"Normando Hernandez Gonzales continues to be treated at the Havana Hospital. He is very ill," Cuban human rights official Laida Carro told BosNewsLife. Carro leads the ‘Coalition of Cuban-American Women,’ representing the interests of political prisoners, including the detained Hernandez Gonzales.
He has been held since April 2003 and is serving a 25-year sentence for "crimes against the state" that include writing articles critical of the Cuba’s health, education and judicial agencies.
While in detention, Hernandez Gonzales, 39, has been suffering of several ailments, including tuberculosis and a chronic parasitic infection, both contracted in prison, severe hypertension, and loss of vision, according to family members and dissidents.
SECURITY OFFICIALS
The ‘Coalition of Cuban-American Women’ said in a statement that state security officials moved the prisoner early Friday, September 14, from the Kilo 7 Prison in the province of Camaguey to the Carlos J. Finlay Military Hospital in Havana, apparently after pressure from his wife and mother.
"My son is doing badly. Very badly," she said earlier this year in published remarks. "He said that from there [the prison] he will leave dead." Gonzalez is perilously underweight, several sources say. His wife’s visits are reportedly the only time he is allowed fresh food. There have been occasional examinations by a gastroenterologist, who apparently confirmed his condition but could or would not provide regular, proper medication and diet. "The eyes of a doctor won’t cure me," the writer reportedly told his wife when she visited him.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro had denied human rights abuses and the existence of Christian dissidents or political prisoners. Those detained, he has said, are "mercenaries of the US" and against his revolution in the Communist-run island.
