He says prisoners 'treated with respect'; U.S. criticism steadfast

By TRACEY EATON / The Dallas Morning News
 
HAVANA – Jailed dissidents aren't being held in dank holes without access to adequate food, water or medical care, Cuban officials said Thursday in their first detailed response to allegations that conditions are poor for opposition leaders imprisoned a year ago.

The Cuban government's foes have been carrying out a campaign of "exaggeration, inexactitudes, lies and fabrication" to try to convince people that dissidents endure inhumane treatment, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque said.

"The 75 mercenary prisoners are being treated with respect," Mr. Pérez Roque said, referring to the 75 dissidents, independent journalists and others arrested last year in a widely condemned crackdown on the political opposition.

'No spirit of revenge'

"There is no spirit of revenge against them. The idea that they're dying of hunger in a European-style Nazi concentration camp is a lie," the foreign minister said.

Some dissidents, their family members and some U.S. officials have said the conditions are deplorable. Critics are urging Cuban authorities to open their jails and prisons to International Red Cross inspectors.

To counter such allegations, Mr. Pérez Roque, in a more than two-hour presentation to journalists in Havana, showed a 17-minute video of eight interviews with inmates' sisters and wives in which none of them complained about prison conditions.

Jailed opposition member Marcelo Lopez is "doing very well," his sister, Teresa Lopez, said in the video. "He's been treated with respect."

Gisela Delgado, wife of dissident Hector Palacios, had no complaints, either. She said her husband received a gall bladder operation last month and is doing fine.

"The medical care was good," she said.

The most critical statement shown in the video was voiced by the wife of dissident Omar Rodriguez. He may have no complaints about mistreatment, she said, but that's not the point.

"He shouldn't be in prison," she said.

The foreign minister said the dissidents are in jail because they received money and support from the U.S. government to try to topple the socialist government. They weren't jailed because they are independent thinkers, he said, but because of subversive acts that would be punished in any country.

As part of the current campaign, Mr. Pérez Roque contends, the socialist government's foes allege that dissidents sleep on bare cell floors, endure filthy conditions and have inadequate medical care.

He denied that and said the government provides one doctor for every 200 inmates in the country. Two doctors gave statements Thursday, saying that dissidents Marta Beatriz Roque and Oscar Espinosa Chepe are in stable health.

Relatives of the two prisoners have complained for several months that they are receiving poor health care.

U.S. officials and anti-Castro activists say they are sticking with their charges that conditions in Cuban prisons are poor.

Cuban jails "fail every sort of litmus test for fundamental requirements under any international or moral standard," said a U.S. congressional aide specializing in Cuba policy, who asked to not be named.

'Inhumane' conditions

Conditions are "unacceptable, inhumane and degrading. Basic medical treatment is denied," the aide said, adding that some inmates with heart, gastrointestinal and other health problems are routinely neglected and "not provided any sort of medical treatment."

One of the prisoners jailed last year is independent reporter Raul Rivero. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), recently awarded him the group's World Press Freedom Prize.

Cuban officials protested, saying it is "deplorable and embarrassing" that the award should go to a subversive. His wife, Blanca Reyes, said he's just a poet and his only weapon was a pen.