Activists arrested in March crackdown

Cuban law greatly limits freedom of expression, association and assembly. Anyone attempting to voice views, attend meetings, or form organizations that do not conform to government policy or state ideology is likely to be persecuted, the punishments ranging from harassment and loss of employment to imprisonment and beatings.

For this reason, in Cuba there are hundreds of which we know, probably many more of which we do not know, who are political prisoners and/or prisoners of conscience. Political prisoners are generally thought as individuals incarcerated for political reasons. Amnesty International defines prisoners of conscience specifically as "people who are imprisoned by reason of their political, religious, or other conscientiously held beliefs or by reason of their ethnic origin, sex, colour or language, provided they have not used or advocated violence" ("Cuba: Current prisoners of conscience must be released," AMR 25/36/99).

Cuban political prisoners and prisoners of conscience run the gamut of age, sex, and color. Some have been explicitly convicted for political reasons, such as "enemy propaganda" or "desacato," a vague legal term that can be translated as "contempt for authority." Others have been detained on fictional criminal charges to disguise the political motivations for their arrests.

The judicial system in Cuba has little in place to protect these individuals since lawyers are employed by the Cuban state and are often reluctant to question seriously the arguments put forth by prosecutors or the Department of State Security. Furthermore, lawyers are not always given adequate time to prepare a defense, or alternately, detainees are held for long periods of time without access to a lawyer and sometimes even pressured to sign incriminating documents. ("Cuba: Current prisoners of conscience must be released,"AMR 25/36/99).

 

FOUR PROMINENT POLITICAL PRISONERS
Francisco Chaviano González
Juan Carlos González Leiva

Jorge Luis García Pérez (Antúnez)
Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina

Leonardo Miguel Bruzon Avila

Forty-nine-year-old Francisco Chaviano González began his work as an opposition activist in 1989 after he was caught trying to leave the country on a small, homemade boat. Sent first to Villa Maristas, headquarters of the Cuban Political Police, and later to the Prison of Quivicán in the province of Havana, he founded the Cuban Rafters Council (Consejo de Lancheros de Cuba) while in prison. This organization devoted itself to organizing a list of persons imprisoned for having tried to exercise their right to leave the country by their own means.


Chaviano continued the work with the council after he was released from prison. He began to document all the persons who had gone missing in the Florida Straits while attempting to leave Cuba. This action was most likely a decisive factor in the Cuban government's change of attitude, which became visible in the significant reduction of the sentences against persons fleeing from Cuba. The members of the council, however, gradually became aware that the reasons for this exodus lay, according to Chaviano's words "in the discrimination, the tourist apartheid, the labor legislation and in a general sense, the lack of basic and undeniable rights that the Cuban people suffer." Because of this observation, the members of the council decided to change the organization's name, thus the National Council for Civil Rights in Cuba was born.
The Cuban government also became aware of the council's change of name and strategy, and the authorities began to carry out a campaign of intimidation and harassment against Chaviano. On March 7, 1994, four armed men broke into his home and beat him. Amnesty International denounced this incident and launched a call for urgent action, expressing its concern over Francisco Chaviano's life. Still, the repression did not stop. On May 7, 1994, State Security arrested Chaviano and sent him to Villa Maristas again. There, he was accused falsely of "revealing secrets concerning state security."


After being held in isolation for 11 months in the so-called Cuban Lubianka, he was finally sentenced to 15 years in prison, in a trial with no guarantee of fair process. He is now serving this term at the Combinado del Este Prison in Havana. On May 11, 1994, Amnesty International identified him as a prisoner of conscience. Eight days later, on May 19, the State Department of the United States put out an official press release supporting his work as an opposition leader and asking for his immediate release from prison.


