The Sword of Raul Castro

The Sword of Raul Castro / Luis Felipe Rojas
Posted on January 14, 2015

All said and done, more than half of a list of 53 political prisoners
that nobody knows are already free, completely secret and that nobody we
ask clarifies for us. Of the fifty who were out, I have the list of 36
prisoners who were surprised to be free again, without formal charges
and under different conditions for their release: immediate release,
probation, and extra-penal freedom (the latter is awarded regularly
after inmates suffering from illness that prevents them from staying in
the difficult prison conditions on the island).

The partial list I have taken from the independent website 14Ymedio.com,
directed by Yoani Sánchez:1.Alexander Otero Rodríguez 2. Alexeis Vargas
Martín 3. Ángel Figueredo Castellón 4. Ángel Yunier Remón Arzuaga 5.
Anoy Almeida Pérez 6. Aracelio Ribeaux Noa 7. Ariel Eugenio Arzuaga Peña
8. Bianko Vargas Martín 9. Daniel Enrique Quesada Chaveco 10. David
Piloto Barceló 11. Diango Vargas Martín 12. Emilio Plana Robert 13.
Enrique Figuerola Miranda 14. Ernesto Riverí Gascón 15. Haydeé Gallardo
Salazar 16. Iván Fernández Depestre 17. Jorge Ramírez Calderón 18. José
Lino Ascencio López 19. José M. Rodríguez Navarro 20. Julio César Vegas
Santiesteban 21. Lázaro Romero Hurtado 22. Luis Enrique Labrador Díaz
23. Miguel Guerra Astie 24. Rolando Reyes Rabanal 25. Ruberlandis Maine
Villalón 26. Yohanne Arce Sarmientos 27. Yordenis Mendoza Cobas 28.
Wilberto Parada Milán 29. Mario Alberto Hernández Leiva 30. Leonardo
Paumier Ramírez 31. Miguel Ángel Tamayo Frías 32. Ernesto Tamayo Guerra
33. Vladimir Ortiz Suárez 34. Roberto Hernández Barrio 35. Rubisney
Villavicencio Figueredo 36. Carlos Manuel Figueredo Álvarez 37.
Alexander Fernández Rico 38. Miguel Alberto Ulloa 39. Reiner Mulet.

It goes without saying, we are happy with these releases, they are
people, young people mainly, who never should have been prisoners. What
is striking is that the majority will remain as hostages, if there is no
further pressure in the coming days. These dozens of outlaws in that
violation of human rights, will follow the course of some ten political
prisoners who were released between 2010 and 2011, when the Catholic
Church served as a mediator for such releases.

The prisoners of the Black Spring of 2003 who decided to stay to live
and fight in Cuba cannot leave the country until the years of their
sentence end or until a doddering finger from the State Council
eliminates this arbitrariness. José Daniel Ferrer García, Oscar Elías
Biscet and Jorge Olivera Castillo, to mention just three, have been
invited to travel as a defender of human rights, physician and writer,
respectively, by political parties, national congresses, democratic
governments and official institutions to visit the world and publicize
the horror that they and an entire people live through. The Havana
regime has refused, alluding to the false legal figure of the
restriction of movement for 'release on parole.'

We should be attentive, these people who are just out of prison have
over themselves the 'sword of Damocles' of General Raul Castro. Not all
have been promoted internationally, and reading their names one
discovers that they are anonymous people who one day did not shut their
mouth or stayed home, detained, taken out, to where the repressive
forces of the Security of the State want to have them.

I was able to speak, hours after his having been freed, with the
rebellious rapper Ángel Yunier Remón Arzuaga, known as El Crítico (The
Critic). He thanked all those who have promoted the cause of Cuban
political prisoners, and immediately he told me, that in addition to his
cause of liberty, he was worried that, "My house is destroyed, brother.
My young wife hasn't been able to handle such a burden and the
harassment by the police every day of this unjust lockup. Now I have to
take on the two houses, this and the other," he said, referring to the
wattle and daub of the country where we were born.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

Source: The Sword of Raul Castro / Luis Felipe Rojas | Translating Cuba
- http://translatingcuba.com/the-sword-of-raul-castro-luis-felipe-rojas/