictatorship, against the dictator and a stern warning that should not go unnoticed by anyone, especially Raul Castro and the international organizations that do little or nothing to stop the accumulated abuses from the incredible 54 years of so-called “Revolution”.

There were common criminals who turned their pleas for justice for their fellow prisoner into slogans for freedom and against the dictatorship. Common criminals  who, possibly, when they lived in freedom (as it’s defined in Cuba) had never questioned the legitimacy or otherwise of the government that enslaves them; the inefficient, shameless and manipulative government that is the one truly guilty for their being there, that has forced them to commit a crime with the sole purpose to survive and feed their families.

This is not about justifying crime. Not at all. But we all know that justice in Cuba is nothing more but a subsidiary power and dependent on political power which administers revenge more than actual criminal convictions. And, betraying the promise that the Revolution was “a revolution of the humble, by the humble and for the humble,” it vents its rage over the most humble and the most vulnerable. And even more so with those who struggle for freedom.

It is precisely the full force of such arbitrariness and injustice in Cuba that “manufactures” dissidents and opponents, and in this process the concentration camps are no exception. On the contrary. This beginning of mutiny has shown that, when inmates have nothing to lose, they lose fear and regain dignity.

Angel is being abused differently, but no less cruelly. He is being tortured psychologically. They have cut off all means of communication with his family, except for those two measly minutes on the phone every so often. They have taken from him open communication with his peers, who have been harassed and threatened with punishment if they have anything to do with him. But once again, showing courage and intelligence, there many people who create strategies to communicate without being noticed by the guards and by the inmates whom the guards bribe.

Angel is where he doesn’t have to be. He is suffering vengeance for having dared to express himself freely. They have tried to turn him into an abuser and a rapist, but they had nothing to use in this intent because nobody believed it. The unfortunate few who spoke out against him were those who, threatened and pressured, didn’t know how to preserve their dignity or at least to remain silent.

The eyes of the civilized world are on and the abuses they commit. The gaze of international organizations is on Angel Santiesteban and are there are ever more who are speaking up in his favor. The more abuses committed against him, the more solidarity grows, aroused by the injustice.

Raul Castro knows it and he is directly responsible for anything that may happen to Angel. As are the army of eunuchs who fulfill their miserable orders, but not only as obedient soldiers but as genuine sadists manifesting all their murderous instincts.

And once again, and we will not tire of repeating it until we have justice for Angel: we demand his immediate transfer to La Lima Prison where, despite not having to be there, he should never have been transferred illegally and violently. We demand absolute respect for his rights and that he be given a fair trial with full due process, with those who were conspicuous by their complete absence in the trial for him, who are now imprisoned.

We demand that Angel be left in peace to work, doing what he can do like nobody else: write. We recall that while he being beaten, humiliated and isolated, there are international judges reading and evaluating his work; prestigious publishers reading his manuscripts. And when he once again wins prizes and is published, as surely will happen very soon, the world press will report that if he can not collect his prizes, or attend presentations of his books because he is in a Cuban concentration camp, that is not Guantanamo but might as well be.

Look after Angel and try not to continue throwing mud on yourselves. In today’s world nothing can be hidden and, sooner or later, everything is known. So it will be very easy to add to the long list of crimes, that the regime has committed and is committing, this criminal proceeding against an intellectual amid growing outrage while his tormentors bury themselves ever deeper in their rotten and fearful actions. And this must always be paid for.

We also remind them, once again, that the same rights we demand for Angel, we demand for the entire prison population, and in particular we demand the immediate release of prisoners of conscience.

They will never silence the truth. History has proved it. When they are digging their claws into Angel Santiesteban they are further strengthening the symbol of freedom he has already become.

So the demand is clear: Raul Castro, do the right thing and order justice done for Angel and do not forget even for a moment that you are and will remain solely responsible for the physical and mental integrity of Angel.

On behalf of the family and friends of Angel Santiesteban-Prats

The Editors

Note: In this documentary, and especially from minute 24.30, you can see and understand how the Nazis manipulated and hid what they did in the concentration camps by preparing a perfect theater in Theresienstadt where they took the Red Cross delegates and showed them the “wonderful” life of the Jews there. The strategy of staging the Nazis used then was copied by the regime in Havana and so continue to lie to international public opinion about what really happens in their concentration camps. What is curious and incomprehensible is that today, when we have the help of technology and nothing can be hidden and all the evidence of what happens is within reach of everyone, there are still those who deny it and defend it from above.

The Red Cross the Third Reich

Site manager’s note: This third-party video is in Spanish (and German, French and English) and is included here to show the whole post as it was posted, but is not translated.

13 May 2013

SOS: Attempted Riot in Prison 1580. Increase in Repression Against Angel Santiesteban and the Other Inmates / Angel Santiesteban

After the attempted riot in Prison 1580

Last night, Sunday May 5 at 7:45 PM, an inmate — Reniel Agramonte Valle — was beaten by two guards: Jesus and Andy the karate man. The inmates of both barracks started shouting against abuse and almost all looked through the windows and bars while the guards continued the abuse of the black, slight and famished 24-year-old.

The prisoners began to hit the gate until it broke and opened; the guards seeing the possible population unnerved all about them, fled and forgot how numerous they and their batons were, the same ones who minutes before struck the prisoner in question, and who by then had been taking their pills for chronic mental illness that are supplied  to them several times a day.

