Could the irony be any thicker with Castro's critics locked up?
Political prisoners hunger for justice - How long could you live in a cage?***Bear in mind that these prisoners live in cages where they cannot take three steps in a straight line or stretch their arms out to the side because they'll hit the walls. Once a day, they are allowed to collect water in a container, and they are given a small portion of food, often in bad condition, spoiled. It's the torture of physical hunger. Some of those reading this article have never had that experience: being hungry all day long and having nothing to eat.
Many Cubans, hundreds of thousands, have been imprisoned and know what we're talking about. But this is an extreme case. It is torture. It is a means of reducing a prisoner to the minimum of his physical and mental abilities.
This near-annihilation is completed by sensory isolation, a cloud of mosquitoes and, in many instances, rats and mice. Arbitrarily, guards confiscate inmates' correspondence and deny them their medicines, even those brought by relatives, because in prison -- according to the guards -- ''they lack nothing.'' The prison provides only pain, humiliation and rations of modus muriendi.
The family of Díaz Sánchez, a Varela Project coordinator, must take him what's called ''the toiletries'': soap, deodorant, sheets, a coat and anything else that he might need. From prison officials, the prisoners receive only cruelty, not basic supplies for survival.
When the family handed the guards the 30 pounds of food and ''toiletries,'' the guards said that the toiletries weighed 21 pounds. A prison official said that weight had to be subtracted from the food's weight, which meant that the prisoner could have only nine pounds of food. But that's not accurate either, because the weight of the containers is included.
In all, Díaz Sánchez would have a scant eight pounds of food for the next three months. That's not even 1.5 ounces a day. But this is not an article on statistics; it's a denunciation of torture.
Díaz Sánchez rejected the food package, because he considered such treatment to be degrading. He told the guards: ``I'm imprisoned here for defending the rights of all Cubans, and I'm not going to accept this violation.''
The warden told the relatives to leave through a back door and ordered two common prisoners to throw the bag with the food out on the road, which they did. Díaz Sánchez told his wife, daughters, and brother not to touch it. It just lay there. His wife told me that she felt very sad as she walked away and saw the package -- which she had put together with such sacrifice -- lying on the road. But she knew that at most one quarter of its contents would have reached him.
Meanwhile, I've heard from José Daniel Ferrer, who is at the Pinar del Rio prison known as Kilometer 5 ½. He tells me about the prisoners' suffering and constant hunger. His brother Luis Enrique -- who challenged the judges to sign the Varela Project and thus was handed the longest sentence, 28 years -- is now in a punishment cell. When normal conditions are torture, imagine what a punishment cell must be like. ***