Castroite totalitarianism accumulates an unparalleled level of evil regarding imprisonment in our hemisphere.
14ymedio, Pedro Corzo, Miami, 27 October 2024 — I regret to be forced to write again about the immortal Cuban political prisoners, the best and most glorious proof – after the firing squad, the dead in combat and the missing – that a broad sector of our people refuses to live under totalitarianism.
Miguel Díaz Bauzá is a worthy example of Jose Martí’s statement: “When there are many men without honor, there are always others who have in themselves the honor of many men.” Being outside Cuba, far from the traumatizing experience of living under oppression, he decided, together with a group of comrades, to leave for the island to bring freedom to his compatriots, organizing an armed uprising against Fidel Castro’s dictatorship.
It is fair to say it because honoring honors. Many Cuban exiles have abandoned their family life and possessions, risking everything to land in Cuba to fulfill their duty to fight for freedom and human dignity. Heroism has not been lacking, as the writer and former political prisoner Jose Antonio Albertini affirms.
The living conditions of political prisoners are inhuman, those imprisoned for common crimes are not any better
Díaz Bauzá arrived on the shores of Caibarién on October 15, 1994, together with the martyr of the country Armando Sosa Fortuny, who died in prison after serving 44 years in two terms. Sosa Fortuny entered Cuba twice clandestinely, in 1960 and 1994, and died in 2019.
They were accompanied by Humberto Eladio Real Suarez, 29 years behind bars, and also former political prisoners Jesús Rojas Pineda, José Ramón Falcón Gómez, Pedro Visao Peña and Lázaro González Caraballo.
Castroite totalitarianism accumulates an unparalleled level of evil regarding imprisonment in our hemisphere. The living conditions of political prisoners are inhuman; those imprisoned for common crimes are not any better.
The number of people who have served more than 20 years in prison under brutal conditions is striking, with Mario Chanes de Armas who reached 30 years, today surpassed by Díaz Bauzá, who reached more than 30 years with his two sentences, a term invented by the Cuban prison authorities to try to destroy the dignity of these brave men.
Many prisoners served their sentence facing year after year the repressive acts of the regime’s henchmen and challenging the authorities, so that when the time came for their release they were not released, having to serve months and even years in prison due to the administrative disposition of the Ministry of the Interior, at the whim of a high-ranking official or through a trial as spurious and unjust as all those carried out by the dictatorship. These prisoners began to be known as the “reconvicted” among their fellow inmates.
The regime could not tolerate the rebellious behavior of many men and women, so, violating its own laws, they “recondemned” them.
It is unacceptable that Díaz Bauzá, 81 years old, has served 30 years in prison and is still in jail. We must not remain silent in the face of such cruelty and we must denounce the false pretext of a new sentence of 25 years for having participated in a violent incident in one of the many dungeons of the tyranny.
Many prisoners served their sentence facing year after year the repressive acts of the regime’s henchmen and challenging the authorities
Those who know him affirm he is a man of honor with a deep sense of justice. Angel de Fana, a former political prisoner for 20 years, with whom he speaks relatively frequently, says that the prisoner is not willing to make any kind of concessions to get out of prison, despite the decades that have passed and his poor health condition, which is why medicines have to be sent to him from overseas.
Díaz Bauzá is one of the people who has been in prison the longest for political reasons in the continent, a painful distinction that the totalitarian dictatorship intends to extend until 2032, which would make him serve 38 years in prison. The behavior of the Cuban dictatorship against Miguel Díaz Bauzá is the reiteration of evil, injustice and abuse of absolute power against those who want freedom and citizens’ rights on the island.
The Cuban regime’s perversion has no equal. Poverty and the violation of citizens’ rights reign from one end of the island to the other. Crises follow one after another in these six-and-a-half-long decades leaving a severe impact on the citizens.
Translated by LAR
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