To stop the potential riot, the senior officer, when he reached the scene, freed the prisoner, and when they saw him return to the barracks it began to calm the spirits of his comrades who had already begun yelling “Down with Fidel,” “Down with dictatorship,” “Tomorrow we will get the news to Radio Martí,” “Assassins,” and “Abusers,” among others.

This morning, when the inmates attended the breakfast, they were met with German shepherds, the ones who on just seeing a prison uniform begin to bark and are very aggressive with them, Nazi-style.

In previous days they also beat several prisoners and after the beatings, they put them in cells hidden from the eyes of the rest of the prison population to hide their injuries and bodily signs of violence against them.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Prison 1580, San Miguel del Padrón

Sowing Terror

One day after the attempted riot in the prison, they began the interviews and the removal of all persons who regularly conversed with me.

They want to keep inmates away from me because they consider a dangerous element my relating to them. And so they were taken to other barracks.

Now the prisoners afraid to approach me because they don’t want to be harmed. I am also concerned about some who claim not to care; because when they receive reprisals for being close to me, my guilty conscience is great because their fates are worse just for talking to me.

Even so, some have changed strategy and started to leave me papers on my bed with silent solidarity messages.

A prisoner on a hunger strike, Jesús Guerra Camejo, for talking with me, has also been taken from the company to an unknown destination.

The inmates are constantly interviewed to obtain information about me, writing or any data they might provide about me.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Prison 1580, San Miguel del Padrón

10 May 2013

Prison Diary XVI. May Day in Prison 1580 / Angel Santiesteban

 What Else the Commission Didn’t See of Cuban Injustice

The sun rising over Prison 1580 was a violent awakening of the “re-educators” offensive because the inmates cannot stay in their beds and not watch TV to see “the march of the valiant people.”

They entered the barracks shouting insults and dirty words, threatening that they would take the names of those who were not in front of the television and later they would be disciplined.

For committing that “indiscipline” the entire barracks was denied a visit and the conjugal pavilion. In the end most of the prisoners were punished and remained staring the economic waste suffered by the country; and they came to the conclusion that after being awakened, offended and punished, the “re-educators” went to their office where there wasn’t a television. They could hear their voices and their laughter, surely mocking their slaves.

And I say slaves because that same May 1st Cuba declared to the Human Rights Commission in Geneva and the TV news relayed the speech of Chancellor Bruno Rodríguez’s speech and the prisoner enjoyed his humorous lies. Most of them laughed as if they were being tickled.

When he said that Cuban prisoners were paid a salary equal what is paid in civilian life, they laughed and cursed him; the majority of prisoners do not earn a salary, and the few who earn something, after working a month, including every Saturday and some Sundays more than 8 hours a day and with the worse food, on payday receive 103 pesos, that is some 4 CUC, which isn’t enough to buy two jars of oil or five lousy soaps.

In the same speech the Chancellor swore that there is no drug trafficking in Cuba. And in my barracks more than half the population, around forty, are drug users and there are exactly seventeen convicted to drug trafficking.

Hopefully the Commission will investigate in-depth all the constant lies of the Cuban government. They have been hiding these truths for many years that are so painful, especially for their suffering victims who have nothing to do, from the inside of hell, with how these officials lie to international public opinion, as in this case to the United Nations.

When the Chancellor assured that in Cuba there is no torture, the prisoners — as if he could see them — stood in front of the TV and showed their scars, their missing teeth, the lost vision in their eyes from beatings, fractured nasal septums and arms and broken fingers… and all the signs of humiliation and abuse printed on their bodies, all of which suffered under a legal neglect.

When a prisoner is abused and there are injuries, they hide them in the punishment cells so that the rest of the prison doesn’t see it, and they stay there until the swelling and bruising disappear.

Then the prisoner always receives the same threat: if he informs the international press or tells his family what happened, he will be sent to distance province far from home, so then his family will have to travel several days and spend a lot of money to visit him.

This is the life of a Cuban prisoner and nothing distinguishes it from that the official propaganda says happens on Guantanamo Base with all the abuses committed there, because I repeat, in my case as in so many we are forced to swallow disgusting food when we decide to start a hunger strike.

I myself, realized in the end that I had to get out of the punishment cell in which they’d confined me so that I could fulfill my condition as a blogger, because in that silence and non-communication I was doing them a favor.

Since they took me out of that cell I have not swallowed the disgusting food that they distribute to the prisoners. I survive on crackers, sugar and milk provided by my family, and above all, on my ideas of freedom and my work as a blogger and writer.

With this I possess more than the dictatorship.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Prison 1580. San Miguel del Padrón. May 2013

4 May 2013

Prison Diary XV From Prison 1580: Which The Commission Should Visit / Angel Santiesteban

It has nineteen barracks crammed with hungry and disappointed men who lately have been mocking the image of Cuban prisons the Government wants to show.

Here, in Prison 1580, they won’t bring them, says one, and everyone else laughs.

The prisoners in Cuba, in particular in Prison 1580, work the whole month, including Saturdays and under the sweltering sun, in heavy construction work to collect 103 Cuban pesos.

They return to the barracks frustrated. Helpless, they hide their tears behind vulgar expressions, offending the prison system and Government leaders, and so they vent their discomfort.

