Date: 2003-06-25
Speaker: LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Florida

Mr. Speaker. the gentleman from New Jersey had a wonderful idea the other week. We should speak every single week about the men and women who are languishing in prisons in the totalitarian state of Cuba. that island that has been for 44 years oppressed by a totalitarian dictator. So each week we bring forth. a number of us here. different political prisoners and speak specifically about their cases to remind our colleagues and those who will listen about the horrors just 90 miles from the shores of the United States. The following are excerpts. Mr. Speaker. from a letter from dissident Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leyva who Is blind. These excerpts of a letter were sent out of his prison in Holguin. Cuba. as recorded by his wife Maritza Calderin. The letter was sent to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva. To Sylvia Iriondo of mothers and Women Against Repression. This is a letter. Mr. Speaker. sent out of prison by Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leyva. After 13 months in prison. I have not been tried or sentenced by any court even as efforts have been made to persuade me to betray God and human rights and collaborate with the dictatorship. Sitice midDecember. State security used inmate Joe Prado. as he calls himself. to .throw in my cell a substance that produced a burning sensation on the skin and nasal congestion. a great deal of phlegm and bronchial inflammation. The situation still continues. Since January. they have added another substance to the sawdust they throw at me. This one gives me the sensation of millions of bugs constantly running all over me. It causes a great deal of itching and prevents me from sleeping. I do not know if this is a biological substance or chemical agent. but I know it is not insects because when I touch my skin there are no actual bugs that I can feel. although this sensation is palpable. Normally the sawdust shower is a daily occurrence. Yesterday it started around 6:00 p.m. when I was on my knees praying. The sensation is that of a multitude of bugs suddenly coming down on my face and my body. This torment continues until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. The inmate follows meeverywhere. I have to eat out of a can that I try to keep covered all the time because he will throw the nauseaprovoking substance into the food. Sometimes I feel as if I have a chain attached to my body and the weight of the world on my shoulders. I feel that I am going to collapse. that I cannot take this anymore. but I pray to God. and Jesus Christ gives me strength. It is a constant struggle. a constant torture. On February 1. I placed my mattress in front of the cells iron bar doors to get some fresh air. Officer Fabu. the unit chief. snatched the mattress away from me. threw me on the floor. took me by the neck and dragged me. He told me that if I wanted to sleep. I could sleep on the bare floor with the dirt. other prisoners shoes. roaches. ants. mice. et cetera. One night they threw so much of the substance into the cell that it was as if the walls were boiling. So I had to retreat to my bed and resign myself to do without the little bit of fresh air I was getting through the iron bars. The substance also causes acute pain in both of my pye sockets. The pain is so severe that at times it seems my eyes are popping out. Every day the unit chief threatens me with death if I continue the hunger strike to protest the prosecutions request of 8 years in prison. They do not allow me to speak to my lawyer and I do not have religious assistance or access to any information. I am only allowed to listen to the round tables and the Staterun newscasts. For the skeptics. I can say that hell does exist and Satan shows all of his faces here. In here. I listen to the weeping of young and old women. their terrible and frightful laments forever embedded in my mind. They plead because they are locked in cells that are like drawers where are held men. women and the elderly. the sick and the incapacitated. They plead because the four walls become a grave site. These are catacombs where people scream but the sound is drowned out by a hermetically sealed metal door. When the women plead. the prison guards laugh and say. "What they want is a man." I trust God and our Lord. Jesus Christ. to give me the strength to face any situation. whether to live in squalor. as I live now. or to die and meet my Lord and my God. The political prisoner of Cuba. Mr. Speaker. 90 miles from the shores of the United States. an island that has suffered 44 years of totalitarian and oppression while the world does nothing. but we do not forget and we will not continue denouncing the horrors of the totalitarianism that the people in Cuba suffer and we will not stop struggling until Cuba is free.