Sunday, December 20, 2009

Open Letter from Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, "Antunez," to Raul Castro

Open Letter from Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, "Antunez," to Raul Castro

By Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez"
Placetas
December 8, 2009
Directorio Democrático Cubano
December 15, 2009
La Nueva Cuba

Mr. Raul Castro,

My name is Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, "Antunez", a former political
prisoner. I am writing to you again not because I pretend to make you
aware of something that is alien to you and is ordinary in Cuba and
natural to the politics of your government. For several months now my
wife Yris Tamara Perez Aguilera and I find ourselves under forced house
arrest by your political police, and a high ranking State Security
officer the week before the Juanes concert in Havana, after arresting
me, informed me that I had an order for my arrest throughout the island
of Cuba. He emphasized that they were going to be watching every step I
take. Since that date I have lost count of how many times I have been
detained, the majority of which were violent.

Mr. Dictator allow me a few questions that may help you clear up some
doubts of those compatriots of mine who were hopeful that your
government would diminish repression or that even democratic openings
could be made.
With what right do the authorities, without a prior crime being
committed, detain and impede the free movement of their citizens in
violation of a universally recognized right?

What feelings could move a man like Captain Idel Gonzalez Morfi to beat
my wife, a defenseless woman, so brutally causing lasting effects to her
bones, for the sole act of arriving at a radio station to denounce with
evidence the torture that her brother received in a Cuban prison, or is
it that for you there are only five families that exist in our country
that have the right to protest and demand justice for their jailed
relatives?

Should you not be ashamed that your corpulent police officers remain
posted for days at the corner of my home to impede us from leaving our
house and monitoring our movements in our own city?

Where is the professionalism and ethics of your subordinates that with
their ridiculous operations provoke the mockery of the populace for
these persons on an almost daily basis?

How do you feel when you encourage or allow these persons who call
themselves "men" to beat and drag women through the streets such as:
Damaris Moya Portieles, Marta Diaz, Ana Alfonso Arteaga, Sara Marta
Fonseca, Yris Perez and most recently the blogger Yoani Sánchez?

How can you and your subordinates sleep tranquilly after deliberately
and maliciously knocking down on more than one occasion Idania Yánez
Contreras who is several months pregnant?

How can you and your government speak about the battle of ideas when you
are constantly repressing them with beatings, arrests and years of
incarceration?

Maybe your followers cannot find or attempt to find a response. However,
I find myself in the long list of persons that are not afraid to respond.

You act this way because you are a cruel man and insensible to the pain
and suffering of others, because faithful to your anti democratic and
dictatorial vocation, you are convinced that dictatorships like the one
you preside over can only be maintained through terror and torture and
the most minimal opening can lead to the loss of the only thing that you
are interested in, which is maintaining yourself in power.

Lastly, and returning to my case in particular, I will respond without
asking you beforehand the concrete motives of your continual repression
against me personally. Your government and servants of the repressive
corps cannot forgive my two biggest and only crimes: First, that despite
almost two decades of torture, and cruel and inhumane punishment during
my unjust and severe sanction, you could not break my dignity and my
position as a political prisoner. Second, because even though I was
accosted and brutalized, and above all risk returning to prison, I have
taken the decision not to leave my country, in which I will continue
struggling for a change that I believe is both necessary and inevitable.

From Placetas,
Jorge Luis García Pérez, "Antunez." December 2009.
Maria A. Lima
Asistente Especial al Coordinador de Programas
Relaciones Internacionales
Directorio Democrático Cubano
Telf: (305) 220-2713
Fax: (305) 220-2716
email: marialima@directorio.org
www.directorio.org

LA NUEVA CUBA (15 December 2009)
http://www.lanuevacuba.com/2009/Dec/notic-09-12-1490.htm

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