Free Republic

Prominent Cuban author and dissident, Armando Valladares, has predicted the collapse of communism in Cuba after the death of former president Fidel Castro. Valladares said that people in Cuba were tired of 'acquiescing to state terrorism' like others had in communist Romania, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Valladares said that the young "sons of the revolution, are becoming ever more politically active... The author who spent 22 years in prison was in Italy to present a new edition of his most popular work, Against All Hope: a Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulags, in the Italian capital in Rome. He also critised...

Conditions at the prison at Guantánamo are inhumane. Inmates are deprived their right to religious worship, receive scant nutrition and suffer constant verbal and physical abuse from guards. It's a humanitarian outrage. I refer, of course, to Castro's Guantánamo Provincial Prison in Cuba proper, the prison across the fence from the U.S. naval base compound holding the terrorists. Fidel's lock-up makes the U.S. prison look like a five-star tropical resort. Torture, deprivation and isolation of political prisoners at the "other" Guantánamo -- or at any of Fidel's gulags across the island -- are no secret. They've been loudly denounced by...