Mr. Castro's Prisoners

Washington Post ^ | November 13, 2002; Page A26 | uncredited

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Then there is Leonardo Miguel Bruzon Avila, president of the 24th of February Movement -- named for both a turning point in the Spanish-American War and the day in 1996 when two civilian aircraft carrying four members of the Cuban American Brothers to the Rescue movement were shot down over international waters by Cuban fighter jets. Mr. Bruzon was merely planning a peaceful public ceremony when he was arrested Feb. 23; since then he has been held without trial. In late August, in protest of the conditions under which he and some 230 other Cuban political prisoners are being held, he began a hunger strike. Now, according to his family, he is near death at a military hospital. His family says his body is covered with bruises and he is coughing blood; his voice is barely audible. His condition is a testament to the nature of Mr. Castro's regime. By the same token, the peaceful tactics he and other opponents have so courageously adhered to predict the quality of government that could one day succeed the dictatorship.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Jay Nordlinger: Who Cares About Cuba***The oppositionists and their supports are extraordinarily, even disturbingly, grateful for any sincere attention they receive. They are accustomed to being snubbed or defamed. Another exile writes, "Prisoners cling to newspaper articles about human rights in Cuba as their only hope against being abandoned and forgotten. The sense of helplessness, that no one is listening, that no one cares, is what kills their souls. I've known many such people, including within my own family."

Back in the Reagan years, Jeane Kirkpatrick became a heroine in the Soviet Union for the simple act of naming names on the floor of the U.N.: naming the names of prisoners, citing their cases, inquiring after their fates. Later, in Moscow, she met Andrei Sakharov, who exclaimed, "Kirkpatski, Kirkpatski! I have so wanted to meet you and thank you in person. Your name is known in all the Gulag." And why was that? Because she had named those names, giving men and women in the cells a measure of hope. Kirkpatrick says now, "This much I have learned: It is very, very important to say the names, to speak them. It's important to go on taking account as one becomes aware of the prisoners and the torture they undergo. It's terribly important to talk about it, write about it, go on TV about it." A tyrannical regime depends on silence, darkness. "One of their goals is to make their opponents vanish. They want not only to imprison them, they want no one to have heard of them, no one to know who or where they are. So to just that extent, it's tremendously important that we pay attention."***

Fidel Castro - Cuba

[Free the USA]

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