Prisoners in Cuba tell of misery
Jan 22, 2004 Chicago Tribune

HAVANA, Cuba - Imprisoned last spring for opposing Cuba's one-party state, Oscar Biscet has spent the first nine months of his 25-year sentence in solitary confinement or with hardened criminals, enduring insufficient food and unsanitary conditions, according to his wife and letters smuggled out of prison.

Many of the 74 other dissidents imprisoned with Biscet for challenging President Fidel Castro's government face similar hardships, according to their wives, human-rights workers and other sources.

"The characteristics of the cell violate the law," Biscet, 42, wrote in a November letter. "There are no windows. There are only walls. Always in darkness. The sky can't be seen."

Biscet has spent weeks at a time in a small cell, sleeping on a thin mattress and using a hole in the floor as a toilet, said his wife, Elsa Morejon. The heat in Biscet's cell was so intense he developed skin rashes. He has lost about 40 pounds.

"I haven't seen my wife and my father in more than four months," he wrote, saying most family visits had been denied.

Castro imprisoned the pro-democracy activists, independent journalists and others after accusing them of acting as "mercenaries" of an imperialist U.S. government aiming to foment counterrevolution.

The dissidents and U.S. officials deny those charges, and international human-rights groups have called for the dissidents' release while requesting access to Cuban prisons to monitor conditions.

Biscet's account cannot be verified independently. But many details of his confinement are consistent with those related by wives of 11 other dissident detainees and other sources.

"The crackdown is evidence that the Cuban government has total disrespect for the human rights of its people," said Eric Olson, Amnesty International's advocacy director for the Americas. "Some of them are being held in apparently acceptable fashion, but many others are living in harsh conditions. None of them should be in prison."

For years Cuban officials have refused to allow international human-rights groups into the island's prisons.

A request by the Tribune to visit facilities housing the dissidents also was denied.

Cuban authorities generally deflect questions about human rights by citing the country's free health-care system, universal education and other government services that they regard as fundamental rights.