Francisco Chaviano was born on March 7, 1953, in Sagua la Grande, Villa Clara. His grandfather, José González Valdés, was a colonel of the Liberation Army that won independence from Spain. When Chaviano was seven years old his family moved to Havana and in 1975, at the age of 22, he began to work as Chief of the Work Organization and Salaries Department at the bus factory called Girón, where, as he has said in his own works, he began to realize how "absurd, irrational and dysfunctional the Cuban economy was." He left that job in 1980 to begin a career as a mathematics teacher in the Upper Middle Level of the Cuban school system, a position he abandoned in 1984 because of disagreements with the educational system of the Castro regime.


After leaving his job as a teacher, he began working as Chief of the Special Brigade for Construction Projects of the Ministry of Interior, and was fired in October 1988 because of his frequent open criticism of Fidel Castro.


In spite of every effort made by the Cuban government to destroy him with its irrational hate, Francisco Chaviano González has held to his beliefs.

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Juan Carlos González Leiva was violently injured and arrested on March 4, 2002. Imprisoned since that day at the State Security Prison in Pedernales, Holguin, Juan Carlos was incarcerated for carrying out a peaceful protest along with nine other human rights activists in the Antonio Luaces Iraola Hospital in Ciego de Avila denouncing the brutal beating of independent journalist Jesús Alvarez Castillo. At the hospital, the group of activists had prayed in solidarity with the journalist and had cried out: "Hail Christ the Lord!" "Long live human rights!" and "Down with Fidel!" Government security forces surrounded, beat and arrested them. All ten activists were accused of common crimes and are now awaiting trial, without right of bail, for "public disorder" and "contempt of authority." Two women are in house arrest while the other eight activists are confined in different prisons far from their homes. The Cuban authorities have tortured them physically and psychologically.

Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva is a 37-year-old blind Cuban lawyer. He presides over two non-governmental organizations considered illegal by Cuban authorities: the Independent Fraternity of Blind Cubans (Fraternidad de Ciegos Independientes Cubanos), which promotes the improvement of conditions for the physically handicap on the island, and the Cuban Foundation for Human Rights (Fundación Cubana de Derechos Humanos) committed to the defense of human rights in Cuba.

Juan Carlos is a Christian of humble origin who has suffered arbitrary arrests, systematic psychological torture, intimidation, verbal abuse, and numerous beatings that have required stitches, caused lesions to an ear, and broken ribs. He has had his clothes ripped from his body, his glasses and cane broken, and he has been kidnapped and abandoned in a remote area.

Juan Carlos's house was searched in March 2002 during which personal property and human rights documents in Braille were confiscated, as well as all books from the Ignacio Agramonte Independent Library he had founded in his home.

Paramilitary groups have surrounded his home, which is watched by State Security, on other occasions. State Security constantly overhears telephone conversations. Juan Carlos's wife, Maritza Calderín Columbié, has received arrest, death and eviction threats. Relatives (father and mother, a brother, cousins, etc.), have suffered physical and psychological mistreatment as they have been pushed, arbitrarily arrested, verbally abused, threatened and blacklisted for being related to a human rights activist.

Gabriel Andreescu, a former Romanian dissident who resides in Bucharest, awarded Juan Carlos with the Pedro Luis Boitel Freedom Award in May 2001 for his heroic human rights struggle in Cuba.

The following is a list of the human rights violations committed against Juan Carlos and the other nine activists who were arrested on March 4, 2002:

Below are the names of the ten human rights activists, their prison sanctions, and their organizations:

Juan Carlos González Leiva (blind) - 6 years in prison - Fundacion Cubana de Derechos Humanos (FCDH)
Virgilio Mantilla Arango - 7 years (FCDH)
Delio Laureano Resquejo - 2 years and 8 months ( FDCH)
Lázaro Iglesias Estrada - 4 years and 6 months (FDCH)
Ana Pelaez García (under house arrest) - 4 years of forced labor (FDCH)
Odalmis Fuentes Fernández (under house arrest) - 4 years of forced labor (FDCH)
Enrique García Morejón - 6 years Movimiento Cristiano Liberación
Antonio García Morejón - 6 years Movimiento Cristiano Liberación
Léxter Téllez Castro - 6 years (independent journalist) - Agencia de Prensa Libre Avileña
Carlos Brizuela Yera - 5 years (independent journalist) - Colegio de Periodistas Independientes de Camaguey

