NEWS ALERT: Cuba Prisoner of Conscience Nearly Strangled To Death, Wife Says

Normando Hernandez Gonzales, 38, was allegedly attacked Tuesday, April 14, by a fellow inmate at the Carlos J. Finlay military hospital in Havana, where he has been hospitalized for seven months due to tuberculosis and several other potentially life-threatening diseases, all of them contracted in jail.

He was transferred last September from Kilo 7 Prison, in central Camaguey Province, north to the hospital in the Cuban capital, a nine-hour bus ride away.

His wife Yaraí Reyes Marín explained in a telephone statement released by the Cuban Democratic Directorate (CDD), a pro-democracy group, that her husband was nearly strangled to death by a common prisoner sentenced for murdering a police officer.

GUARDS WATCHING

The attack happened as four guards were watching, she was quoted as saying, adding that another prisoner unsuccessfully attempted to defend Hernandez Gonzalez.

As the guards did not immediately intervene, the attack nearly rendered the young prisoner of conscience unconscious, and left his flesh marked with gouges, the Cuban Democratic Directorate (CDD) quoted his wife as saying.

He, "has gouges on his neck and left shoulder…[The guards] waited until he was partially suffocated, and after that, when they saw that the other prisoner was unable to remove the attacker from Normando, that was when they went in to remove him," Reyes Marín reportedly said.

The attacker, identified only as Mario, did not exhibit any symptoms of illness, and had been admitted to the hospital 20 days before the attack took place, during which time he had persistently verbally harassed the political prisoner, the CDD said.  
 
RELIGIOUS RIGHTS

It came just weeks after religious rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide said in a report that Hernández González has been denied the right to pastoral visits.

As editor of an independent news agency, the Colegio de Periodistas Independientes de Camagüey (CPIC), he was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2003 on what rights groups have described as “trumped-up” charges of crimes against state security. Three other independent journalists were tried in the same hearing.

He was one of some 75 dissidents, including Christians, detained during what became known among human rights as ‘Black Spring’. When the March, 2003 crackdown began, he reportedly eluded arrest for 24 hours so he could celebrate his daughter’s first birthday, and then he turned himself in. Authorities have in the past denied the existence of dissidents on the Communist-run island.  

DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENTS? 

There have been some hopes among Western observers that Raul Castro, who succeeded his frail brother Fidel as Cuba’s leader this year, will encourage at least some democratic changes in the country and improve religious and political rights.

However the 76-year-old has made clear to the National Assembly he will consult his brother on important decisions. Amid political uncertainty, mission broadcaster HCJB Global said it would continue Spanish programs to Cuba via shortwave from South America.

“Hundreds of listeners have enrolled in the ministry’s Bible Institute of the Air, a Spanish correspondence program incorporating radio broadcasts," said HCJB Global. “In addition, numerous pastoral training workshops, held in conjunction with Leadership Resources International, have been held in Cuba since the mid-1990s."
 
The call-letters ‘HCJB’ stand for ‘Heralding Christ Jesus’ Blessings’.