Add that of the 90 grams of rice due them they only get 40, and of the two boiled eggs most of the time they get only one, with the rest of their food consisting of a colorless, odorless, very bad tasting soup.

Added to that there are the beatings, the constant dungeons, the sentences that are extended, and the blackmail so that they won’t demand their “rights.”

The combination of all this is unbearable: the exploitation of man by man. But it will all be hidden from the national and international journalists Commission…

The Castros have always mocked the Commissions that visit prisons. They prepared a walk-through for a couple of prisons painted and decorated for the occasion, with prisoners warned not to say a word and that later compromises them and for those they refuse time off for good behavior.

Everything is a perfect representation of the scene of a play staged for the Commission to get a good impression. In other words, a constant mockery of human rights and those who protect them.

The prisoners only yearn for their freedom, understandably, and so they join forces in silence enduring everything to get out as soon as possible.

But many can not suppress their desire to protest and they approach me to denounce the continuing violations of which they are the objects and the injustices they suffered in their trials.

They place their hopes in me even though I assure them that I can not do much because their statements will only be read abroad. But they insist that they want the world to be aware of what is happening in Cuban jails.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Prison 1580. April 2013

3 May 2013

The United Nations Human Rights Council and its Great Challenge With Cuba / Angel Santiesteban

Tomorrow, May 1, the United Nations Human Rights Council will meet in Geneva, where Cuba will present a report with notes on its prison policy.

“Dressing up” for the occasion, for the first time in nine years the Castro regime opened its jails to the national and international press accredited in Cuba. It is public knowledge that the infamous stance adopted by these visitors facing the reality of the Cuban prison system.

In a previous statement we urged journalists to reconsider and not continue to be complicit in the crimes committed in the Castro concentration camps. But silence prevailed as expected.

Those who were not silent were the prisoners who by different means told the world the cruel reality that the dictatorship makes happen. All their complaints are on the Internet. Here we provide a link where you can listen to two testimonies of the many who have appeared just in the last few days.

Angel Santiesteban-Prats wrote an open letter to the Human Rights Council which urges them to know and appreciate the real testimonies of those who suffer violations of their most basic rights, countless humiliations and deprivation in these prisons. The letter has been widely reported by the international media and numerous blogs over several days.

On the strength of his claim, we publish the letter again, this time in English, as submitted to the Council.

We believe it is most opportune to recall the list of political prisoners who populate the concentration camps and who both the Castro regime, and its allies in the world, refuse to admit the existence of.

We hope that neither Angel Santiesteban’s Letter nor the list of political prisoners are ignored tomorrow at the meeting of the Council, and that its members show the world that they are fulfilling their mission to ensure the defense of Human Rights without distinction.

For all Cuban prisoners we ask for justice and respect for their rights. And for the political prisoners in particular, justice, respect for their rights and freedom.

Finally we urge everyone to work together tirelessly disseminating the list of political prisoners — sadly always provisional — so that their names are not forgotten and the world’s eyes are finally opened to the terrible reality that Cubans have been suffering for 54 years.

Thank you for your attention,

The Editorial Team

Open Letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council

Honourable Sirs,

I turn to you from the deep despair produced by my imprisonment for reasons of consciousness in one of the Castro brothers’ horrific prisons. In your hand is the opportunity to stop the agony for so many inmates who survive the cruelest famines and tortures, both physical and psychological.

In order to hide the truth, on April 9, just before the international journalists arrived, I was transferred by the back door from the prison La Lima, where I was confined, to another prison, the 1580, wherein all sorts of outrages and humiliations, worthy of Nazi concentration camps, are committed against the inmates.  Inmates are crammed in small spaces; there is a lack of food and  proper sanitation, the violence is constant, the most basic rights of the prisoners and their families are violated.  These sad conditions add up to make this prison a true concentration camp.

In recent months there have been two large fires in the prison, the causes of which have yet to be explained. Multiple suicides also accompany daily life in this prison.

Upon my arrival I started a hunger strike; I was put in solitary confinement with no light, no water, no clothes or toiletries. After several days I was violated by several guards, some of them held me by my limbs while another pressed my nostrils until I opened my mouth to breathe and a stinking soup was introduced into, which choked me; and thus again and again I was force fed this soup until I was on the floor of the cell completely covered in food, which I vomited uncontrollably.

I want to denounce Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Quintana, head of the Provincial Penitentiary Administration of Havana who is directly responsible for what I have told above.

I also want to clarify that my situation is not the worst. I wish that you could listen directly to the abused inmates in order they could explain for themselves the hell in which they live. I fear not being credible enough to expose the horror and the wickedness we suffer daily.

The Cuban government must understand once and for all that it is impossible to maintain their power at the expense of people’s pain.

We, who are suffering these terrible circumstances, strongly urge you to value this first-hand testimony, which I give under full oath; asking God to put His holy hands on this country forgotten by the international community, and that the testimonies of the prisoners such as myself can be heard. We ask that Cuba signs the UN covenants and accepts the statements of Human Rights declarations, and if it does not do so, that appropriate measures should be taken to expel the existing Cuban government from the concert of free nations.

We are a devastated country that, despite these fifty-four years of slavery, still dreams of becoming a prosperous and free nation. We need help and support, we need that this horror, the one my fellow inmates and I have and continue to suffer, be halted.