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Jorge Luis García Pérez (Antúnez) was born on a historical date, October 10th, 1964, ninety six years after Carlos Manuel de Céspedes made his famous Yara Cry proclaiming the independence of Cuba from Spain. The economic situation of his home and the delicate health of his mother forced him to study at the ESBEC (Basic Secondary Schools in the Fields) and the IPUEC (Preuniversitary School in the Fields), where his first political questioning about the Castro's regime emerged after reading the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. From that moment on, he began rejecting all the indoctrination that was taught at school, and for that reason he was admonished in front of the professors and the staff. Because of this situation, and the imperative necessity to earn money to alleviate the terrible financial situation of his family, Jorge Luis understood that his long kept dream of becoming a lawyer was impossible, so he began working in the most diverse and tiring jobs, including working as a sugar cane cutter, construction worker and farm laborer. He was expelled from many of these jobs just for expressing his political points of view against the ruling dictatorship.


By this time, the Cuban government was watching Jorge Luis closely, and after he spent six months working at the Cuban Atomic Plant at Juraguá, Cienfuegos, he was fired as the result of an investigation carried out by the Ministry of Labor, which classified him as "disaffected to the process." In the last days of 1983, while he was chatting with some friends at the XX Anniversary Square in the city of Placetas, he said that the sole responsible party for the 23 Cubans who died in combat with the US Army at Granada was Fidel Castro, and he was immediately beaten by agents of the so called National Revolutionary Police (PNR). He was taken from there to the Instruction Department of the State Security Police in Santa Clara, where he was released after being issued a "warning act." But this intimidation did not stop Jorge Luis from expressing his will according to his beliefs. On March 15, 1990, while he was again at the XX Anniversary Square listening to an official radio transmission calling for the IV Congress of the Communist Party, he started to shout that communism was "an error and a utopia" and yelled, "We want and need reforms such as the ones carried out in Eastern Europe." He was immediately beaten by agents of the PNR and the State Security Police, who took him again to their headquarters in Santa Clara, where he was charged this time for "oral enemy propaganda."


This is the way that Jorge Luis' long, courageous history as a political prisoner began. In June of the same year, while already held in the Provincial Prison of Santa Clara, he was sentenced to 6 years in prison, and for that reason he started a hunger strike that lasted 21 days. This was the first of a long series of occasions during which Jorge Luis appealed to this kind of action to protest the innumerable, brutal beatings committed against him, being locked in a punishment dungeon without water or access to sunlight, and the uncountable offenses directed against his person because of the color of his skin. But none of these repressive acts has managed to break the unbridled spirit of this young prisoner of conscience. On February 19, 1991, he declared himself a Preso Plantado, refusing to wear the uniform of the non-political prisoners and rejecting the so-called "Communist Re-education." Among his multiple actions of rebellion and protest, one salient action was his escape from the Las Grimas Prison, in Placetas, on October 17, 1992. In 1995, while he was held in the Kilo 8 Major Severity Prison, known by the nickname of "Se me perdió la llave" (I have lost the keys), he founded, among other prisoners of conscience, an organization called the Pedro Luis Boitel Political Prisoner's Movement, which aims to denounce the terrible situation of political prisoners inside Castro's prisons and promote the use of civic resistance against the brutality of the jailers of the regime. He is now confined in the Sancti Spiritus Provincial Prison, also known as "Nieves Morejón."
From birth, Jorge Luis García Pérez (Antúnez)'s life has been marked by his commitment to freedom and the courage with which he has known how to defend it. A young man (actually only 38 years old), a member of the black race and of humble origins, his humanity in the face of the rage and racial antagonism that the dictatorship has directed against him are a convincing example that the tyranny of Fidel Castro is, more than a utopia, a pharisaic, criminal nightmare.

