Friday, July 25, 2003
[posted by jaed at 8:00 AM]...there is not much more harm that the warden can inflict on me for speaking out...
In the NYT, Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, who was one of Fidel Castro's companions in the movement to overthrow Batista (and was jailed with him), compares and contrasts their treatment at the hands of Batista with Cuban dissidents' treatment at Castro's hands:
Prisoner Castro, a lawyer, had three months between his arrest and his October 1953 trial to prepare his own defense (later adapted into his famous "History Will Absolve Me" speech). Warden Castro allowed today's dissidents their first glimpses of their lawyers minutes before their trials, if at all.The traditional exhortation: read the whole thing.
Their quarters do not resemble Inmate Castro's bright and spacious hospital room of 1953: most are in cells full of rats and mosquitoes; in many, the tap for drinking water juts from the wall just above the hole in the floor the prisoners are to use as a toilet. When they have family visits, every three months, they come out in handcuffs, some in shackles.