I beg you to accept my gratitude in advance.

Yours faithfully,

Angel Santiesteban
Prisión 1580.

Partial list of those sanctioned and processed for political reasons drawn up on the basis of what the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation published this year, more cases have been added since then. There may be more cases we do not know:

1- Abreu Bonora, M.arcelino
2- Alcalá Aramboru, Harold
3- Alonso Hernández, Claro Fernando
4- Alonso Parada, Lázaro
5- Álvarez Pedrozo, Pedro de la Caridad
6- Álvarez Puig, Yordanis
7- Arce Romero, Lewis
8- Arcia Céspedes, Pavel
9- Arzuaga Peña, Ariel Eugenio
10- Ávila Sierra, Lázaro
11- Borges Pérez, Ernesto
12- Brachaw Alexander, Dolyn
13- Bravo López, Joel
14- Cano Díaz Joel
15- Caraballo Betancourt, Madeline Lázara
16- Castillo González, Reinaldo
17- Cervantes García Jorge
18- Cerezo Sirut Leandro
19-Cobas Sendó, Roelvis
20- Cornel de la Rosa, Raúl Manuel
21- Corrales Jiménez, Nayibis de la Caridad
22- De Miranda Rubo, Karel
23- Delgado Aramburo, Maikel
24- Díaz Bouzá, Miguel
25- Díaz Ortíz, José Ángel
26- Farret Delgado, Yander
27- Frenández Benitez, Luis Enrique
28- Figuerola Miranda, Enrique
29- Forbes Lamorú, Alain
30- Frometa Allen, Eider
31- Frometa Lobaina, Ángel
32- Garro Alfonso, Sonia
33- González Castillo, Eliso
34- González Estrada, Alexander
35- González Moreno, Ulises
36- González Pozo, Eldris
37- Gross, Allan Philip
38- Guía Piloto, Yosiel
39- Henry Grillo, Ramón
40- Hermán Aguilera, José David
41- Hernández Ruiz Ricardo
42- Labrador Díaz, Luis Enrique
43- Ledea Pérez, Wilmer
44- Lescay Veloz, Rider
45- Lima Cruz, marcos Maikel
46- López de Moya, Danny
47- Lozada Igarza, Luis Enrique
48- Martín Calderín, Carlos Rafael
49- Martín Calderín, Miraida
50- Matos Montes de Oca, Rafael
51- Muñoz González, Ramón Alejandro
52- Mustelier Galán, Bismark
53- Naranjo Bonne, Omar
54- Núñez Pascual, Adriana
55- Osoria Claro, Francisco
56- Padrón Quintero, Santiago
57- Parada Ramírez, Raúl
58- Peña Ramírez Jesús Manuel
59- Pérez Bocourt, Elias
60- Pérez Pérez, Danny
61- Pérez Puentes, Jorge Luis
62- Piloto Barceló, David
63- Planas Robert, Emilio
64- Pradera Váldez, Máximo
65- Puig Rodríguez, Yelkis
66- Quvedo Valladares, Eliosbel
67- Real Suárez, Humberto Eladio
68- Reyes Rodríguez, Francisco
69- Ribeau Noa, Arcelio
70- Rivera Guerra, Niorvis
71- Riveri Gascón, Ernesto Roberto
72- Rodríguez Acosta, Osvaldo
73- Rodrígez Castillo, Osvaldo
74- Rodríguez Jiménez, Boris
75- Romero Hurtado, Lázaro
76- Salmerón Mendoza, Erick
77- Sánchez Pérez, César Andrés
78- Santiesteban Prats, Ángel Lázaro
79- Santovenia Fernández, Daniel Candelario
80- Sarraf Trujillo, Rolando
81- Sosa Fortuny, Armando
82- Surís de la Torre, Ihosvani
83- Tavío López, Rogelio
84- Terrero Carrión, Grerardo
85- Thomas González, Yoanny
86- Torres, Luis Antonio
87- Torres Mártínez, Yoan
88- Tudela Iríbar, Rolando
89- Triana González, Orlando
90- Vargas Martín, Alexei
91- Vargas Martín, Diango
92- Vargas Martín, Vianco
93- Vázquez Osorio, Juan Carlos

Political prisoners who continue to serve their sentences on parole:

1- Argüelles Morán, Pedro
2- Biscet González, Oscar Elías
3- Díaz Fleitas, Eduardo
4- Espinosa Chepe, Oscar Manuel
5- Ferrer García, José Daniel
6- Gónzalez Marrero, Disodado
7- Hérnandez Carrillo, Iván
8- Linares García, Librado
9- López Pérez, Abel
10- Maseda Gutiérrrez, Héctor
11- Moya Acosta, Ángel Juan
12- Navarro Rodríguez, Felix
13- Olivera Castillo, Jorge
14- Palacios Ruiz Héctor
15- Ramos Lauzurique Arnaldo
16- Roque Caballero, Martha Beatriz

30 April 2013

Tribute from El Fogonero to Angel Santiesteban / Angel Santiesteban

MV5BMTg5NzM2MTY2N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNzQ5NjYxNA@@._V1_SY317_CR12,0,214,317_While we wait with growing worry for news of Angel, we share here this tribute dedicated to him by his close friend Camilo Venegas El Fogonero.

