Mrs. Gisela Delgado Sablon

My beloved and self-sacrificing wife

At first I am sad because once again, the police didn't allow us to meet, of course, physically, because we are simply inseparable in moral, spirit and love. As always, we are two bodies united in one heart, thanks God.

At other hand, last Friday March 26; 2004 I saw the headlines at Granma saying "The truth. the real weapon of the Revolution" followed by the statements made by Mr. Felipe Perez Roque our slave country's "Secretary" of Foreign Relations. Thinking well and not like him who offends the Cuban political prisoners that are rotting in our cruel prisons every day, I think that he is the most misinformed person in this country not to call him as irresponsible and accomplice for everything that happen to us.

About the Round Table about the Cuban prisons, unfortunately those who spoke about it are either misinformed or are accomplices themselves for what is happening here. Look, there are tens and tens of prisons in Cuba, hundreds but I am going to tell you about Kilo 5 ½ at Pinar del Rio, all are the same.

1- Do you know how many prisoners here are disabled because they have injected themselves diesel, salt and other chemicals because they can't help the rigorous prison system.

5- About the food. I can believe that a Foreign Relations Secretary could affirm that food given to prisoners is adequate, balanced and abundant. The food served here with a few exceptions, is not even good for the dogs that watch the prison perimeter. In most cases it is scarce and rotten. Besides the hygiene at the dining room and everywhere else there is a big business with the food that belongs to the prisoners and when someone complaint about it and ask for a better quality food he takes chances to be beaten and sent to the "tapiadas" cells (dark cells with a little slot to receive food and water). I have many examples of this for whoever wants to know.

6- About they allow taking food inside the prison. They only allow the political prisoners to receive 30 pounds of food at the visitation day every almost 100 days. So, what food are they talking about? Whit that amount of food we only attenuate our hunger but they want us to suffer and don't increase the amount of food we can receive. Visitation is every almost 100 days for two hours and only two persons are allowed in. The family pavilion for those who are married is allowed twice a year for three hours. This is another way of punishment to finish families. This is a political hatred system.

7- The Secretary doesn't say anything about how far are the prisoners from home sometimes more than 1000 kilometers in a country where the public transportation system doesn't exist.  It is like to consciously provoke a family massacre. The Secretary assures that they comply with all international treaties respect to political prisoner's treatment. I wish they publish these treaties that not even penitentiary authorities know about it and come here to discuss them with me and then I will prove to them that they don't comply any of its articles. Is the Secretary lying? Is he being deceived? Is he a complice?

8- We are accused of being agents for a foreign government. THAT'S A LIE. They incarcerated us because we are patriots that don't think as totalitarians and offer a pacific way, choices that this country's owners don't admit. I have no idea why they link us with the five (the five Cuban spies sentenced in USA). They have what they need: food, medical attention, Internet, clean sheets, cell phones, etc.

9- The Secretary says that we can make calls for 100 minutes a month. Here in Kilo 5 ½ the telephones have being installed for several months and I have been allowed to call out for only 15 minutes. He is being deceived. I have been in solitaire and "tapiadas" cells for more than six months at temperatures over 45° C (113° F) what have altered my health system. It is true that I am in the hospital now but just after they almost killed me. Is that a health care? Where were the doctors when we denounced these constant physical tortures? They respond that it was a police problem.

10- If the Secretary wants to know about the "tapiadas" cells in Cuba he just has to come where we are at Prison Kilo 5 ½.  Just because the international pressure they eliminated some of these cells but what about the punishment cells. Mr. Secretary should visit and make them more suitable for humans. Now they wish to take us to another section in this prison full of murderers, drug addicts, and mental patients all born after 1959, just to cause troubles between them and us. If we oppose to that we take the risk to spend 100 days in the cellular cells or terror holes like it happened to Normando Hernandez.

11- The Secretary assures that the violence was never used at the time of the detentions. How should we call the fact that 40 police officers turned your house upside down seizing more than 1,000 books, medicines, family pictures, my daughter's computer, which is legal as the most legal one, and the Sweden Liberal Party Award my wife won? Is she a President Bush ally too? The police closed all surrounding streets to my house, scared the neighbors but why did they run away when foreign media correspondents arrived? Why did they take all my belongings to Villa Marista (the State Security headquarters) to account what they stole from my house? That is a good story that Mr. Secretary should know very well but he doesn't care. He knows what happened but doesn't say it.

12- About what they said that the trials were impartial and all legal guarantees were observed, I laugh to that and I feel bad to hear those lies from a high post government official. We were questioned day and night, confined with very dangerous murderers in the "tapiada cells" at Villa Marista. Days later, with no lawyers, we were told the charges, sentence to life term in prison for me. The next day it was the trial when I met my lawyer for the first time. I was told that she could only see part of the dossier against me and she will know the rest during the trial. The dossier was very large apparently everything I have written in my lifetime is being considered treason by them. Prosecutors were communists judges were communists and lawyers working under pressure for the communist government. Who is going to believe what the Secretary said about the impartiality of the trial and a guaranteed process of law? What witnesses is he talking about? They were only accusers. All those trials can be considered the mayor judicial fraud in Cuba's history and what definitely open the world's eyes about what is happening in my country.

13- Mr. Secretary affirms that only five of us were working. Doesn't he know that in this country anyone who dissent from the government is expelled from the job? This is ridiculous.

14- What the Secretary can't disguise is that they have committed a major injustice with us. He must be a brave person to ask for big headlines on world news media for this piece of nonsense. What the Secretary maybe ignores is that we are in the communications and globalization era and thanks God anything can't be hidden. They can do anything they want: to scream, to accuse or kill us (that is another choice they have in their plans) but they can't humiliate, force or make us in their accomplices. That is what he means when he talks about the "benefits" of the Cuban penitentiary system perhaps one of the cruelest of the world.

15- About what he said that we, the 75 prisoners, watch TV I only can say that it is a big lie. Here in Kilo 5 ½ we have not ever seen TV. We have only read the newspaper occasionally and our mail is violated, seized, censored and many things else. I saw the Secretary's picture at Granma front page and I got shock for all the weight he has gained lately.  Since that is not good for his health I encourage him to spend 45 days here, at Kilo 5 ½ and he will leave skinny, pale and with a better sense of reality and a little bit of sorrow in his soul. Wait, we are not going to offend him here, we treat defenseless people in a gentlemanly and human way.  There are many other nonsense statements in Granma that I don't bother to talk about. Everybody know that we are being ruled by force, Cuban rulers only care about power even though all the social, economic and political plans they have begun in this 45 years of strong " people's dictatorship" have failed.

God will the truth find its own way out then the truth will be an efficient weapon in Cuba's people arms.

I ask everyone to be calm and quiet because injustice won't last forever. We are paying a high price for exercise our right to dissent but Cuba's rulers will pay one thousand times more their daring and brutality of incarcerate the just ideas.

We don't ask for mercy we need solidarity!

I love you very much. You are the sunshine taking injustice away from me.

Your husband

Héctor Palacios

HOME