Liberty Costs Dearly, and Angel Santiesteban Decided to Buy It for Its Price

Liberty Costs Dearly, and Angel Santiesteban Decided to Buy It for Its Price
Posted on September 3, 2014

"In the world there has to be a certain quantity of decency, just as
there has to be a certainly quantity of light. Where there are many men
without decency, there are always others who have in themselves the
decency of many men. Those are the ones who rebel with terrible force
against those who steal from the people their freedoms, which is to
steal decency from men. In those men are thousands of men, an entire
people, human dignity. Those men are sacred." Jose Marti.

Today, August 28, 2014, it has been a year and a half, 18 months, 72
weeks, 548 days or 13,152 hours since Angel was unjustly incarcerated.

In this time, not a single response from the dicatorship in answer to
the requests for a Review of his rigged trial after the false complaints
by a resentful woman manipulated by State Security.

In this time, his son grew enough to distance himself from his mother,
the complainant, and to tell that he was manipulated to lie and testify
against his father for the purpose of hurting him.

In this time, Angel has continued writing, publishing, and reaping awards.

In this time, Angel has continued denouncing the brutalities of the most
pampered dynastic dictatorship in the world where hypocrisy reigns.

But, in this same time, thanks to the same dictatorship that keeps him
incarcerated, he has been able to denounce the horrors from the very
heart of hell, the Castro penitentiary system.

After the simple words of his son — which dismantled the State
Security's crudely concocted plot against him — they have only increased
his isolation in punishment because of them, and that's why we continue
not knowing his own version of the events that had him in an unknown
location for a week.Right now, his own reality came to occupy the place
of the complaints that he cannot send us.

The silence to which they condemn him, the blind, deaf and mute justice,
the illegal transfers and his solo confinement, are the most tangible
proof that his complaints are true, that Cuba lives in submission to a
ruthless dictatorship, where there exists no separation of powers and
that to assume the universal right of free expression one pays very dearly.

Incarcerating him and silencing him, the regime says through Angel much
more than he himself; it only corroborates with events what it denies in
speeches, that yes, always decorated with supposed reforms and feigned
openings that are nothing more than the other such farces to which we
have become accustomed.

Angel continues a prisoner but freer than ever. The truth is that they
will never be able to silence him. The Jaimanitas cell where there is an
officer posted at the door 24 hours a day is the most patent and
pathetic proof that Cuba is steeped in terror.

"A just principle, from the depths of a cave, can do more than an army."
Jose Marti.

The Editor

Click the link for Amnesty International to declare Cuban dissident
Angel Santiesteban a prisoner of conscience.
https://secure.avaaz.org/es/petition/Para_que_Amnistia_Internacional_declare_prisionero_de_conciencia_al_disidente_cubano_Angel_Santiesteban/?fbss

Translated by mlk.

27 August 2014

Source: Liberty Costs Dearly, and Angel Santiesteban Decided to Buy It
for Its Price | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/liberty-costs-dearly-and-angel-santiesteban-decided-to-buy-it-for-its-price/