Under Cuba's "dangerousness" law, authorities can imprison people who have not committed a crime on the suspicion that they might commit one in the future. "Dangerous" activities include handing out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, writing articles critical of the government and trying to start an independent union...We sat in a small kitchen with a dirt floor. Inside were two small chairs, a worn wooden table and a single-burner gas stove. A door opened on a room just big enough to fit a mattress and a dresser.
René told us he had not been on the march and did not consider himself political. But shortly after his father's arrest, he came home to find "Death to the worms of house 58," his family's address, spray-painted on the nearby bus stop. A week later, he was fired from his longtime hospital job. Members of the local "revolutionary defense committee" -- the neighborhood association connected with the Communist Party -- insulted him in the street and tried to pick fights. A man was assigned to watch him and his mother; he stood on their corner and followed them as they came and went.
René's girlfriend stopped talking to him on her parents' orders. So did most of his friends, who were warned by police that they would find themselves in trouble if they kept hanging around a "counterrevolutionary."
"It's like having someone plant a boot right in the middle of my chest and applying so much pressure I can hardly breathe," René told us. "Some days I wake up and I think: I have nothing. I am nobody. I have no dreams left for my future." We encountered this profound sense of isolation time and again in visits with the families of political prisoners....
Nik Steinberg's piece in the Washington Post, describing a visit with the family of a Cuban political prisoner, is compelling reading. Let it stimulate us to say a few prayers for Cuba's freedom today.
And also consider forwarding this post to others of your friends and family, especially to those who tend to believe Oliver Stone's fantasies about Communist Cuba instead of the brutal realities.
