Justice In A Dictatorship Part II

Some of what I experienced is hard to believe.

What follows is possibly one of the most despicable examples of collective torture in the history of humanity.

Each of the four buildings that held the prisoners in Isla de Pinos was rigged with seven thousand pounds of TNT by the Cuerpos de Ingenieros del Ejercito Rebelde (The Core of Engineers of the Rebel Army)

The foundation walls and tunnels of the buildings were perforated in triangular patterns creating an almost flawless demolition system once the TNT was installed.  In addition, one thousand pounds of TNT were placed in the central tower of each building with the objective that each tower would become a powerful fragmentation grenade four floors tall, the height of each tower.  The project was completed in the summer of 1962 and the prisoners lived for over a year fearing the explosion that would destroy them could come at any given moment.

All the while in prison cells the beatings continued, as did the tortures applied in cells of punishment and solitary confinement.  Some prisoners were even taken to Mazorra, the largest mental hospital in Havana, where they were given Electric Shock Treatments in the absence of any mental illness.

In 2003, 75 Cuban dissidents, journalists and poets were incarcerated by the regime,  provoking the dissent of many,  including men of outstanding talent like Jose Saramago, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Eduardo Galeano, Carlos Fuentes, and Susan Sontag.

Among the prisoners were Raúl Rivero and Manuel Vázquez Portal, two internationally known Cuban poets.  Two poets condemned for writing their verses.  That was their only crime.

Marta Beatriz Roque, a professional woman in a fragile state of health was arrested for suggesting that all Cubans gather peacefully to discuss the future of their country.

Most of those arrested were promoters of Project Varela, a group of people who walked the streets collecting signatures in accordance with the existing Cuban constitution, attempting to create a referendum where all Cubans could offer an opinion over the direction they thought their country should take in the future.

None of those arrested had a history of violence.  All of those condemned were pacifists in the style of Mahatma Gandhi.

After being condemned to long sentences, in a Machiavellian turn of events, all of the prisoners were transferred to prisons far away from where their families lived in an effort to deepen their suffering and that of their families.

The common denominator in the Cuban dictatorship has been to trample the rights of every citizen in order for Castro to maintain his hold on power.

Dig into the history of the Castro government and you will find that very few nations of our American continent have required the kind of price our Cuban people have paid to keep Fidel Castro in power.

I am sure that the day will come when a tribunal like the one in Nuremberg, will judge the tortures imposed and the crimes committed by Fidel Castro and his government and find that during his regime, justice has been nothing but a wadded up peace of paper in his murderous hands.