Freed dissident tells of abuses, torment of 13 years in `hell'

Freed dissident tells of abuses, torment of 13 years in `hell'

Cuban dissident Francisco Chaviano was released from prison after 13
years, in ill health but as defiant as ever.
Posted on Sat, Aug. 11, 2007
BY WILFREDO CANCIO ISLA
El Nuevo Herald

One of Cuba's longest-serving political prisoners, Francisco Chaviano,
was released Friday on ''conditional freedom'' after serving 13 years in
prison -- and immediately blasted prison conditions on the island.

''I am back from hell,'' Chaviano, 54, told El Nuevo Herald from his
home in Jaimanitas, west of Havana. ``If Dante had known the Combinado
del Este [prison], he would not have needed his imagination to write The
Inferno. He simply would have told what he saw there.''

''I spent five years stuck in a cell without seeing the sun, two years
without receiving visitors and four years without conjugal visits,'' he
added. ``It was a cruel, merciless treatment that was also extended to
my family, my wife and my children.''

Chaviano, a mathematics professor at Havana's Institute of Chemistry,
was arrested on May 7, 1994, and sentenced by a military tribunal to 15
years in prison on charges that he ''disclosed secrets concerning the
state security'' and falsified documents.

He had been chairman of the Cuban Civil Rights Council, an organization
that supported civil liberties and denounced the penetration of State
Security agents into the dissident movement. His case had been brought
to the attention of the human rights branches of the United Nations and
Organization of American States.

Chaviano said prison life had seriously harmed his health, and that he
now suffers from a rapidly growing tumor in one of his lungs and a
serious heart condition. During the last two years, he was hospitalized
several times with serious pulmonary and cardiac problems, he said.

''The damage in my lungs I owe to them [the government]. In Cuba,
imprisonment kills,'' Chaviano said.

But he added that he will not seek exile abroad and vowed to continue to
actively oppose the government from inside the island.

''This country is a disaster,'' he said. ``The economic pauperization is
visible.''

Chaviano was one of 73 Cubans regarded as prisoners of conscience by
Amnesty International, and of about 200 listed by the illegal but
tolerated Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation
based in Havana.

''We consider his release to be good news, but we regret that -- in his
case, as in the cases of many other political prisoners -- the
government of Cuba continues to violate the terms of early release, as
established by the current penal code,'' said commission President
Elizardo Sánchez.

Sánchez said that under the code, Chaviano should have been freed
unconditionally on May 7.

However, Chaviano remained in prison an extra three months and his
release was termed ``conditional.''

http://www.miamiherald.com/581/story/199837.html