guards to stop the torture of her increasingly weak brother and allow him medical attention, dissident sources confirmed Wednesday August 25.
The Cuban Democratic Directory (CDD) said Berta Antunez, the sister of the 39-year old jailed Christian dissident Jorge Luis Garcia Perez (Antunez) began the action earlier this week "in her humble home in Placetas (in) Villa Clara, Cuba."
Her action comes at a time when human rights groups and family members have expressed concern about the alleged harsh treatment suffered by several imprisoned dissidents, including beatings and deprivation of food and medicine.
In a statement distributed via CDD, Berta Antunez said she was particularly worried about the "harassment" of her brother, who received an 18-year prison sentence in March 1990 on charges of spreading "enemy propaganda?" an apparent reference to his opposition to the Communist government of Fidel Castro.
CIVIL RESISTANCE
He was also one of the founders of Pedro Luis Boitel National Movement for Civil Resistance, which seeks to record and denounce maltreatment of political prisoners and promotes passive resistance amongst detainees.
Antunez has been confined in solitary confinement, a tiny, sealed cell with no light or bedding, typically overflowing with excrement and infested with rats and insects, said Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), another human rights group. During the Papal visit to Cuba in 1998, the Pope included Antunez’s name on the list of political prisoners for whose freedom he was petitioning.
While in the feared Convenedor del Este in Havana, the authorities have repeatedly confiscated his Bible and denied him water, medical attention and clothes, CSW reported last month. More recently the Cuban prisoner was "savagely beaten and tortured", human rights watchdogs said.
CHILD BEATEN
In addition "my family suffered an act of aggression during our visit on July 5 of this year when the guards even beat up a nine-year old child, in addition to the horrible beating that they gave my brother in front of my own eyes," claimed Berta Antunez according to CDD.
She said she had "delivered a letter to the national headquarters of Jails and Prisons in Havana" on July 14, "asking that the harassment against my brother end, and that he be moved to our province," from where "he has been exiled for more than ten years." Because she did not receive an answer, Berta Antunez decided to declare a hunger strike, said CDD.
Her brother reportedly suffers from serious bronchitis, and prison authorities do not permit his family to deliver him medicine. "Prison officials do not administer him any relief for his suffering either," added CDD, which has close contacts with his family.
OTHERS ALSO SUFFER
Among other known dissidents said to suffer similar treatment is Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, whose health has been deteriorating, since prison officials prevented his wife last month to bring him the "meager rations of food and medicine" allowed to other detainees, the United States State Department said.
This punishment in the Kilo 8 prison of Pinar del Rio province was to end on August 18 but his wife has been unable to confirm this to outsiders as her telephone communications have been "interrupted", BosNewsLife learned from dissident sources.
Human rights organizations have also expressed concern about Normando Hernandez Gonzalez, who activists say has been in a "punishment cell" since May 14 when he reportedly refused to be transferred "to areas of extremely dangerous hardened criminals", arguing that it would diminish his dignity as a Prisoner of Consience.
LONG ISOLATION
"After more than ninety days of isolation, his wife and family do not have news of his health or his whereabouts," CDD said. Two political prisoners, Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia and Leonel Grave de Peralta, who joined his protests in May were recently transferred from his "Kilo 5 1/2" Prison’ in Pinar del Rio, to other detention centers, the organization added.
Some 70 human rights activists were arrested in Cuba last year as part of a massive crackdown on dissidents and pro-democracy activists, including Christians, who protest a one-party system in place in the four decades since the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
Cuba rejects the word "dissident," saying all opponents to President Castro’s communist government are U.S.-backed "counter-revolutionaries" "mercenaries" and "traitors". It has also denied reports of torture and mistreatment of prisoners.
