Prison Diary X. The "5″ (Sybarites) Don't Like Chicken

Prison Diary X. The "5″ (Sybarites) Don't Like Chicken / Angel Santiesteban
Posted on April 6, 2013

The prisoners I share this barracks with tell me they read in the
newspaper Granma that the 5 spies condemned in the U.S. complained
because their jailers had offered them chicken twice. That is, they were
protesting because they repeated the menu.

When I was free, I always heard these comments that seemed absurd and I
immediately looked for a way to find someone on the internet to verify
with. Now, in the conditions in which I survive in this prison it's
impossible to verify anything.

The truth is that it makes me laugh the way the prisoners here with me
hear the news. I've heard several times, and I always have to laugh:
this repetition of chicken that the spies complain of would be a reasons
for a celebration among the inmates in this prison.

Some Fridays, on a holiday, they deliver what is normally recognized as
a fourth of a chicken. That day the dining room is full. The other days
it's preferable to be on hunger strike. I myself, for example, spent
five days without going to the dining room. I prefer to survive on
cookies and toast that my family brings and that I keep, like a
treasure, in a sack.

I have also read the statements of the Spanish political, Angel
Carromero, who was driving the car in which we lost Oswaldo Paya and
Harold Cepero. He said that his six months of imprisonment in Cuba was
enough to leave him traumatized and needing medical help.

We have to remember that Carromero was held in a special prison for
foreigners, that he also had the oversight of the embassy, and the
obvious treatment of the political police to "sweeten him up," so that
the real version of what happened that fateful day won't come to light.

We should ask, regardless of any prison, wherever it is, it's always
difficult to face and endure, what's left for us who are in these
inhumane prisons, with almost no food and with the extra weight of the
known evil prosecutions for justice?

Neither the 5 spies nor Carromero know what a prison really is.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

La Lima Prison. April 2013.

5 April 2013

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