August 24, 2005
GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS DIRECT REPRESSIVE ACTIONS
Havana – Two top government officials have been identified among the mobs harassing and attacking the dissidents. In one picture taken by international journalists during the siege to opponent Vladimiro Roca’s residence, on August 12th, Jesús Prieto Medina and Nidia Diana Martínez Pití, were clearly identified as the harassing group directors. Prieto Medina has a high rank in the Municipality of Sandino, in Pinar del Río Province, and is a delegate to the National Assembly (where only official candidates are allowed) for the same municipality. Martínez Pití is director of the ¨William Soler¨ Pediatric Hospital, in the City of Havana, as well as a Cuban Women Federation (paramilitary association) official and a delegate to the National Assembly for Cerro county, in Havana. This confirms that the abuses and aggressions against well known dissidents are arranged actions, organized by the same government, who uses bands of regime’s sympathizers and paramilitary groups dressed up as civilians, in order to attack peaceful opponents.
GOVERNMENT RETAINS INFORMATION ABOUT EPIDEMIC OUTBREAK
The Cuban government is not giving any new information about the epidemic outbreak afflicting the island. After a sparse official note at the end of July, nothing else has been released in the official press, in spite that the affluence of patients going to the health facilities is very high, mainly at the emergency rooms of the pediatric hospitals, and according to rumors, the amount of victims is already over thirty. Even if the etiology of the disease is unknown, there exist several factors which seem to have a decisive influence in the presence of such outbreaks and which have not been mentioned by the government. These are: the small attention given to the epidemiological control of the various transmissible diseases, mainly due to lack of qualified personnel, lack of motivation from the professionals implicated in those areas and limitations of resources to solve the problem; furthermore, you can add the deplorable hygienic-sanitary conditions, with trash dumping grounds practically around every block in the country. Only in the capital, City of Havana, some 17 thousand cubic meters of solid waste are generated every day, which is far from being totally picked-up, since the specialized collecting system, as well as the more conventional one, result inefficient, inadequate and obsolete. Neither the collecting system for house waste is adequate, since the water supply is irregular in the whole Island and people are forced to store it in any kind of recipients they can find, which in many cases are not the most appropriate. Besides, the drinking water pipes have many leaks, which facilitate cross contamination with sewage.
MORE THAN 80 MILLIONS SPENT IN RECENT MILITARY MANEUVERS
While tens of thousands of Cubans are suffering even more from the calamities brought by hurricane Dennis, the experts estimate that the recent military maneuvers performed in the island had a cost of more than 80 million dollars. These exercises, which have shown what is left of the military machine dating from the times of the extinct Soviet Union, had, as its main objective, to intimidate the regime’s opponents, showing that the government still counts with the sufficient potential to suffocate any internal revolt, although such technique may result obsolete and ineffective against any modern army. What is most regrettable is that with the 80 million dollars wasted in this show, important problems affecting the population could have been solved. Two concrete examples: For the reconstruction and renovation of the Cuban national energetic system, is necessary an annual investment of 140 million dollars, while the remodeling and modernization of the aqueduct and sewage system, would cost approximately 100 million dollars per year, figures very close in both cases to the amount wasted in the useless war games which convinced no one.
ONLY TWO SUGAR MILLS WILL RUN IN CIEGO DE AVILA
Ciego de Avila – Of the nine sugar mills in this province, only two of them will operate in the next sugar cane crop. According to a sugar industry’s officer, who demanded to remain anonymous, only Baraguá sugar mill, due to its condition of also being a refinery, and the giant Ciro Redondo mill, are programmed to remain active on the next crop, which should begin on the next month of December. The other sugar production units will remain momentarily intact, with the basic purpose of serving as a source of spare parts for the operating mills, a strategy known in Cuba by the name of ¨cannibalism¨. Beforehand, sugar mills Máximo Gómez, Bolivia and Patria o Muerte have been already dismantled, and Venezuela mill is also in this process. Workers from sugar mills that are being deactivated enter into the sub-employed category and most of them will temporarily receive their salaries, so they can go –supposedly- to ¨study¨, which is nothing more than a way of disguising the unemployment generated by the closing of the units which were part of the most important sector of the Cuban economy.- Antonio Femenías
TRAFFIC ACCIDENT
