Havana, January 9-10, 2008- Antonio (Tony  Díaz) Sánchez has been besieged by prison authorities and has been taken from the 5 and a half meter by five meter cell that he crowdedly shared with 27 other political prisoners and 9 bunks, to live with highly dangerous common prisoners.

This is a practice of maximum punishment that is sophisticatedly organized by the prison authorities in order to intimidate and to expose the prisoner to the most barbarian attacks by high risk delinquents, criminals.

 We can use as an example the case of Rolando Jiménez Posada, a Varela Project organizer who is currently serving a sentence at the Guayabo prison, on the Isle of Youth.

Cuban political prisoner and prisoner of conscience, Rolando Jiménez was vilely physically assaulted by a mob of highly dangerous common prisoners, when he was transferred from his solitary confinement cell to another cell he shares with common prisoners on December 31. In a recent “roundtable” program he was attacked by the journalist Lázaro Barredo. He responded courageously to Barredo’s insults. In retaliation, the regime put Rolando in a cell to live with common prisoners and provoked these prisoners so that they gave Rolando a severe beating. As a result of this inhumane beating, Rolando’s face is disfigured and he has lost almost all vision from one of his eyes, according to his wife Lamasiel Gutiérrez Romero, an independent journalist.

Rolando is imprisoned with a 12 year sentence in Guayabo Prison, on the Isle of Youth. He was a Cuban intelligence deputy and a prosecutor against narco-trafficking crimes in his province and was discharged from his position when he became a Varela Project organizer. Many of the highly dangerous common prisoners in the prison cell that he was transferred to were indicted by Rolando during his incumbency as a prosecutor.

This attack, as well as the one reported by us earlier against Antonio (Tony) Díaz Sánchez, must be responded to with urgency by the international community, Human Rights institutions, and government authorities in countries that are in solidarity with defending the Cuban people. A whole series of attacks against political prisoners is unfolding as the people are beginning to increase their call for change while the regime’s officials do not want to respond adequately to these calls. We alert the international community to demand that the Cuban government pay immediate attention and restore the rights that Antonio (Tony) Díaz Sánchez and other political prisoners are entitled to in prison as they are subjected to a level of repression in these moments that has never been seen before.

Oswaldo J. Paya Sardiñas

Christian Liberation Movement (MCL)