Castro’s political prisoners

Press, 17 July 1979, Page 18

Castro’s political prisoners

By

CHRISTOPHER JONES

in London

Last year Dr Fidel Castro promised to release 3000 of his 40.000 political prisoners. The pledge, part of a diplomatic move to establish Cuba’s leadership of the Third World at his September’s non-aligned summit in Havana, does not seem to have been fulfilled. It should have meant freedom for 400 prisoners a month, but the latest evidence points to a recent crackdown on Cuba’s imprisoned dissidents. The publication in Madrid of “Written in Cuba, Five Dissident Poets,” assembles the work of five jailed poets: .Armando Valladares, aged 42, arrested in 1960 and jailed for 30 years for a poem; Miguel Sales, aged 28, in and out of prison since the age of 16 because he wanted to leave Cuba; Herberto Padilla, aged 47, whose book “Out of the Game” won a prize in Peru while Castro’s men judged the book and its author subversive, arresting him in 1971; Ernesto Diaz Rodriguez, aged 40, arrested for antiGovernment activities in 1968; Angel Cuadra, r.ged 48, condemned to death for subversive activities in 1967. Amnesty International obtained his release in 1970. He was rearrested in 1971. ‘‘Written in Cuba” indicts Castro’s Cuba as a tropical

Gulag Archipelago. Ramon J. Sender, an exiled Cuban author, writes in the prologue: “In Cuba today, there is less freedom than in Europe during the. Middle Ages or in Spain during the Inquisition.” While Mexico’s President, Mr Jose Lopez Portillo, recently praised Castro as a “symbol and legend of one .of the most important social movements of this halfcentury,” Cuban dissidents, such as the publisher Carlos Alberto Montaner, aged 36, point out that Castro’s Cuba detains proportionately between five and 10 times more political prisoners than Chile, Argentina. Brazil or the Soviet Union. Armando Valladares has spent half of his life in Castro’s jails. Sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment for “counter-revolutionary activities,” Valladares is confined to a wheel chair. Between June 24 and August 12, 1974, he was crippled by polyneuritis, aggravated by starvation. His wife, Martha Lopez, married the jailed poet in the La Cabana prison director’s office in 1969. Although she has left ■ Cuba Martha hopes to arrange her husband’s release .through the promotion of his book, smuggled out of Cuba, “From My Wheel Chair.”

The crackdown has not only affected intellectual dissidents or the regime. Castro’s former comrades-in-arms from the revolution, such as Hubert Matos and

Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, were jailed for their opposition to Castro’s dictatorship. Matos was the commander of the rebel army in Camaguey province during the revolution and governed the province after the revolution triumphed. He was arrested 10 months later for “slandering the revolution by calling it Communist,” a charge later changed to treason. . Menoyo occupied Havana with his army six days before Fidel Castro entered the city on January 1, 1959. Born in Spain, the Commander of the Escamhray division fought Castro's Communists until 1965, when he was captured, tried and sentenced to death. The sentence was later commuted to 30 years detention, conditional on his “rehabilitation.’’ Menoyo,

Matos, Valladares and Cuadra have never agreed to submit to Castro’s indoctrination programme. During his visit to Cuba last September, the Spanish Prime Minister, Mr Adolfo Suarez, obtained the release of 109 prisoners who held Spanish nationality. Castro promised the Spanish leader that he would free Menoyo on the grounds that he is a Spaniard. Although Castro wants to visit Spain this year, as part of his diplomatic blitz, it appears that the “Lider Maximo” has gone back on his promise to free the commander of the Escambray front. So far only 300 prisoners have been released under Castro’s pledge. He still refuses to free those “criminals” responsible for “terrorist activities.” And, while the “Lider Maximo” circles the globe promoting the Cuban revolution as a model for Third World nations, Hubert Matos writes: “I am more than used to suffering, to my own flesh and spirit, mistreatments and vexations in these forgotten and tortuous paths of offence to the human race that are called Castro’s jails, but there is something 1 cannot understand: why isn’t this denounced, loud and clear, day after day in the streets of Caracas, in the universities of Mexico, in the pulpits of churches in Scotland, on French television, in the Canadian press, in the United Nations?” —O.F.N.S., Copyright.