Prison Diary XXII: Maximum Security and Minimum Decency / Angel Santiesteban

Some days ago I was told that I had been “revoked” to a maximum security prison for six months for the hunger strike I undertook. They are so predictable I could not help smiling. But it has been nothing more than a justification to punish me and keep me away from the phone in a further attempt to reduce the regularity of the posts I write for my blog, The Children Nobody Wanted.

Since I’ve been here I haven’t gone to the dining room, for the benefit it represents for me to spend time in my cell, allowing me to write, read, and also avoid losing this in search of food you can not eat.

One prisoner told me that perhaps the conversation I had with the Prison Director had been a provocation for me to declare a hunger strike again, to land me in solitary confinement and to put an end to my public demands. They want to silence me to prevent me from giving my opinions about May 1st and their report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.

Once again, the government of the Castro brothers, violates the rights of a Cuban with their usual cynicism, using another lie to commit a new injustice, as I had been informed that he was not revoked because the transfer from La Lima Prison to 1580 Prison was not because of a discipline infraction, and this is what they also told my family on Saturday April 13.

Now I am, for those who still defend the dictatorship, in a maximum security prison, instead of the promised hospital where they would give me a “check up.” Lie after lie.

Worst of all is that they have emerged, again, unharmed before the Human Rights Council, precisely on the issue of prisons in Cuba, where they commit so many abuses and violate the rights of prisoners with impunity.

The Council and the world must prevent the Cuban government from continuing to mock the United Nations.

We Cuban Prisoners ask each fair and decent citizen take a minute of your life and protest the abuses that occur in Cuban jails.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
1580 Prison, May 2013
Havana, Cuba

30 May 2013