Havana, Cuba. March 5, 2001
"Manto Negro" Women's Prison
Statement by Maritza Lugo, Cuban political prisoner of conscience, denouncing and accusing the Cuban government and its State Security. It is addressed to all people of good will who defend human rights.
From this horrible place, I come before you: the international organizations who defend human rights; the organizations defenders of democracy, justice and peace, the religious organizations who promote liberty; the whole world and its people, to denounce the government of Cuba:
I accuse the dictatorial government imposed on Cuba and its repressive arm, the State Security, of all the injustices and abuses they commit against the Cuban people, the penal population, and, specially, against the political prisoners of conscience.
I accuse those miserable and cowardly men and women who, through the use of force, commit all types of human rights violations, while nothing stops them as they attempt to defend a false revolution built and maintained upon a foundation of lies and infamies.
As a physically defenseless woman in ill-health; as a mother of two unfortunate daughters currently without a mother's care and armed with my religious faith as only weapon, I accuse.
I accuse them of publicly blaming every day a foreign country to give a false impression to the Cuban people that they have nothing to be guilty of.
And this is why we, the repressed ones, demand that the criminals be sanctioned in the name of all victims that have suffered and continue to suffer in our homeland.
Stop already the continuous wanton detention of innocent people whose only crime is disagreeing with the Castro regime. Stop taking them to inhumane prison cells where they are physically as well as psychologically tortured, as are their family members. They are kept in these prisons for an arbitrary and undetermined amount of time, living among dangerous common criminals and exposed to all kinds of risks. They are kept incarcerated for months without an expeditious trial, serving an unjust sentence while waiting to be charged or tried, as others are tried and unjustly condemned.
To the dictatorial government I say, stop denying that you torture people.
Stop denying international organizations access to our prisons with the pretext that you do not accept others meddling in your internal affairs or that you do not compromise your sovereignty. To promote your agenda, you conveniently allow bribery and deception to prevent the inspection of these prisons according to international law.
I denounce that political prisoners are treated differently from other prison inmates. We are more rigorously repressed, even though the behavior of some common prisoner may be undesirable. Political prisoners, "counterrevolutionaries", as they call us, are constantly watched by guards and common prisoners trained for this sole purpose.
We are searched more often and more demands are placed on us to follow their stringent, so-called rules. The women's prisons are practically uninhabitable due to the putrid water that leaks from the floors above. The sinks are clogged and the prisoners have to do their wash on the floor. We are neither given supplies nor detergents to clean, leaving us to our own resources to solve our problems, sometimes using our own pieces of clothing. But this doesn't stop them from making demands on us and passing inspection to check our cleanliness.
If they fail you, they submit a report that may carry the possibility of punishment. Medical attention is atrocious and there's hardly any medicine, while the communist government affords the luxury of exporting doctors and medicine to other countries.
This is not done because government officials are kind and generous people. This is done for propaganda purposes only, taking advantage of the misery other nations suffer to sell them their propaganda of solidarity and unselfish interest.
Stop showing the exteriors walls of prisons as well-kept and elegant facades, while incarcerated human beings are degraded in extreme dearth.
I denounce that the prison food is vile. We are given a very small quantity every day of rice with ground soy beef or badly cooked macaroni. The dictatorial regime justifies blaming the so called blockade. But what it does is inhuman. They refuse to send transport to pick up the generous supply of mangoes the Finca Baragua, in the municipality of San Miguel del Padron was offering, free of charge to the prisoners of the Combinado del Este Prison.
What they did instead was come up with a diabolical scheme to steal my family's farm by force ( not taking into account their own law which does not allow them to do this ) only because the farm is the headquarters of the Partido 30 de Noviembre, an open opposition movement that officially does not recognize the so called revolutionary government.
Families arrive weary and emaciated bringing bags of food to supply the needs of the prisoners only to be turned away because authorites fail to notify them that visiting hours have been changed, even though this government has plenty of computers to keep tabs on the civilian population.
This is why they don't want international inspections. They don't want the world to know these internal matters, so well-known to the innocent political prisoners.
I denounce that, in the majority of cases, we leave these prisons physically ill, thus history continues to repeat itself as so many of us are imprisoned so many times. This is why Castro's government represses us implementing Law 88 which prohibits and penalizes any group of two or more people whose ideas resist and oppose the revolutionary government of Castro.
I accuse the Castro government of separating the Cuban family who, in desperation, flee Cuba for political reasons, and because of failed political, and economic policies, dispersing Cubans throughout the world.
The so called revolutionary government justifies everything using the "blockade and the meddling U.S. policies" as an excuse. But the Cuban people want to leave their country overwhelmed by the infamy and tyranny, making use of whatever means available, including hiding in the wheel compartment of planes leaving for Great Britain or Spain, or joining the 11,000 who mobbed the Peruvian Embassy. Let's remember a history which prevails with our pain and blood, even though the regime denies it with its designed propaganda apparatus.
I accuse the so called revolutionary government of the political and democratic ignorance our people suffer, as they deceive the unwary people of the world with their propaganda of mass and cultural education. They accomplish this by creating public opinion directed by the state using Nazi style techniques copied from Bolshevik Russia where Cubans pay a high price, acting hypocritically as they pretend to go along in public in order to subsist.
We ask the addressees of these lines, soon to convene in Geneva, Switzerland at the Human Rights Commission to discuss Cuba, to consider the ill-treatment of the Cuban people by its own government. I know that no delegation, not even those who defend Castro, will be permitted to come visit me so that they can see and corroborate this raw truth. I believe that if justice exists in the world, this government should be sanctioned for this and so many other violations they are constantly inflicting upon the Cuban population as they deceive and laugh at the whole world.
Maritza Lugo Fernandez President of the 30th of November Democratic Party "Frank Pais" From the Women's Prison popularly known as "Manto Negro" (Black Cloak) Testimonial provided via telephone from the Democracy Information Center in Havana, Cuba by independent journalist, Maria del Carmen Carro.
For further information http://www.30november.org/casa.htm