When Fatties Go on Hunger Strike

In Clandestinos, one of the Cuban films I most enjoy, there is a moment that I really like. It’s near the beginning. Dozens of young revolutionaries who remain prisoners in a jail in a dictatorship, decide to declare a hunger strike.

One of them, who is fat — they call him El Gordo — and who was played by Amado del Pino, is taking a shower when a decision is made. With his head still soapy, he looks at the camera and raises his index finger, “Hey, no, no hunger strike, better suicide,” he says.

Then, when those who were selected for the strike are transferred with their mats to another cell block, the fat guy tries to sneak. The group leader (Luis Alberto Garcia) persuades him and he says he can not resist: “Look, I have this support this,” answers el Gordo, and hefts his enormous paunch, “I have more than you.”

A cut puts the viewer in the dark night of the galley. All are in bed and hungry. El Gordo is joking with his companions and about to pronounce one of the most delicious speeches of Cuban film history:

“Pino, Pinito, what you doing now, bro, if the old guy shows up out there with a little plate or two…what’s more, with a bucket of soup?” he says, savoring it.

“A little soup with cheese, delicious. Mommy, throw me a bucket of soup, enough to go around. Enough to get our mouths dirty. You’re not messy when you eat? Ah, whoever doesn’t get messy isn’t enjoying it.”

“Gordo, for Pete’s sake, shut up,” his companion says.

“It’s so delicious to get messy, buddy!”

“Keep it up, Gordo.”

“Me, since I was a kid, I get the food all over my face. Me, I’m an eater, and if I’m an eater I’m going to keep on eating.”

“Gordo, fucking can it. Stop, dammit!”

“Well fuck me,” he insists. “Here, at first I dreamed of women, but now I dream of tamales…!”

First, they throw a show. Later, the leader of the group goes and threatens to kill him if he keeps talking about food.

Invisible Threads

Through the same invisible threads that helped Antonio Gramsci to get his writings out of prison, this message came to me from a punishment cell in Havana, Cuba.

“To El Fogonero Camilo Venegas
“Love is not surrendured as long as I breathe. The pain and the injustice multiply. And I wake up happy.”

Ángel Santiesteban

Published in El Fogonero

23 April 2013

Prison Diary XIV. The Punishment of the “Master” / Angel Santiesteban

In Castro’s Cuba those who dare to confront the system, like the Creoles who faced the Crown during the colonial period, will be imprisoned, tortured, killed or exiled.

Nothing has changed. The Castro regime continues to harass those who think differently; they are making me pay for my posts by bringing me to this closed prison to which they have “sentenced” me, according to their own laws, it is  another violation of my rights as because I should be in a prison camp, as I was in La Lima Prison.

But it’s not enough that they unjustly condemned me without any proof or that they locked me in prison, I have been put in a cell block where the prisoners are on a severe regime, those who have committed serious crimes. Because it is State Security who controls my fate in jail and Lieutenant Colonel Reuben of Section 21 warned me so, on his visit to the La Lima prison.

Here in the 1580 Prison, the inmates at times pressure me because everyone wants me to listen to their pain, for me to tell the world of the injustices and abuses that the Cuban prison system commits against them. And I leave my writing and reading to listen. And they show me the beds of those who have committed suicide.

Beside me, one shows me his arms marked all along their length, cuts that he has done more and more as a protest against injustice. The re-educators should ensure that they respect our “rights,” but they’re incapable of it, and sometimes you see them move from one place to another with their military uniforms waiting for their work shifts to end.

Many prisoners have completed their sentences but because of bureaucratic paperwork remain imprisoned.

They, in their silence and in the opposition with their voices, one day very soon, will be rewarded with a society of Rights.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

1580 Prison, San Miguel del Padrón. April 2013

28 April 2013

Prison Diary XII: The Birth of a Dissident / Angel Santiesteban

Lamberto Hernández  Plana foto de Hablemos Press
Lamberto Hernández Planas

Just days before Angel was moved illegally and by force from La Lima prison, where he was incarcerated for crimes he did not commit, and when we are still without news of him except that he was locked in the 1580 Prison, or The Pitirre, in San Miguel del Padron, on a severe regime, well away from possible visits international and national journalists and human rights and without even being allowed to make a call to his family, managed to get this post out for the world to remember the terrible case of a prisoner of conscience with whom he shared his prison, Lamberto Hernandez Planas.

Lamberto’s case became known well outside the island and was even brought before the Congress of Deputies in Spain. Even so, and after denouncing it for years, Lamberto has spent more than two decades incarcerated and is a clear example of how the Havana regime systematically violates human rights and how it punishes dissent.

Angel has included links at the end of the post for those who want to know more and initiate action to also demand justice for him.

Thank you very much.
The Editor

Lamberto Hernández Planas or How a Dissident is Born

In La Lima Prison, where I am serving an unjust sentence for crimes I didn’t commit, I met another political prisoner, Lamberto Hernandez Planas, who is 43 and will soon have served 22 years in prison. Neither the tortures and horrors that I will related to you have made him budge a single inch from his ideas of freedom. continue reading

I shall digress. Whenever I hear the testimonies of the victims of the violence of the dictatorship I think of the people of Cuba, of those who, when we achieve a free system and the terrible abuses of the Castro government are brought to light, will say that they knew nothing of the atrocities committed against their brethren. I especially think about the intellectuals who support the regime and silence in their works the truths that they should collect and capture in their art.