Ciego de Avila – One dead and 71 wounded, 9 of them in serious condition, was the initial count of victims in a traffic accident occurred on August 18th, between the towns of Gaspar and Ciego de Avila. The event took place when a private passenger truck driven by Ortelio Vivanco Pérez, collapsed after a front tire exploded. Various mechanical flaws and the fact that the vehicle was carrying an excessive number of passengers were the main factors causing the accident. Only a few days ago, another traffic accident was reported between Sancti-Spíritus and Villa Clara provinces, which caused the life of several people, when a state freight transport, also with excessive passengers, crashed against a bridge. The dreadful transportation and road situation in Cuba is forcing a great number of people to travel using means which are not the most appropriate for public transportation.- Antonio Femenías
TOURIST WORKER EXPELLED
Cayo Guillermo, Camagüey – The administrative commission of the Meliá-Cayo Guillermo Hotel declared worker Leydis Morales Quintero ¨unsuitable¨ to remain in her job position, for expressing her opinions on the country’s present situation, to a fellow worker.According to an independent press reporter in the area, the Communist Party instructor for the Cayo Guillermo hotels, named George, witnessed a conversation between Leydis Morales and a co-worker, in which the now expelled party was criticizing the blackouts and the inefficiency of some government leaders, including the very same Cuban ruler Fidel Castro. The Party official informed immediately to his superiors, causing the employee’s immediate dismissal. Leydis Morales Quintero worked as a housekeeper at the Meliá-Cayo Guillermo Hotel, with the best recommendations on his job, for which other tourist employees consider this sanction as a Communist Party repressive method, in order to silence other critical expressions taking place in this sector, which is considered a privileged one to many people.- Kallan Poe
NEW ETECSA MULTISERVICES CENTER DISCRIMINATES AGAINST CUBANS
Morón – ETECSA, Cuba’s main Cuban telecommunications enterprise, inaugurated a new facility in this city: the Multiservices Center in Telecommunications, with Internet access exclusively for foreigners. The new installation is located in the building which used to belong to the former Spanish Community, built in the year 1927, and its opening took place after months repairing the place. But to the surprise of some citizens with relatives living in United States, or who are carrying on foreign missions as doctors or in other specialties, the e-mail service which they can access over there is forbidden to the rest of the island citizens. ¨This kind of local discrimination will encourage them to keep on using the black market, for sending messages abroad¨, explained a company worker.The exclusion of Cubans living in Cuba contradicts ETECSA top directors, who on international meetings have declared that ¨the government will continue giving priority to the social and collective use of the new technologies…¨ To prevent the access of common citizens to the Internet, even to send a simple e-mail, is considered an action violating the present Cuban Constitution as well as the International Human Rights Declaration.- Manuel Caraballo Bravo
VIRUSES AT LARGE
Morón – Bars and cafeterias operating with foreign currency are becoming an excellent lodging for some viruses which can be transmitted through disposable plastic cups, which are normally recycled after a simple wash with water directly coming from the faucet, as a specialist on the matter is warning. The recycling of these disposable cups is forbidden by the Ministry of Public Health, but not counting with sufficient inventory in the warehouses, according to responsible parties, has made the problem a common fact in those bar-cafeterias.- Kallan Bares
OPPOSITIONIST LEADER HARASSED
Florida, Camagüey – From August 6th on, the political police harassment against Juan Carlos González Leyva, President of the Cuban Foundation of Human Rights, has been largely intensified. In a telephone call with Carta de Cuba, Leyva explained that he is being submitted to strong pressures by the military personnel of the Cuban Government State Security. Last Thursday, González Leyva was arrested in front of the Polish Embassy, when he was in the process of preparing his visit to that country, invited by ex-President Lech Walesa. On August 6th, Juan Carlos was detained for nearly 6 hours in the Police Unit of the Municipality of Florida, in Camagüey Province, for participating in a dissident meeting, receiving an official warning that he could go to prison for being a ¨social hazard¨. Besides, some of his relatives who have permits to leave the country are kept as hostages, including his father and a brother. Juan Carlos González Leyva, who is in this moment sentenced to 4 years of freedom limitation, has been threatened that he could also be sanctioned for ¨disobedience¨, which could send him to jail, if he persists in denouncing the human rights violations committed by the Cuban government.
DISSIDENT ARRESTED
Ciego de Avila – Dissident Julio Columbié Batista, president of the Cuban Foundation of Human Rights, in the ¨1ro. de Enero¨ Municipality, Ciego de Avila province, was arrested and threatened by an officer from the Technical Investigations Department (DTI, in Spanish), who told him that for six months he would be controlled by people watching him every day. Columbié Batista was arrested for a few hours, on last August 13th, by henchmen of political police, who tried to frighten him, by saying ¨they had a lot of information about him and they knew what he was doing¨. The arrest was done by some ¨Captain Raúl¨. Only a few days before, Eduardo Leyva, an officer of the State Security in Ciego de Avila, went to Julio Columbié Batista’s home, under the pretext that he ¨had phoned him at his house¨, in an evident harassment and control maneuver against the dissident activist.- Abel Escobar Ramírez