As coronavirus sweeps across Cuba, the socialist Castro dictatorship is more concerned with controlling damaging information than controlling the deadly virus.
Via Martí Noticias (my translation):
Four political prisoners punished for denouncing prison conditions in Cuba
The Cuban regime has permanently suspended phone calls to family for four political prisoners as punishment for denouncing the dismal conditions they find themselves in Cuban prisons in the midst of coronavirus.
According to human rights activist Jiordan Marrero Huerta, the authorities made the decision in conjunction with State Security.
The regime decided to punish the members of the Felipe Martin Campanioni Civic Resistance Front, who are serving seven years for the “crimes of assault, contempt, and resistance” along with Misael Canet Velazquez, who was sentenced to six years in prison on the same charges. They are incarcerated at the Kilo-7 prison in Camaguey.
“According to the family members of the political prisoners, prison authorities, in coordination with State Security, have decided to maintain the restrictions on phone calls, saying that the prisoners continue to make denouncements from inside the prison,” said Marrero Huerta.
The reprisal also affected Fernando Vazquez Guerra, provincial coordinator for the Patriotic Union of Cuba in the agricultural region who is sentenced to three years in the same prison for “failure to pay fines” and Alexei Rodriguez Martinez, member of the Independent Union Association, who is serving four and a half years in prison for the “crime of disorderly conduct” at the provincial prison in Holquin.
Human rights activist Ramon Zamora reports that political prisoner Rodriguez Martinez was also denied access to phone calls.
“The restriction comes from orders by State Security for expressing discontent with the abuse they are suffering in the prisons,” he said.
Continue reading (in Spanish) HERE.
The nerve. At least they don’t have to wait in huge lines for food, and they get “free” health care.