[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 95 (Wednesday, June 25, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H5907]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         HELL IN A CUBAN PRISON

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from 
New Jersey (Mr. Smith) had a wonderful idea the other week. We should 
speak every single week about the men and women who are languishing in 
prisons in the totalitarian state of Cuba, that island that has been 
for 44 years oppressed by a totalitarian dictator. So each week we 
bring forth, a number of us here, different political prisoners and 
speak specifically about their cases to remind our colleagues and those 
who will listen about the horrors just 90 miles from the shores of the 
United States.

                              {time}  2100

  The following are excerpts, Mr. Speaker, from a letter from dissident 
Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leyva who is blind. These excerpts of a letter 
were sent out of his prison in Holguin, Cuba, as recorded by his wife 
Maritza Calderin. The letter was sent to the United Nations Human 
Rights Commission in Geneva.
  To Sylvia Iriondo of mothers and Women Against Repression. This is a 
letter, Mr. Speaker, sent out of prison by Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leyva.
  After 13 months in prison, I have not been tried or sentenced by any 
court even as efforts have been made to persuade me to betray God and 
human rights and collaborate with the dictatorship. Since mid-December, 
State security used inmate Joe Prado, as he calls himself, to throw in 
my cell a substance that produced a burning sensation on the skin and 
nasal congestion, a great deal of phlegm and bronchial inflammation. 
The situation still continues.
  Since January, they have added another substance to the sawdust they 
throw at me. This one gives me the sensation of millions of bugs 
constantly running all over me. It causes a great deal of itching and 
prevents me from sleeping. I do not know if this is a biological 
substance or chemical agent, but I know it is not insects because when 
I touch my skin there are no actual bugs that I can feel, although this 
sensation is palpable.
  Normally the sawdust shower is a daily occurrence. Yesterday it 
started around 6:00 p.m. when I was on my knees praying. The sensation 
is that of a multitude of bugs suddenly coming down on my face and my 
body. This torment continues until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.
  The inmate follows me everywhere. I have to eat out of a can that I 
try to keep covered all the time because he will throw the nausea-
provoking substance into the food.
  Sometimes I feel as if I have a chain attached to my body and the 
weight of the world on my shoulders. I feel that I am going to 
collapse, that I cannot take this anymore, but I pray to God, and Jesus 
Christ gives me strength. It is a constant struggle, a constant 
torture.
  On February 1, I placed my mattress in front of the cell's iron bar 
doors to get some fresh air. Officer Fabu, the unit chief, snatched the 
mattress away from me, threw me on the floor, took me by the neck and 
dragged me. He told me that if I wanted to sleep, I could sleep on the 
bare floor with the dirt, other prisoner's shoes, roaches, ants, mice, 
et cetera.
  One night they threw so much of the substance into the cell that it 
was as if the walls were boiling. So I had to retreat to my bed and 
resign myself to do without the little bit of fresh air I was getting 
through the iron bars.
  The substance also causes acute pain in both of my eye sockets. The 
pain is so severe that at times it seems my eyes are popping out. Every 
day the unit chief threatens me with death if I continue the hunger 
strike to protest the prosecution's request of 8 years in prison.
  They do not allow me to speak to my lawyer and I do not have 
religious assistance or access to any information. I am only allowed to 
listen to the round tables and the State-run newscasts. For the 
skeptics, I can say that hell does exist and Satan shows all of his 
faces here.
  In here, I listen to the weeping of young and old women, their 
terrible and frightful laments forever embedded in my mind. They plead 
because they are locked in cells that are like drawers where are held 
men, women and the elderly, the sick and the incapacitated. They plead 
because the four walls become a grave site.
  These are catacombs where people scream but the sound is drowned out 
by a hermetically sealed metal door. When the women plead, the prison 
guards laugh and say, ``What they want is a man.''
  I trust God and our Lord, Jesus Christ, to give me the strength to 
face any situation, whether to live in squalor, as I live now, or to 
die and meet my Lord and my God.
  The political prisoner of Cuba, Mr. Speaker, 90 miles from the shores 
of the United States, an island that has suffered 44 years of 
totalitarian and oppression while the world does nothing, but we do not 
forget and we will not continue denouncing the horrors of the 
totalitarianism that the people in Cuba suffer and we will not stop 
struggling until Cuba is free.

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