Lamberto Hernández, despite over two decades of imprisonment and being subjected to inhuman special security regimes — in which he has suffered and endured the unspeakable — has not ceased to fight.

In the early ‘90s, he dedicated himself to bringing pottery from the Isle of Youth to Havana with the intention of reselling it, and thanks to having mastered Portuguese, he became friends with African students. His life passed totally normally until a State Security official approached him intending to propose that he collaborating over some foreign students suspected of being counterrevolutionaries.

His job would be to extract information, and in particular some information about the possible intention to create a political party. If he obtained this information, he should go to the police station at Gerona to send it.

Lamberto, who up to then had had no political inclinations, accepted the proposal and promised to see if he could obtain this information. But his real intention was to shake off the official.

They waited months and after having giving him several warnings to cooperate and understanding that he would not, they decided to act: he was arrested and taken to the police station, where he was charged with theft. They presented it as a complaint from a young person he didn’t know.

Then he learned that it was a 23-year-old who’d been blackmailed because she prostituted herself with foreign students. He didn’t even have a residence permit in that city, and for more proof presented be the defense, on the date of the supposed events he was not in Gerona because he was in Havana. Of course his witnesses were useless.

It was known ahead of time that he was already sentenced (any resemblance to other realities is purely coincidental). From the time of his unjust conviction and entering the penitentiary, he started his activity in the opposition, first claiming his innocence and civil rights, but then his conscience grew and with it his political activism as he circulated through prisons all over the island, seven in total. He met the opponents most representative of the Cuban dissidents, and, like in school, he took in readings and practices and citizenship.

His convictions were growing along his protests about the penalties and those hiding behind common accusations. For this he received beatings and suffered multiple fractures. He undertook several hunger strikes, sometimes the only weapon left to Cuban political prisoner to demand justice, which have left many injuries in his body.

He describes how he bore those years of “special regimes,” especially the first eight, six of them without any family visits.

They kept adding new sentences “for inciting the masses” in prisons, “boycott,” “organizing political activities” in prisons, but all of them dressed up as common crimes to prevent recognizing them as a political prisoner of conscience.

In 2003, state security, in a gesture of desperation, offered for him to serve as an informant and then a witness in the trials of the 75 dissidents arrested in the “Black Spring,” to which, of course, he flatly refused and so he came to be known as prisoners of conscience when he returned to the cell.

For his refusal to collaborate again and pronounced stance against the Government he has been the victim of intense torture and have even attempts to kill him. His body carries the burden of chronic diseases such as peripheral neuropathy, second-degree internal hemorrhoids, and amblyopia (shortsightedness), hiatal hernia, esophagitis, bleeding chronic gastritis, duodenitis, a cyst on a testicle caused from the kicks – which causes inflammation and severe pain, and rectal bleeding that doctors have not yet been able to discover the cause of.

When he reached the famous special regime Kilo 7, the guards were waiting at the entrance of the prison to warn: “You reeducate yourself or we will reeducate you,” to which Lambert replied: “If they kill men here, I came to defy death.” Immediately he  received the first of the many beatings that later did not cease.

“I always wonder,” Lamberto tells me, “why we suffered so much that we have given everything for the freedom of Cuba … it is not enough to have given my entire youth and endured pain and humiliation.” But when you think of what you can all Cubans could enjoy, but above all genuine freedom for our children and grandchildren, it seems little to commit to the cause.

He assures me that, despite his now twenty-two years of imprisonment, the physical and mental health and the twelve hunger strikes, he is still up in arms but not with the same strength but with the same spirit multiplied to continue defending our human rights, unyielding, and always without falling into the sentimental trap of offering freedom that they have announced since 2011.

Lamberto Hernández belongs to the Human Rights Committee, he was part of Hard Line Front and the Orlando Zapata Tamayo Boycott, and today is part of the Cuban Republican Party (PRC). His wife Niurka Rivera Despaigne is part of the Ladies in White and the Latin American Federation of Rural Women (FLAMUR).

“That’s my modest contribution, brother,” he says and walks away because he’s been warned that recount is starting. I look at the silhouette of this humble man who struggles from complete anonymity.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

La Lima Prison, March 2013

http://www.plantados.org/?p=6329

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y01/ago01/13a5.htm

http://www.primaveradigital.org/websitepublisher//articles/1092/1/HUELGA-DE-HAMBRE-EN-CANALETAS/Page1.html

http://elpais.com/diario/2007/03/24/opinion/1174690804_850215.html

http://angelicamorabeals1.blogspot.com.ar/2011/05/campana-internacional-por-la-libertad.html

http://www.libertadsindical.com/liberado-diosdado-gonzalez-marrero-y-oscar-e-biscet-denuncia-estado-de-las-prision-combinado-del-este-en-la-habana/

http://www.pinceladasdecuba.com/2010/09/huelga-de-hambre-el-prisionero-politico.html

http://www.directorio.org/comunicadosdeprensa/note.php?note_id=2851

http://defiendecuba.blogspot.com.ar/2012/03/lamberto-hernandez-plana-un-luchador.html

http://www.congreso.es/public_oficiales/L9/CONG/BOCG/D/D_467.PDF#page=14

11 April 2013

URGENT: Reporters Without Borders Ask for Immediate Release of Angel Santiesteban

Call for the release of the blogger Angel Santiesteban-Prats, imprisoned two months ago.

