Uncertainty haunts 6 dissidents released from Cuban prisons
By Vanessa Bauzá. Havana Bureau. Posted July 1 2004 in the South Florida
Sun-Sentinel.
HAVANA · In the first few days of his fragile freedom, Carmelo Díaz
Fernández was plagued by nightmares. After 15 months in prison, the
67-year-old former accountant and independent journalist had trouble
sleeping in his bed.
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"At night I would see the bars and the locks and hear the opening and closing of the prison gates," said Díaz Fernández, the oldest dissident in the group of 75 who were sentenced in April 2003 on charges of collaborating with the U.S. government to topple President Fidel Castro. Venturing out into the bustling streets surrounding his Old Havana home also took some getting used to. |
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"For the first few days I didn't feel secure going out alone," he said.
"I saw ghosts everywhere and didn't feel confident. The impact of prison remains."
So too does the threat of arrest.
For Díaz Fernández and five other peaceful dissidents who have been released
conditionally from prison because of their deteriorated health, the joy of
being home with their families is marred by fear and uncertainty.
In some cases state security officers have warned the men that they could be
arrested again if they rekindle their opposition activities. Some suggested
the men leave Cuba permanently.
Caught between exile and the possibility of serving out the rest of his
15-year prison sentence, Díaz Fernández said he, like some others, will seek
asylum abroad.
"I can't have an active political life because I could be taken back to
prison," he said. "With those conditions I can't live."
Cuba's crackdown on dissidents sparked criticism from the Vatican, some
leftist intellectuals, the U.S. Congress and European Union, which
downgraded its diplomatic ties to the Cuban government in response. In a
statement last month, Foreign Minister Brian Cowen of Ireland, which
currently heads the European Union, said the release of imprisoned
dissidents on medical grounds was "a positive signal" and called for all
remaining political prisoners to be released.
Havana has defended the sentences and refuted charges that the jailed
dissidents were suffering from poor prison conditions and inadequate medical
care.
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While some dissidents such as Roberto de Miranda, 59, who was released on June 23, called the decision to free him a "good will gesture," others said the Cuban government wanted to avoid a potential international relations disaster if their health continued to deteriorate. |
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"I think this is a maneuver of the Cuban government to 0silence public opinion," said Miriam Leiva, whose husband, independent economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, was sentenced to 20 years in prison and remains hospitalized for liver problems. She said she had no expectations he would be released. |
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Independent journalist Manuel Vázquez Portal, who served one year, three months and four days of his 18-year sentence, said he was surprised by his release June 23. He suffers from high blood pressure but says other dissidents who are still behind bars are in worse health. He is deliberating with his family whether to leave Cuba. |
"I haven't been freed, I've been transferred from a small cell to a larger
one," he said. Prior to his arrest he had been granted a U.S. visa.
A former writer for state-run children's publications Vázquez Portal, 52,
was found guilty in April 2003 of providing "subversive" information to
Miami-based news outlets and thereby contributing to destabilize Cuba,
according to court records.
In Santiago's Boniato Prison, about 500 miles east of Havana, he
communicated with other prisoners along a corridor of solitary confinement
cells by passing notes inside a slipper. He struggled against the mind
numbing monotony of prison life by writing a diary, which he smuggled out
inside a hardbound copy of War and Peace.
Before his release, a state security captain asked, "If we freed you
someday, what would you do?"
When Vázquez Portal told him he would go back to being a journalist, he
recalled the captain responded, "If I were you and they freed me I would go
into exile."
De Miranda, a former teacher, who was released on the same day as Vázquez
Portal, said he may seek asylum abroad because he was fired from his job
teaching math and geology several years ago and is unable to make a living.
"I don't want to abandon my country, but what am I going to live from?" de
Miranda said. "If they incarcerate me again I don't know that I will resist
because my health is deteriorated."
Like some other dissidents, he lives off remittances sent by relatives in
the United States and from contributions by exile groups in Miami.
The Cuban government describes dissidents as puppets manipulated by the U.S. government and says the fractured internal opposition movement is fueled by federal funds.
Tensions between Havana and Washington are high as the Bush administration
has implemented tough new measures aimed at ending Castro's 45-year rule.
They include up to $29 million in new funding over two years for democracy
building and assistance to dissidents in Cuba, much of which is funneled
into Miami exile organizations.
De Miranda and others reject the Cuban government's assertion that
dissidents are "mercenaries."
"If I were a mercenary I would be a masochist to have my house in these
conditions," he said pointing to his bare Central Havana living room, where
slats are missing from the windows and ceiling tiles are coming loose.
Like some of the other dissidents released recently, de Miranda had spent
months in a prison hospital for his ailments, which included cysts in his
kidneys, an ulcer and high blood pressure.
He said prison doctors were respectful and responsive and state security
officers seemed preoccupied with his deteriorating health.
"They wouldn't leave my side until I had stabilized," he recalled.
Dissident Miguel Valdés Tamayo, 47, who had suffered two heart attacks prior
to his arrest in March 2003, spent several months in a solitary prison cell
in Camaguey's Kilo 8 prison, about 300 miles east of Havana. He was
transferred to a prison hospital in Havana when his heart condition
worsened. On June 9 a prison official surprised him with the news that he
had been released on probation.
"They came to my bed and said 'pick up your things, you're free,'" he
recalled.
This week Valdés Tamayo turned in his application seeking refugee status in
the United States.
"I have no guarantees, at any moment I can be returned to prison," he said
from his wooden, blue-painted home in the broken down Havana suburb of
Parraga. "They didn't let me go as a humanitarian gesture, or a good will
gesture. They let me go because they were afraid I would die."
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