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Don't Forget the Victims In Castro's Gulag
By Mary Anastasia O'Grady

The Wall Street Journal /The Americas

August 22, 2003. "Kirkpatski, Kirkpatski," Andrei Sakharov exclaimed when he met Jeanne

Kirkpatrick in Moscow. "I have so wanted to meet you and thank you in

person. Your name is known in all the Gulag."

 

The reason why, wrote National Review's Jay Nordlinger when he related that

incident in June 2001, was because she had named names of Soviet prisoners,

"giving men and women in the cells a measure of hope."

 

Mr. Nordlinger's piece sought to draw attention to Cuban repression, more

than a decade after the Soviet system had collapsed. Two years later, the

situation is even worse. It's a good time to remind Washington that, pros

and cons of Wyoming beef sales to Fidel aside, the innocents rotting -- and

getting beat up -- in Cuban jails must not be forgotten.

 

Ms. Kirkpatrick, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told Mr.

Nordlinger, "This much I have learned: It is very, very important to say the

names, to speak them. It's important to go on taking account as one becomes

aware of the prisoners and the torture they undergo." The regime "want[s]

not only to imprison them, they want no one to have heard of them, no one to

know who or where they are. So to just that extent, it's tremendously

important that we pay attention."

 

Recall that in March a new wave of repression swept Cuba. Seventy-five of

the most important dissident leaders were sent to filthy, rodent infested

prisons to serve sentences of 20 years or more. The prisoners have been

sited far from where their families live and even when difficult

transportation can be arranged, they are often denied visitors. When they

are not in solitary they are crammed in small spaces with common criminals

where the toilet is a hole in the floor. Some of them are very sick and a

few could die if they are not granted decent medical treatment soon.

 

One seriously ill political prisoner is Oscar Espinosa Chepe, a 63-year-old

independent economist who suffers from cirrhosis of the liver. By telephone

from Cuba on Wednesday his wife Miriam Leiva told me that when he was

arrested in March, he was interrogated for hours at the Villa Marista state

security headquarters in Havana and suffered deep psychological torture and

sleep deprivation. The regime refused to supply the medicine he needed for

his liver condition or to let his family bring it to him. Without medical

treatment and a proper diet his condition worsened.

 

He was later sent to the western side of the island, some 500 miles from

home. Then he was moved to several other locations without any notification

to his wife, who each time had to try to find him.

 

For more than eight days in July Mr. Chepe was locked in a cell with no

windows in solitary. He is now at a Havana "military hospital," in a small

cell with tiny windows that do not open and no running water. His wife has

reason to believe that psychiatrists are drugging him.

 

Another important Cuban economist that Fidel has sentenced to his gulag is

58-year-old Marta Beatriz Roque. This courageous woman has already done

years in the slammer for authoring, with three others, a paper discussing

Cuba's economic problems. She is gravely ill with a heart condition and has

lost more than 40 pounds.

 

Oscar Elias Biscet is a devout Christian and a pacifist whose work to teach

Cubans about the Universal Human Rights Declaration riles Castro. He was

arrested in March and no one has been allowed to see him since April. In a

June 1 letter to his family he described his first 37 days in jail: "They

took away all my personal belongings including my underwear and led me to a

dark and dirty cell with the only ventilation consisting of the soot and

petroleum smoke coming from the prison kitchen."

 

Librado Linares lived in the province of Villa Clara and became a threat to

Castro because he had such success in organizing intellectuals and

activists. He also led humanitarian efforts like lunch programs for the

elderly. He has played an important role in the national dissident movement.

He was the first person arrested in March and is in solitary confinement.

 

Roberto De Miranda is the head of Cuba's Association of Independent

Teachers, which seeks to provide education without ideology. He is also

"guilty" of involvement in Cuba's grass-roots democracy movement known as

the Varela Project. Mr. De Miranda has a very serious heart condition and

has suffered at least one heart attack in prison. As with the others, his

living conditions are not fit for an animal.

 

Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva, a blind human-rights lawyer and a Christian, has

been in prison without trial since March 2001. The regime now accuses him of

self-mutilation. In a letter he corrects the record and appeals to the U.N.

Human Rights Commission. "In the 16 months I have been confined in this

dreadful place, I have suffered the most savage physical and psychological

tortures . . . to force me to become a collaborator of the State Security,"

including, he says, attacks by the common criminal prisoners.

 

All this is classic Castro "justice." His crimes against humanity have been

reported by hundreds of former prisoners. They are heartbreaking to anyone

with a heart. Yet there is also something enormously empowering about these

heroes. Roberto De Miranda's wife put it well when she said, "I felt such

great pride when I saw him and when I saw him I felt more courage to

continue struggling even more than I do now."

 

Dr. Biscet has written: "I say to my brothers in exile, the international

community and the Cuban people that I feel kidnapped only for defending the

right to life and the right of all Cubans to live in freedom. What inspires

me is alive: God and the great teachers of non-violence present today more

than ever. As Martin Luther King said: 'If a nation is capable of finding

amongst its ranks of people 5% willing to go voluntarily to prison for a

cause they consider just, then no obstacle will stand in their way.'"

 

That is precisely what Castro fears. The Free World has a moral obligation

to pay attention to the victims in his gulag.

 

Reprinted with permission of The Wall Street  Journal © 2003

   Dow Jones & Company. All rights reserved.

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