Reporters Without Borders calls on the Cuban authorities to release Ángel Santiesteban-Prats, writer and author of the blog The Children Nobody Wanted, who was imprisoned on February 28, 2013, as soon as possible. The prisoner, currently on hunger strike, was placed in solitary confinement when he was transferred to [another] prison in early April.

“The same day that the authorities agreed to release the dissident journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, Angel Santiesteban-Prats was transferred to Prison 1850 and placed under a maximum severity. This detention is both absurd and cruel. The authorities, who believe that this will set an example, can never prevent pluralistic expression among the population. Ángel Santiesteban-Prats should be released without delay,” said Reporters Without Borders, which continues to encourage the blogger to end his hunger strike.

“The Cuban government, which in January 2013 assumed the presidency of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), fails to meet its international commitments on matters of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Member countries of CELAC should remind it of this requirement,” the organization added.

The blogger, who was transferred on 9 April to Prison 1850 in San Miguel del Padron (Havana), began a hunger strike shortly after he arrived at the prison, before they put him in an isolation cell, without light or water. He is only allowed to talk on the phone a few minutes a day. On April 22 Angel Santiesteban-Prats reported that he was assaulted by prison guards. Immobilized he was forced to swallow a stinking liquid that made him sick.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats was sentenced to five years in prison on December 8, 2012, officially for “violation of domicile and injury” following an expedited process. The writer, who has won several major literary awards, had been arrested several times before this final instance, because of his political stance. They redoubled their efforts to harass him since he created his blog, independent and critical of the government.

In addition to Ángel Santiesteban-Prats, there is another “information action” imprisoned in Cuba and that is it is Luis Antonio Torres, an employee of the newspaper Granma, who was arrested in 2011 and sentenced in July to fourteen years in prison for “espionage,” a crime he never committed. Reporters Without Borders is also calling for his swift release.

From Reporters Without Borders

29 April 2013

Open Letter from Angel Santiesteban to His Holiness Francisco / Angel Santiesteban

Havana, Cuba, April 3, 2013

“… justice is like a serpent, a viper, that never bites the boots,
it only bites the barefoot.”
Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero
Archbishop of San Salvador, murdered in 1980.

Your Holiness Francisco, first of all I want to thank God, for your devotion and faith, you who have been designated the first Pope, for other merits, Latin American, for the pride of those born on this continent; so it is somehow impossible not to consider you closer and more earthly, for your own Latino people.

Holy Father, I confess that since the loss of my beloved Pope John Paul II, my tie to Catholicism has dimmed, but You, despite the few days you have sat in your humble papal chair, you have practiced that modesty that elevates and exalts, which has already revolutionized the universal church.

Your Beatitude, I write from a prison in Cuba, where I am serving a wrongful conviction for a crime that could not be proved, for opening a critical blog from which I write on behalf of social justice, a penalty that has the sole purpose of teaching me a lesson,although they have not been able to silence my voice, but my heart will not let me cry in my favor, I prefer, I need, I am urged to seek justice for Prisoners of Conscience who suffer in Cuban jails.

Supreme Pontiff, the situation being experienced by our island is already known and unacceptable in the twenty-first century, to paraphrase our beloved Pope John Paul II, to not open itself to the world, to not even open its blinds to plural national thinking, as should correspond to any civilized nation in the world.

Messenger of Peace, we are prisoners because we overcome the fear; the need to be heard made us take off the gag, so we have faced the punishment of the dictatorship, which unfortunately holds to maintain silence and its discipline, attacking with imprisonment, beatings and the mysterious deaths of opposition leaders.

Your Grace, in this prison where I live with two brothers in the struggle: Lamberto Hernández Planas and Pedro de la Caridad Alvarez Pedroso, who have spent 22 years in prison, more than half of their lives, without having committed acts of bloodshed, without having hurt a human being; also suffering imprisonment are a married couple, Sonia Garro Alfonso and her husband Ramon Alejandro Munoz, who have not harmed anyone, only their ideas have been enough to keep them in jail without cause or conviction; as well as Calixto Martinez, for his journalism. But they are not unique; like them there are many throughout the country’s prison system.

Universal Pastor, my voice was one that opposed the last visit of Pope Benedict XVI, because I felt that was a mockery of the Vatican, as the Cuban government took advantage of his kindness and good intentions, and every papal visit only adds a false recognition before humanity, especially when Cuban representatives of the church that you represent ignores the Cuban opposition as a political force.

Dear Pope, José Martí, the Cuban most universal, addressing a soldier wrote on October 20, 1884: “A people is not founded, General, in the same way that one commands a military camp,” and the current governing Nomenklatura Cuba accepts no position different from the militarized.

We ask you, as Vicar of Christ, that do not rub against the manipulations of the Castro brothers, exercised for more than half a century since the beginnings of their  nefarious power in 1959. With humility, we pray that you be elusive to their  antichrist offerings. For the Cuban people it is not enough that we have have the holy days returned to us. We need freedom, “Which can not be anything other than freedom to think differently,” (Rosa Luxemburg), and that they accept and respect once again the Universal Human Rights.

Bishop of Rome, I have the hope that your papal administration will bring peace for Cubans. So that then, one Cuba united, without hatred or pain, will give you the spontaneous welcome no Pope has received on this soil.

