Cuba counters claims they mistreat jailed dissidents

Friday, March 26, 2004

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque on Thursday dismissed as a "campaign of exaggerations and lies" charges that authorities were mistreating dissidents jailed one year ago -- and made public video to make his point.

The 75 dissidents were arrested in March 2003 on charges of working for a foreign power. They were given swift trials and sentenced to anywhere between six and 28 years in prison.

Since the arrests relatives have claimed that the dissidents were subject to especially harsh prison conditions, being sent to darkened and isolated cells without drinking water and given poor food.

"There is a campaign against Cuba," Perez Roque said, describing the charges of mistreatment as "manipulated, tendentious information ... lies."

The government of President Fidel Castro "does not have a vengeful attitude" towards the dissidents, adding that Cuba is "fulfilling minimum United Nations requirements on treatment of prisoners."

Perez Roque said the prisoners are treated with "respect for their physical and moral well-being," and "receive adequate medical attention, good food, they do not sleep on the floor but on a bed with a mattress, and are not in darkened cells or in isolation."

Perez Roque showed a 19-minute film of the relatives of seven prisoners who have been reported as being in dire health. The wives, mothers, sisters of the seven were interviewed at homes by Cuban television reporters.

The witnesses said their loved ones are receiving good medical care in prison hospitals and are in a satisfactory state of health.

Perez Roque also produced two doctors from the army hospital in charge of the health of two dissidents, economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe and activist Marta Beatriz Roque, the only woman arrested in the group.

The doctors described their medical condition and denied that either had cancer, as had been rumored.

According to Elizardo Sanchez, a dissident who leads the Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, the crackdown "was an act of pure vengeance, punishing the peaceful opposition. And with that, the government did not change the country's situation, political or economic."

At least "a dozen of these prisoners are in their 60s and about 20 of them are gravely ill," Sanchez said last week, marking the anniversary of their imprisonment.

No international organization has been allowed into Cuba's prisons since 1988.

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