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CUBA:
Human Rights Violations/ For Immediate
Release
AFTER MORE THAN A YEAR BLIND LAWYER
CONTINUES IMPRISONED WITHOUT A TRIAL,
SUFFERING PHYSICAL AND MENTAL TORTURE
March 17,
2003
March 4,
2003 became a year that Juan Carlos Gonzalez
Leiva and seven human rights activists
remain confined in inhumane prison
conditions, awaiting trial for carrying out
a peaceful protest at a hospital in the city
of Ciego de Avila, Cuba, in solidarity with
an independent journalist beaten by Cuban
State Security. They are all charged with
committing crimes which carry sentences of
up to eight years.
Juan Carlos
Gonzalez Leiva, a blind lawyer and president
of the Cuban Foundation for Human Rights is
very ill from the physical and mental
torture he has and is suffering at the State
Security Prison in Holguin. For two months,
since January 2003, he was prevented from
going out of his cell to take the sun and
because his mattress was taken away, he is
forced to sleep on the bare, humid floor.
Gonzalez
Leiva is experiencing chronic severe
headaches and a throat infection due to what
he has described to his family as toxic
fumes and noxious particles continuously
introduced in his cell. The inflammation of
all tissues in his left ocular cavity is
such that he is unable to introduce the
prosthesis that replaces his missing eye.
In Ciego de
Avila, toxic gases described as smelling
like chloroform made sick anyone who entered
the home of Maritza Calderin Columbie, wife
of this blind lawyer. Maritza was thus
forced to move out of her home and to her
sister's house for two months, where they
also felt the same noxious consequences. The
elderly mother of Gonzalez Leiva, staying at
a home in
Holguin
to be near the prison where her son is
confined, also experienced these
intoxicating effects.
After
Maritza Calderin and two of her husband's
brothers traveled to Havana and held a press
conference on Friday, February 28 where they
requested the press to investigate all these
human rights violations, the fumes have
mysteriously stopped except in the cell of
Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva whose situation
remains critical.
In a letter
of January 14, 2003 smuggled out of prison,
Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva wanted the world
to know that he made "...Cuban State
Security responsible for an assassination
attempt against my life and of anything else
that might happen to me as long as I'm in
prison. It is my belief that they are trying
to induce a sickness in my organism,
specifically through the respiratory system,
and release me so that my death occurs at
home, result of a natural disease."
We request
urgent solidarity from dignitaries of
democratic nations, human rights
organizations, religious entities,
international press, and men and women of
good will who must demand the immediate and
unconditional release of a blind lawyer and
human rights activist suffering undue
hardship at the hands of Cuban authorities.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
All
documented information was obtained via
telephone from Cuba, recorded, transcribed
and translated.
Coalition of
Cuban-American Women/LAIDA CARRO
Email:
Joseito76@aol.com
-----------------------------------------
MARITZA
CALDERIN COLUMBIE, wife of Juan Carlos
Gonzalez Leiva.
Address:
Honorato del Castillo 154, entre República y
Cuba, Ciego de Avila,
Cuba.
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