Prison Diary XXV: Open Letter to the Journalists of the Commission

Prison Diary XXV: Open Letter to the Journalists of the Commission /
Angel Santiesteban
Posted on June 9, 2013

Editor's note: This open letter is to international journalists who were
permitted a carefully orchestrated visit into selected Cuban prisons who
later issued generally favorable reports on the conditions there.

I like to think they were duped, that their naiveté prevented them from
understanding that the whole show was put together for their visit, or
perhaps that international ethics do not allow the journalist force to
demand that the reality not be hidden from them.

The truth is that, in one way or another, they helped to give
credibility to a dictatorship that mocks the international media, in
this case, you were the ones who mocked us, the prisoners, the
disadvantaged, and the dictatorship was the beneficiary.

With this in mind I tried to explain to you, without having all the
elements to fully understand what the mechanism of choice to be part of
this International Commission in which you participated worked, and from
which you didn't look more deeply into what they were showing you on
this visit. So they prepared a crude stage that no one, least of all a
journalist, who had access to the Internet and to the independent press,
could have believed if they had undertaken the slightest observation.

I was one of the inmates they removed before you arrived. At first they
tried to fool me, then when I protested because my intention was to talk
with you, I was taken by force between several guards in front of over a
hundred young people, students I imagine, who were waiting at the
entrance of La Lima prison. They listened to my exalted explanation
while I was being handcuffed for more than ten soldiers who chased me
while I screamed that they were cheaters, that they were hiding me to
deceive international public opinion, that I was an honest writer who
was serving a sentence for thinking differently, and that thinking
differently was not a crime. Seeing so many young people, I asked them
not to handcuff me, not to let themselves be manipulated because they
had been assigned the dirty work of the dictatorship.

By then I had yielded before the forces they doubled against me and I
let them take me, though still shouting that my work was being a writer
who honestly denounced their constant arbitrariness.

The person who personally took me by force was the same one who welcomed
you, with the same face, the same look, the same lack of conscience in
both cases. Lt. Col. Carlos Quintana, Chief Provincial Prison in Havana.

Before getting into the paddy wagon that would take me away, I swore to
pursue them with my denunciations for the rest of my life, and told him
that if I thought of killing myself, it was because I had no fear of
dying for the freedom of Cuba.

Finally, they put me in the paddy wagon and took me out from the back of
the camp.

The lie came to its end, the transfer to a hospital, as the officials
had promised was not done. I was taken to a prison of greater severity,
violating their own laws because my sentence is minimal and it is
supposed to be served in a camp.

In this operation, in addition to Lt. Col. Carlos Quintana, also taking
part were the Lieutenant Colonel of Section 21 of the State Security and
Colonel Almanza, first deputy of General Marcos, chief of National
Prisons, according to what was presented in the interview he had with me
days before, with the intention to agree to my "hospitalization" to
submit to a "health check."

As you can see, there is only one beneficiary, the Castro brothers'
regime, which for more than half a century has flouted international
organizations, misrepresenting to the mass media the Cuban reality,
making themselves true specialists in emulating the methods of Nazi
propaganda.

I hope that the members of the Commission have learned as a lesson, that
if in the future they return to be part of another Commission, not to
allow their becoming cynical mockers for their "educated" hosts, who
deliberately kept them from witnessing the cruel punishments to which
prisoners are subjected.

They should see what they eat and how the "food" is prepared for the
prisoners, and hopefully hear the testimonies of prisoners, ready to
discover the truth despite the threats. They should see them in the
punishment cells, forcing their way through the bolts, keys nails,
glass, metal spoons and whatever objects they find, just to make the
injustices of those who are victims heard, in order to be able to change
them.

Some, when they see that none of their terrible acts of self-harm even
manage to call attention to their plight, but only lead to more beatings
and punishments, openly attack their own lives and cut their veins or
sew their mouths shut with wire and cover themselves with their own
excrement to avoid the guards.

Sure that my words are not enough to denounce the horror that is
committed in Cuban prisons, but also sure that one day, God willing not
too far off, justice will be done and they will pay for their dead,
those they hung as if they had committed suicide, those whose names the
prisoners are very familiar with, and they will also know the names of
their torturers.

Until then, God protect us.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Prison 1580. May 2013

7 June 2013

http://translatingcuba.com/prison-diary-xxv-open-letter-to-the-journalists-of-the-commission-angel-santiesteban/