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Carta de Cuba, la escritura de la libertad |
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August 17, 2005 GOMEZ MANZANO TRANSFERRED Havana – The lawyer and peaceful opponent René Gómez Manzano was transferred to the commissariat at 100th and Aldabó Streets, headquarters of the Technical Department of Investigations. 61-year old Gómez Manzano has been detained since the morning of July 22th, shortly before an oppositionist meeting was to take place on that day, in front of the French Embassy, with the purpose of protesting on behalf of the people arrested on July 13th, anniversary of the sinking, by government troops, of a tugboat carrying on board more than 70 persons trying to leave the country, with a large number of victims, among them women and children. Gómez Manzano was arrested in his home and taken to the police station at 7th Ave. and 62nd Street, in the Miramar neighborhood, where he stayed for 19 days, under due process of law. The authorities pretend to condemn him based on Law 88, popularly known as the ¨Gag Law¨, which is said to ¨protect¨ the national sovereignty and economy. At the same time, the government has thrown the worst mobs to the streets. Shouting slogans in favor of Fidel Castro’s regime, demonstrators supporting the Cuban government have congregated, in these last days, in front of the houses of well known dissident figures, preventing them to attend to previously programmed meetings or to even walk out to the street. Among those who have been threatened by such mobs, are oppositionist leaders Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello and Vladimiro Roca Antúnez, as well as Gisela Delgado, wife of prisoner of conscience Héctor Palacio Ruiz, and independent doctor Darey Ferrer. Vladimiro Roca declared to the international press, speaking from his house fence, that his father, the deceased communist leader Blas Roca, would have qualified such violent acts as ¨fascist actions¨.- José Raúl García PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE GRAVELY SICK Havana – Acute diarrhea, very low blood pressure and significant loss of body weight, constitute the medical condition presenting independent journalist José Raúl García Paneque, prisoner of conscience condemned to 24 years in jail, and who is actually interned at the hospital in ¨Combinado del Este¨ prison, in Havana. His wife, Yamilé Llanes Labrada, denounced that he was suffering from a seriously acute diarrhea, whose origin doctors have not been able to find out. He is now weighing 48 Kg. -a little more than 100 pounds- while his blood pressure only amounts to 70 with 45. Llanes Labrada has to attend the prison hospital, every 15 days, to carry him the food he is supposed to eat, since the authorities do not guarantee him the diet required by his present physical condition.- Abel Escobar Ramírez 40 DAYS WITHOUT WATER Santiago de Cuba – After more than 40 days without getting drinking water, which was followed by a furious protest of the population, at last the residents of Ciudamar neighborhood, in Santiago, have received the precious liquid. The outraged neighbors went out to the streets with empty buckets, shouting all kind of insults against the authorities. In a busy neighborhood sector, a poster was actually placed saying: ¨Terrorism is not only to put bombs, but to kill the people with calamity¨. The popular protest provoked the immediate mobilization of the authorities who, in a matter of hours, solved that which they have haven’t been able to achieve in 40 days: the positioning of reservoir trucks and water tanks in several places of the neighborhood, which is close to the local airport and the ¨Versalles¨ motel, where all Venezuelan patients receiving medical treatment in Cuba are living.- José Behar SMALL BUSINESSMEN REPRESSED Havana Province – In Batabanó, south of Havana, the official authorities developed the so called ¨Operation Rastrillo¨ (Operation Rake), an intense repressive police wave against what the state calls ¨crimes of illegal sales and enrichment¨. This has resulted in a series of arrests, confiscations, inspections, fines, housebreaks, power abuse, warnings and use of force against hundreds of people, something which has created a deep unrest among the population in the area. The local police -whose main commanders were recently changed- busted the street sales people with such force that in less than a week, it had immobilized all unauthorized commercial activity -which is practically all- jeopardizing the neighbors’ access to the products or services in shortage at the municipal state market net, aggravating even more the citizens’ hardships. Great amounts of butter, sodas and sweets, elaborated by local producers, were confiscated, and fines between $700 and $1,500 pesos were applied in each case. But what mostly outraged people was what happened to a popular local character, known as ¨Felo, the milkman¨, who was forced to throw two tanks of his cow’s milk on one side of the highway, as a way to put an end to such ¨illicit¨ activity.- María Olaya TO DREAM A HOUSE Havana – In a world encounter denominated ¨Sustainable Programs for Cities¨, which took place in the Cuban capital, the government was forced to reveal for the first time information demonstrating the profound crisis the island is suffering in relation to the housing situation. Almost half of the country’s houses are in bad or nearly bad shape, according to the report. Most of the families do not have access to a home or are forced to live with their relatives or directly in state shelters. The fundamental cause for this deficit is the lack of resources to build and repair houses. In order to alleviate such serious situation, the Cuban state would have to invest 4,000 million dollars, throughout ten years, by annually building 50,000 dwellings; only in Havana, it is required the annual construction of more than 20,000. However, last year, only 15,325 were built in the whole country, most of them replacing the ones demolished by the hurricanes. To build a house in Cuba costs around 8,000 thousand dollars, according to the report, but such figure cannot be considered real, because the materials can only be bought by the state, at the prices and conditions officials decide.- José Raúl García UNDERGROUND MEDICINE FACTORY Havana – It is still unknown the total amount of people implicated on a complex scheme of underground manufacturing of medicines, using stolen raw materials, which was recently discovered by the Cuban police. To produce such remedies, which were later sold on the black market, an elaborated deviation –word used by the Cuban government when it does not want to mention ¨robbery¨- web of resources had been created, in which partook from production and brigade leaders to technicians, workers and security personnel from the state laboratories. According to the limited information offered on the matter, in the manufacturing and sales of medicaments destined to the black market, there were transportation and storage personnel also implied, and even officials related to the distribution of such products in hospitals and pharmacies, from where they took some of them. In a sparse official note, it was said that the discovery of the underground pharmaceutical laboratory is part of the so called ¨Operation Dignity¨, of the Interior Ministry, in order to counteract the buoyant medicine black market existing in the country.
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