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Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina was born on April 27th, 1965, in the city of Baracoa, Cuba. In the early 80s he began his high school studies, and soon thereafter, his political views began to clash with the ideology of the present regime. After several analyses conducted by the school's directors, Nestor was identified as a person who refused to follow the regime's communist guidelines. Afterwards, he continued his studies in the field of energy but he was denied the right to continue with graduate studies due to so-called "ideology problems." In 1988, he moved to Havana to study art, literature and politics.

As a result of the transitions to democracy in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980's, a group of university students understood the necessity to promote changes in the political and economic structure of the Cuban nation by nonviolent methods. In June 1991, Nestor, along with several other young Cubans, founded the Cuban Youth for Democracy Movement (MCJD), an independent nongovernmental organization that promotes respect for the democratic liberties and human rights of the Cuban people. The official response was a ferocious persecution against each of the members of this group through the arbitrary and illegal methods.

The following is a brief summary of some of the most well known acts of repression perpetrated against Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina by the (DSE), Spanish acronym for Department of State Security (DSE), or the Cuban political police.

1. July 1991- Baracoa - Members of State Security circled Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina's home, taking books and documents and classifying them as subversive. He was detained in the Operations Department of State Security and accused of enemy propaganda under Case No. 73/1991. He was kept in the abovementioned department for two months.

2. December 1993- Baracoa - Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina was arrested by members of the political police, accused of being a "danger to society," and sentenced to 2 years in jail for openly expressing himself against the Cuban revolution and for not being part of any of the official political organizations, as is written at the end of his sentence.

3. June 1996- Havana- Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina was arrested by members of the DSE and charged with "resistance and disobedience," Case No. 228/1996. He was sentenced to 6 months of house arrest and five years of internal exile, exiled from his native city in the eastern region of the island.

4. April 1997- Baracoa- Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina was arrested by officers of the DSE. They circled his home in search of "supposed" enemy propaganda. He was charged with "disrespect and resistance," Case No. 22/1997 and sentenced to 18 months in the provincial jail in Guantánamo. During the time he spent in jail, he was victim of brutal beatings and cruel, inhumane physical tortures that endangered his life.

5. November 1999- Guantánamo- Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina was arrested by members of the DSE to obstruct his trip to Havana on the eve of the celebration of the IX Ibero-American Summit. During this arbitrary arrest, he was physically abused, suffering a fracture in his right hand. He was kept for five days without medical attention in a cell that was little more than a hole at the State Security Operations Department located at Kilometer 2 ½ on Salvador Highway, near Guantánamo.

6. December 1999- Santiago de Cuba- Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina was arrested at plain view by officials of the DSE and taken to the General Department of Police located in Zone Micro-9 District José Martí in Guantánamo. After being detained for more than 10 hours without any information, he was pushed into a car and taken to Niva Mountain at approximately 1:00 a.m. where he was subjected to a mock execution (a form of psychological torture). Afterwards, he was abandoned in the forest, about 40 kilometers from the nearest city in Santiago.

7. March 2000- Santiago de Cuba- Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina was arrested by officials of the DSE. He was accused of supposed "disrespect to the figure of the Commander in Chief Fidel Castro" and of "public disorder," Case No. 688/2000. He was sentenced to 6 years in prison and taken to Aguadores Prison in Santiago de Cuba. On October 20th, he was transferred to the prison of maximum security "Combinado of Guantánamo." The tribunal of the Popular Power ratified the sentence as a response to an appeal.

8. August 20th, 2001- Guantánamo- At 9:00 a.m., prisoner of conscience and President of the Cuban Youth For Democracy Movement Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina was brutally beaten by a gang of common prisoners on Floor 2-A, of the Provincial Penitentiary "Combinado of Guantánamo." He suffered multiple lesions to his jaw and eventually both sides of his jaw were fractured. Due to the seriousness of his injuries, he was transferred to the General Hospital "Agustino Neto" for specialized medical treatment. Once evaluated, the doctors concurred in keeping him in the hospital under guarded conditions at least until he was out of danger. Their decision was based on the premise that the prison's infirmary lacked the facilities needed by this prisoner for his treatment and recovery. The following day, without medical approval, Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina was removed from the hospital and transferred back to the prison, provoking a vigorous protest on the part of Mrs. Yunaibis Castillo Betancourt, Néstor's wife.

