Treat Dissident, U.S. Tells Cuba

New York Times ^ | June 2, 2003 | uncredited

[Cincinatus' Wife]

WASHINGTON, June 2 - The Bush administration demanded today that Cuba provide adequate medical attention to Óscar Espinosa Chepe, a dissident journalist with liver disease. Mr. Chepe, 62, was among 75 writers, economists and human rights activists sentenced to prison this spring in a sweeping campaign against government critics.

Sentenced to 20 years for treason, Mr. Chepe is being held in eastern Cuba, far from his family and a hospital able to treat his condition, which relatives say is deteriorating.

A State Department spokesman, Philip T. Reeker, said the Cuban government "appears to be going out of its way" to treat the dissidents inhumanely.

"The United States demands that the Cuban government provide Mr. Chepe with adequate health care and transfer him to a hospital where he can receive the level of care commensurate with his illness," Mr. Reeker said.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Dissidents' wives irk Cuban regime***"They told him that because of my actions," said Claudia Marquez, the wife of dissident journalist Osvaldo Alfonso. Marquez recently wrote an article for a U.S. publication about the crackdown in Cuba. The wives say another concern is that their husbands have been assigned to prisons hundreds of miles from home. Few people own cars in Cuba, and public transportation is poor. Lydia Lima Valdez, a 67-year-old physician, said it took three days to travel back and forth between Havana and eastern province of Holguin, where her husband is serving an 18-year sentence. The trip included two 12-hour bus rides. "The distance is so far for me," said Lima Valdez. "It's really difficult. I'm too old."

Visits for some inmates also have been limited to one every three months, the wives say. This makes it difficult for family members to deliver food, clothing, soap, sheets and other things their husbands need to make it in Cuba's sparse penitentiary system. With other avenues of protest blocked, several wives met with a delegation from Iowa and recently attended a packed diplomatic reception at the home of the Norwegian ambassador to Cuba.

Elsa Morejon, the wife of imprisoned dissident Oscar Elias Biscet, said she attended the Norwegian reception because "my husband is in a punishment cell, and I have to get him out of there." "I talked to diplomats from Spain, Greece, Canada, Chile and Britain," she explained. "If the people of the world don't know about my husband, I can't do anything for him." Morejon said her husband is in solitary confinement after he refused to wear a prison uniform. Biscet, who is clothed only in underwear, has been denied visits, she said.***