Havana, January 18, 2008-Prisoner of conscience, Antonio Ramón Díaz Sánchez, is imprisoned in Canaletas prison in the Cuban province of Ciego de Ávila. He is a member of the Coordinating Council of the Christian Liberation Movement and is one of the principal organizers of the Varela Project.

He is one of the Cuban Spring political prisoners, is 45 years old and was sentenced to twenty-seven years in prison in April 2003.

In December 2004 he was diagnosed with Ischemic Cardiopathy and an enlarged prostate (BPH) in the National Hospital for Prisoners that is located inside the Eastern Compound Prison in Havana.

During 2007, a specialist in Proctology that has conducted various diagnostic tests on him declared that Antonio Díaz is suffering from an illness known as Immunologic or Idiopathic Colitis, after observing significant deterioration and numerous ulcers in his intestines after various colon rectoscopy. One cause in the worsening of this illness has been constant stress.

Antonio Díaz Sánchez’s wife has presented, by means of an attorney that was contracted from a law practice, a request before the court that sentenced Antonio, so that the necessary process could take place to be considered for an extrapenal license for health reasons. According to the attorney in charge of the case, the court accepted the proceeding a week later. This request was made in June 2007, but to date, almost seven months later, the court has not responded and has not sent Antonio the corresponding medical report to the National Hospital for Prisoners, thereby not abiding to what was legally established. Rule 132 establishes the proceedings to be followed in the case of a request for an Extrapenal License.

Antonio has been prescribed a specific nutritional diet by the doctors, which he only partially receives from the prison authorities. For instance, in the last twenty days Antonio was not able to eat breakfast for eleven days because he was not given the food that his rigorous diet requires for his illness. More information can be found on www.oswaldopaya.org.

Antonio Díaz Sánchez declared that the only civic and peaceful recourse that he can take to defend his right to life is his own life and that is why he has decided to not accept any more of the medication that the doctors have prescribed and that many times he receives incompletely and irregularly and he will also refuse any more consultations with a specialist, in protest against the arbitrariness of the court that should have already sent him a medical report many months ago to decide whether the alleviation or cure of his illness is incompatible with his remaining in prison. It is evident that unjust imprisonment and the conditions in which he is under confinement are the most direct cause for his illness worsening.

Antonio has announced that he will begin to take increasingly more drastic peaceful acts of protest against the inactivity of the court that is condemning him in this way to an early death.

Antonio Díaz is imprisoned in a cell, which is 5.5 meters wide and equally long, with twenty six common prisoners. In this limited area there are nine three-level bunks. Antonio’s health is irreversibly deteriorating every day that he spends in prison. He is being subjected to short-term annihilation.

Our call is for everyone inside and outside of Cuba to raise their voices to save the life of Antonio Díaz Sánchez, for his release, and for all those who are imprisoned in Cuba for peacefully defending Human Rights.

 
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas

Coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement