July 16th., 1997
Newsletter/ Cuban Independent News Bureau
1) Government Attempts to Link Dissidence to Terrorist
Actions
CIENFUEGOS, July 12 (Olance Nogueras, BPIC) - A report from the Cuban Human
Rights Party denounced, that Juan Carlos Vazquez Garcia, the young alleged
perpetrator of an attempted sabotage the Cuban National Television signal relay
towers, is being pressured by the government to implicate the peaceful internal
opposition.
"We are in the duty to prevent, by all means at our disposal, any
manipulation aimed at tarnishing the peaceful image of the internal dissidence."
Declares the report from the dissident organization headed by Odilia Collazo.
The document mentions the case of Vazquez Garcia, a 28-year-old Cuban of
unknown political affiliation, who remains in isolation since last April 12 at
the provincial Revolutionary Arm Forces Prevention Unit. According to the report
the youth, is being interrogated by Coronel Alberto Sanchez Garcia and Captain
Carlos Garcia Santaya, both, military counterintelligence experts.
The Cuban political police alleges that Vazquez met last March with two
persons, who claimed to be citizens from Costa Rica, who offered him a quick way
out of Cuba if he will accept to sabotage a strategic point in the Rancho Luna
highway. This highway leads to the main tourist attraction in the region,
located in the beach by the same name.
As declared by Miguel Angel Fernandez Rio, a community activist with the
Cuban Human Rights Party in Cienfuegos, the meeting in which Vazquez was
presented with the offer was entirely filmed by a political police technical
team. The movie would show the young Cuban receiving a package with explosives,
a false passport and a check for $25,000.
"It all seems to amount to premeditated incitement by the Cuban State
Security Department"(DSE), said Fernandez, who added that it is not the
first time in which similar manipulations take place.
On August 25, 1991, only eleven days after Fidel Castro had appeared in
Cienfuegos to deliver a speech, Jose Raul Garcia Pita, an ex-member of the
Interior Ministry was arrested on the street while he was carrying some
explosives. An ulterior investigation from the Cuban Independent News Bureau
revealed that Garcia was the victim of a setup. Political police agents had
actually met with Garcia Pita at the city's Acea cemetery posing as members of
the Alpha-66 anti-Castro organization.
In another incident Jose Valladares Diaz, an anti-Castro Cuban currently
exiled, met in 1988 with some alleged foreign tourist. The "tourists"
provided him with detailed plans to sabotage military and economical targets in
the region. The meeting was also recorded on tape by a technical team from the
Interior Ministry.
Now the District Attorney is preparing a trial against Juan Carlos Vazquez
Garcia under charges of Terrorism. He was detained last April 12, while he
allegedly was attempting to place explosives at Cienfuegos television relay
towers.
His families said to be highly concerned because the authorities want also
to make him responsible for blowing up the weapons quarters at the old
Cienfuegos military helicopter base during the last night of festivities in the
1991 Carnival.
According to the same source, --the only family member to be willing to
talk—the authorities subjected the defendant to a psychiatric evaluation to
rule out the possibility of mental illness.
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2)Need a Job in Tourism? Better not be independent or,
honest
CIENFUEGOS, July 12, (Olance Nogueras, BPIC) -
An attendant at the "Tobacco House" operated by the Caracol
Corporation in Trinidad was dismissed from his employment with the Tourism
Ministry, after he publicly professed his desire to emigrate in search of
economical and political freedom.
Jose Manuel Vazquez Rodriguez was recently informed by Rosario Ruiz
Cerquera, the Commission on Suitability president for the Caracol Corporation of
his dismissal. In the meeting he was also vividly admonished for his political
believes.
Julio Valdivieso, the entity's director, qualified the words expressed by
Vazquez as "an immoral act that tarnish the sector's image and that of
Cuban Tourism as a whole."
According to Alfonso Meinegra, BPIC Santi Spiritus provincial
correspondent, employment opportunities in the Tourist Industry are still
conditioned to being actively involved in supporting the Communist Government.
Meanwhile, Jose Manuel Vazquez Rodriguez, was drafted into the forced labor
brigade that the provincial Interior Ministry manages in order to punish all
state employees who are no longer trustworthy by the State ideological project.
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3)Meat for animals but not for inmates
CIENFUEGOS, July 12, (Olance Nogueras, BPIC) -
Inmates at the Cienfuegos Ariza prison, are protesting they receive less
nourishment than the animals at the penitentiary exclusive Zoo.
According to some inmates family members, the prison authorities
prioritizes the nutritional regime of a lion, a lioness, monkeys, crocodiles,
hawks, falcons while offering minimal rations to the prisoners.
The sources mentioned, that whenever cattle is slaughtered at the prison,
the meat is divided between the prison guards and the exotic animals of the only
Zoo in the Cienfuegos province.
"Recently a ram was slaughtered and it was almost completely given to
the lions," said Ileana, a twenty-six-year-old brunette who regularly
visits her brother. The young man has lost fifteen pounds of body weight in the
last three months, due to the miserable portions served at the Ariza prison.
The District Office of Jails and Prisons sustains that the Zoo was built
for the benefit of family visitors and occasional guests.
Pedro Castellanos Perez, municipal community activist with the Cuban Human
Rights Party expressed his outrage to the fact that human beings are found
undeserving of minimal nutritional conditions while animals receive the food
that is denied to them
Transmitido por Iraida Montalvo, BPIC-USA.
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