Today, Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina remains at the Combinado of Guantánamo Prison suffering repression and inhumane treatment only because of his political ideas. Since 1991 to the year 2000, Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina has been arrested and/or detained arbitrarily more than 90 times at the hands of the sophisticated repressive machinery of the Cuban regime solely for his peaceful, pro-democracy activities.

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Leonardo Miguel Bruzon Avila, president of the unofficial Movimiento 24 de Febrero, was arrested on Feb. 22, 2002, and at the time this report is written, has yet to be charged or brought to trial. It is believed that he was arrested as a way of preventing his participation in the commemorative activities that opposition groups carry out all over the island every Feb. 24th. On this day in 1996, the Cuban regime shot down two civilian planes of the exile group Brothers to the Rescue and killed four members. Bruzon Avila’s arrest was part of a general sweep that the Cuban government performed in February and March, arbitrarily detaining about two dozen opposition activists. Amnesty International considers Bruzon Avila a prisoner of conscience.

In addition to his work as a human rights activist, Bruzon Avila is also director of the 24th of February Independent Library in Havana. During his imprisonment, he has maintained a courageous stance of nonviolent resistance, meeting the government’s ruthless subjugation with a series of peaceful hunger strikes.

On March 15, 2002, he began the first hunger strike to protest his arbitrary incarceration and authorities’ refusal to allow his attorney access to his file. Previously, the defense attorney had filed a habeas corpus petition because he had not been allowed to see Bruzon Avila’s case file, which included information on the motives for his arrest, charges against him and the circumstances of his detention. On April 4th, the provincial court, or the Tribunal Popular Provincial de la Ciudad de La Habana, rejected the lawyer’s petition.

Days afterwards, Bruzon Avila was transferred from the Technical Department of Investigations to the Prison of Quivican in the Province of Havana. On Aug. 27th, despite having already lost 20 pounds, he began a second hunger strike along with 26 other activists imprisoned in several jails who had also been detained in similar circumstances. They demanded to be informed of the charges against them or freed immediately.

On Oct. 10th, the hunger strike ended. Bruzon Avila was the only activist of the group who maintained the strike until its end. That same day, prison authorities refused to give him medical assistance, and in return, he decided to take up the hunger strike again.

In the next couple of weeks, Bruzon Avila was placed in a punishment cell. Other prisoners demanded medical care for him, but prison officials refused to help him. The Leonor Perez Committee of Cuban Mothers for the Freedom of Political Prisoners submitted a letter to the State Council addressed to Fidel Castro denouncing Bruzon Avila’s ailing health and demanding his immediate transfer to a hospital. The Federation of Cuban Journalists joined them in their petition.

Finally, on Oct. 25, 2002, Bruzon Avila was taken to the Carlos J. Finlay Military Hospital in Havana. He was permitted to stay there until Dec. 12th, at which time he was transferred to the Combinado del Este Prison in the capital. Still determined to protest his unjust imprisonment, on Jan. 10th, Bruzon began yet another hunger strike. Almost a month later, fellow political prisoner Jorge Luis Garcia Perez (a.k.a. “Antunez”) was able to smuggle out a note describing how Bruzon had been rushed to the prison clinic after nearly suffering a heart attack and how his health was progressively deteriorating.

Opposition organizations in different corners of the country have carried out hunger strikes and fasts demanding his liberation. Despite differences in political strategies, opposition groups have mobilized in defense of this peaceful activist. No longer on hunger strike, Bruzon Avila nevertheless continues to maintain a position of dignity and resistance, despite the fact that he suffers from vitamin deficiency, Parkinson’s Disease and a series of other illnesses. He is just one example of the many brave men and women who make up the nonviolent resistance movement in Cuba.