[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19815]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  THE HORROR STORIES OF CASTRO'S JAILS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to draw attention to 
the continued plight of political prisoners locked away in Cuban jails. 
In March of this year, Fidel Castro began a campaign against political 
opposition. Over the course of a few weeks, Castro's regime arrested an 
array of political opposition leaders, including signers and supporters 
of a joint statement from the Cuban dissident community to the European 
Union, promoters of the Varela Project, members of the independent 
press, owners of independent libraries and members of Cuba's 
independent civil society.
  Inside of a month, the dissidents were arrested, arraigned, tried and 
sentenced, some receiving prison terms as long as 27 years. The 
prisoners were refused access to their wives and family, allowed little 
or no legal defense and were denied the ability to read the state's 
case against them. The Cuban Government provided no information about 
the trials and barred access to international journalists. However, 
that was only the beginning of Castro's reign of terror.
  Accounts of psychological torture, abuse and neglect have slowly 
begun to emerge from Cuba's prisons. Stories of rat- and bug-infested 
cells, beatings, solitary confinement and a lack of medical treatment 
seem to be the standard in Castro's prisons. The accounts are so 
horrible that they have led a spokesperson for the U.S. State 
Department to declare that ``the Cuban Government seems to be going out 
of its way to treat these prisoners inhumanely.''
  The wife of journalist Hector Maseda, sentenced to 20 years, shared 
his accounts of bed bugs so rampant in one jail that prisoners cannot 
sleep. Family members of journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who is 
suffering from liver disease and gastrointestinal bleeding, shared his 
stories of being denied medical care. His family fears he may die.
  The wife of Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leyva, a blind dissident, recently 
presented one of his letters to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in 
Geneva. In the letter he talks of the daily ``sawdust shower'' that he 
has been subjected to by a fellow inmate. Gonzalez writes that the 
substance ``gives me the sensation of millions of bugs constantly 
running all over me.'' He continues, stating, ``I don't know if this is 
a biological substance or a chemical agent. But I know that it is not 
insects because when I touch my skin there are no actual bugs that I 
can feel.''
  Other prisoners, Mr. Speaker, complain of leaking cells, no sheets, 
no pillows and no eating utensils.
  Amnesty International recently declared the 75 dissidents and 
opposition leaders ``prisoners of conscience.'' These 75 convictions 
bring Cuba's total to 90 ``prisoners of conscience'' currently in Cuban 
prisons. This makes Cuba the country with the highest number of 
prisoners with that status in the Western Hemisphere. Various other 
organizations inside and outside Cuba place the number of political 
prisoners at more than 300.
  However, these are the stories and prisoner accounts that have 
managed to be leaked to the public. There is no telling what evils lurk 
in Castro's jails and what stories and horrors have yet to see the 
light of day.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join with me and condemn Castro's 
incarceration and mistreatment of the 75 dissidents and all of its 
political prisoners. Congress must send a strong message to Castro that 
the abuse of Cuban political prisoners has not gone unnoticed and will 
not be allowed to continue.

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