Humbly I beg of you,

Ángel Santiesteban Prats
Writer
La Lima Prison
Havana, Cuba

* This letter was written by Ángel on April 3 when he had not yet been illegally and forcefully transferred to La Lima prison. It was just delivered yesterday April 24 at the headquarters of the Nunciature in Havana.

Today, April 25, Angel continues in the strict regime prison in 1580. The reason for his transfer was to prevent his being interviewed by the Commission of National and International Journalists who visited the center on April 9. This visit was one of many performances organized by the Castro regime to deceive the world about what really happens in their prisons, authentic concentration camps. Three weeks before the UN Human Rights Commission meets in Geneva and submits a report on the Castro government which will include aspects of prison policy, the committee of journalists — without the least ethical principles — counting on the complicit silence with all the human rights violations committed by the dictatorship. The UN Human Rights Commission, based in Geneva, now has in its hands the possibility to remedy such an affront to the dignity committed by the journalists. In a few days we will know if they will.

25 April 2013

Angel Santiesteban: Open Letter to the UN Commission on Human Rights*

I write to you from the depths of despair produced by being a prisoner of conscience in one of the horrendous prisons of the Castro brothers. In their hands is the opportunity to impose agony upon an extensive penal population that survives the cruelest famine and physical and psychological torture.

To hide the truth, I was taken on April 9 just before international journalists arrived at La Lima prison. They took me out by the back door and I was taken to another prison, 1580, where they have committed all sorts of outrages and humiliations worthy of Nazi concentration camps.

The lack of food and proper sanitation are the other elements that add up to make this a real prison camp. They violate the most basic rights of human beings and their families. Prisoners live crammed together amid continuing violence.

In recent months there have been two large fires of unexplained causes. Multiple suicides are also a daily part of life in prison.

Upon my arrival, after several days of hunger strike and being put in solitary with no light, no water, no clothes or toiletries, I was attacked by several guards, holding me by my limbs while another squeezed my nostrils shut until I opened my mouth to breathe, and then they put stinking soup in my mouth that choked me; and so, over and over, until I was on the floor completely covered in the food helpless to avoid it.

I want to report to Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Quintana, head of the Havana Province.

I also want to clarify that my situation is not the worst. I would like them to listen to the abused themselves so that they can explain the hell in which they live. I fear not being credible enough to expose the horror and the wickedness that we suffer daily.

The dictatorship must understand once and for all that it is impossible to maintain disastrous power based on the people’s pain.

We beg this to take the testimony firsthand, under full oath, and ask God to put his pitying hands on this country forgotten by the international community, and that they manage to collect the testimonies of prisoners without their being threatened ahead of time, as usual.

We ask that Cuba sign the UN covenants and accept the statements of Human Rights, if not, to take appropriate measures to expel the concert of free nations which aims to live undiscovered barbarism imposed on us.

We are a devastated country which — despite these fifty-four years of slavery — we still dream of becoming a prosperous nation.

Please accept my thanks in advance.

Ángel Santiesteban Prats

Prisión 1580. San Miguel del Padrón, Havana. Cuba.

* The HRC in Geneva, Switzerland, was created by 47 member states on March 15, 2006 in the Assembly of the United Nations, to promote universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms of all persons, without distinction of any kind, and in a fair and equitable manner. Along with the Security Council, these are two of the principal organs of the highest level and prestige within the UN system.

23 April 2013

URGENT SOS: Angel Santiesteban forced to swallow a strange liquid that made him feel sick / Angel Santiesteban

We just received a very worrying message from Havana from Angel, who so far has told us in other communications that he is being treated badly and is held under severe conditions in Prison 1580.

As we denounced yesterday, they only allow him phone calls of a few minutes, because of which the uncertainty is still greater, as in those few minutes there is not enough time to explain what’s happening.

Right now the information we have is that Angel had asked to eat food and wear clothes that the prison authorities don’t allow, and he is not receiving the letters sent by family and friends.

Today he was able to call — for just a couple of minutes again — and denounced that they held him by his hands and feet and forced him to swallow a strange liquid, and he didn’t know what it was.

Apparently this is a method of reprisal because Angel has not been eating any of the prison food, only the food brought to him from outside: cookies and things like that, very little nourishment.

Today he also asked that we send pants a size smaller than his usual size. And said he didn’t feel well. We don’t know if it is because of what they forced him to drink.

It is no secret to anyone what resources the regime’s assassins have up their sleeves. There are enough denunciations from prisoners who have been made ill by treatment of this kind, some of them gravely so, because they’ve been made to drink strange things.

ALL THE EYES OF THE WORLD ARE FOCUSED ON RAUL CASTRO: ONCE MORE WE WANT TO EXPRESS THAT WE HOLD HIM DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE, ALONG WITH HIS HENCHMEN, FOR WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN TO ANGEL.

Angel is an honest man, a good person, a loving father. No lie from the Regime can change that reality. What they are doing does more damage than they have already done and dispels the doubts in any honest minds who still believe they are not consummate assassins.

We, the families and friends of Angel, will remain here to denounce what is happening to him and to demand that he be immediately returned to La Lima Prison — from where he never should have been removed — and that he be guaranteed the full enjoyment of all of his rights.

22 April 2013