Santiesteban Protests Against Conditions Of His Confinement

Santiesteban Protests Against Conditions Of His Confinement / 14ymedio,
Lilianne Ruiz
Posted on December 8, 2014

14ymedio, LILIANNE RUIZ, 7 December 2014 — Writer and journalist Angel
Santiesteban continues to be detained, since August, in a border guard
military unit located on Primera Street in Miramar. His jailers have
announced to him this week that he may be transferred to a location yet
to be identified.

The hut where Santiesteban has been incarcerated these months overlooks
the street, just opposite the security checkpoint. It measures four by
four meters. The prisoner cannot walk, stretch his legs, get sun or
interact with other detainees. They only let him out once a week to use
the phone and every twenty-one days to receive a two-hour family visit.

Santiesteban is thinner and paler. He relates that last weekend he began
a hunger strike to demand better conditions like having the right to get
sun, walk and run on the ground as is his custom, to have free access to
the telephone like the other prisoners, and to receive visits every 15
days. "After an upset stomach, I refused to take oral rehydration salts
and I stopped ingesting food in protest of my conditions of
confinement," he reports.

The writer explains that then two State Security officers told him that
they would transmit his claim to the command and give him an answer
within a week. They told him that "he has done much damage to the
Revolution and that if he had accepted the offer they had made him last
August his situation would be different."

Santiesteban explains that in that month, when he was transferred to the
border guard unit, officials from State Security proposed freedom to him
in exchange for his leaving the country, which he roundly refused.

Wednesday he dropped the hunger strike pending an answer to his demands.
Next April he should be released on parole if the authorities comply
with the law which calls for release after the completion of half the
sentence. Santiesteban also awaits the response from the Ministry of
Justice which accepted the appeal of his case indicating that it admits
that irregularities were committed in the trial held against him.

Translated by MLK

Source: Santiesteban Protests Against Conditions Of His Confinement /
14ymedio, Lilianne Ruiz | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/santiesteban-protests-against-conditions-of-his-confinement-14ymedio-lilianne-ruiz/