Havana, Cuba, Aug 14, 2007 / 08:52 am
The president of the Christian Liberation Movement in Cuba, Oswaldo Paya, has sent an open letter to the public denouncing the growing risk of death that prisoners of conscience are facing in Cuban prisons.
In his letter, Paya noted that the increased risk is due to the fact that “Cuban political prisoners are confined together with common prisoners who on occasion threaten and harass them, with the encouragement of the authorities themselves.”
Violence and bloodshed are frequent among common prisoners and from abusive prison guards, Paya said, noting that in all the prisons of Cuba, “political prisoners have a high possibility of being assaulted and suffer great anxiety and stress, due to confinement in cruel, degrading conditions that are life-threatening.”
“To confine political prisoners with common ones,” the letter explained, “has not been very common in Cuba’s history, even during the dictatorship prior to this one, but now it has become a perverse practice on the part of authorities who are enraged with these people only because they dared to defend and promote the rights of Cubans,” Paya noted.