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 a! re 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 p! ermitted 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.

Top ^