Prison Diary XVIII: Those Who Live Off The Government / Angel Santiesteban

A few days ago it was suggested to me in a letter that someday, in another government of course, I could be Minister of Culture, which I doubt because I think politics is not my thing. But if being a politician is saying what you think and going against the interests of the current president, then I am a politician, or a romantic risking that I don’t get tired of suffering until the coming of the happiness to this country that it has deserved for so many years.

In this future government I don’t doubt that there will be the same people who now support the dictatorship.

Unfortunately they are corks*, intellectuals without honor, allying themselves for their personal benefit to communism and fascism.

We see them there, and they, as usual, extend a greeting to me that if I escape they will label me spiteful and say that I cannot adjust to the new national force for a better country.

Those of us who were born to suffer, those of us who do not accept gifts from wherever they come, those of us who think first of Martí, we never enter into these political alliances.

For me, a president is nothing more than a good administrator, and if we get one, then we will see our economy and our culture flourish. What more can we ask for? With that I will be deeply happy. I want a participatory democracy, a country without a secret police that persecutes the opposition and a culture that is not censored for expressing ideas contrary to the State.

In short, I want a free country and that’s why I wake up every morning in this prison completely sure that José Martí’s dream is coming. I am happy in the place that I am. I am at the side of the suffered with Bishop Espada, Father Jos” Agustín Caballero and Félix Varela; I am where I am because I am continuing along the path laid for us by Martí, Céspedes, Agramonte, Maceo. And accompanying me on this path are hundreds of Cubans like Antonio Rodiles, Jose Daniel Ferrer, Guillermo Fariñas, Berta Soler, Hector Maseda, Angel Moya, Cuesta Morúa, Antunez, Manzano and Palacio, among many, who risk their lives and those of their families to achieve our longed for freedom, not to mention the community of bloggers and independent journalists.

I am going to be this: a citizen in the service of good causes, and I’ll be with the rest of the noble and honest intellectuals creating our works which is the best omen.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Prison 1580. May 2013

*Translator’s note: “Corks” in the sense that they keep bobbing to the surface.

17 May 2013

Angel Santiesteban Harassed and Isolated in Prison 1580. Raul Castro Responsible for His Safety / Angel Santiesteban

After several days of staging a scene in the tropical paradise prison system for the accredited “press” and the examination of the UN Human Rights Council, where Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said he will accept the recommendations of the international body and apply them to the Castro prison system and he  said he will allow the Red Cross visits, everything is the same or worse. Nothing changed and never will change because changes will never come from those who have caused the Cuban tragedy. The only change possible is to root out the evil dynastic dictatorship of the sadistic Castro brothers.

Cuba is a small island in whose geography is the largest concentration of jails in the world. The Island of Happiness is a huge prison where, in its many overcrowded concentration camps live the tortured, humiliated and starved thousands of prisoners, guilty or not, who have rights like any human being; rights that the regime in Havana never respected. To the common prisoners must be added the more than hundred prisoners of conscience who are caged to silence them on false charges of common crimes, such as Angel Santiesteban.

Fortunately, through Angel — and despite the relentless efforts of his jailers to silence him — we know that in that grisly concentration camp in which he is located, the 1580 Prison in San Miguel del Padrón, Havana, on the 5th May there was the beginning of riot caused by the indignation of the prison population on seeing how two thugs torturing a young black man, mentally ill, whose humanity is locked in there. Thanks to the solidarity of all, they left the unfortunate boy in peace and the inmates calmed down.

But from this episode we must extract two important things. One is that not even in such terrible conditions of life do solidarity and values disappear. Although there will always be those who choose to ally themselves with their executioners, the majority will preserves and defend their dignity. If they are often silent it is just to avoid greater evils, but moments of maximum cruelty arrive, as Angel related, the principles take over from fear and all become a voice against injustice. This  stopped the savagery that might have killed the boy.

But, and no less important, is when barbarism is manifested with all the fury, the clamor of the prisoners is not limited only to scream against it and stop it, but it becomes a cry for freedom, for democracy, against the dictatorship, against the dictator and a stern warning that should not go unnoticed by anyone, especially Raul Castro and the international organizations that do little or nothing to stop the accumulated abuses from the incredible 54 years of so-called “Revolution”.

There were common criminals who turned their pleas for justice for their fellow prisoner into slogans for freedom and against the dictatorship. Common criminals  who, possibly, when they lived in freedom (as it’s defined in Cuba) had never questioned the legitimacy or otherwise of the government that enslaves them; the inefficient, shameless and manipulative government that is the one truly guilty for their being there, that has forced them to commit a crime with the sole purpose to survive and feed their families.

This is not about justifying crime. Not at all. But we all know that justice in Cuba is nothing more but a subsidiary power and dependent on political power which administers revenge more than actual criminal convictions. And, betraying the promise that the Revolution was “a revolution of the humble, by the humble and for the humble,” it vents its rage over the most humble and the most vulnerable. And even more so with those who struggle for freedom.

It is precisely the full force of such arbitrariness and injustice in Cuba that “manufactures” dissidents and opponents, and in this process the concentration camps are no exception. On the contrary. This beginning of mutiny has shown that, when inmates have nothing to lose, they lose fear and regain dignity.

Angel is being abused differently, but no less cruelly. He is being tortured psychologically. They have cut off all means of communication with his family, except for those two measly minutes on the phone every so often. They have taken from him open communication with his peers, who have been harassed and threatened with punishment if they have anything to do with him. But once again, showing courage and intelligence, there many people who create strategies to communicate without being noticed by the guards and by the inmates whom the guards bribe.

Angel is where he doesn’t have to be. He is suffering vengeance for having dared to express himself freely. They have tried to turn him into an abuser and a rapist, but they had nothing to use in this intent because nobody believed it. The unfortunate few who spoke out against him were those who, threatened and pressured, didn’t know how to preserve their dignity or at least to remain silent.

The eyes of the civilized world are on and the abuses they commit. The gaze of international organizations is on Angel Santiesteban and are there are ever more who are speaking up in his favor. The more abuses committed against him, the more solidarity grows, aroused by the injustice.

Raul Castro knows it and he is directly responsible for anything that may happen to Angel. As are the army of eunuchs who fulfill their miserable orders, but not only as obedient soldiers but as genuine sadists manifesting all their murderous instincts.

And once again, and we will not tire of repeating it until we have justice for Angel: we demand his immediate transfer to La Lima Prison where, despite not having to be there, he should never have been transferred illegally and violently. We demand absolute respect for his rights and that he be given a fair trial with full due process, with those who were conspicuous by their complete absence in the trial for him, who are now imprisoned.

We demand that Angel be left in peace to work, doing what he can do like nobody else: write. We recall that while he being beaten, humiliated and isolated, there are international judges reading and evaluating his work; prestigious publishers reading his manuscripts. And when he once again wins prizes and is published, as surely will happen very soon, the world press will report that if he can not collect his prizes, or attend presentations of his books because he is in a Cuban concentration camp, that is not Guantanamo but might as well be.

Look after Angel and try not to continue throwing mud on yourselves. In today’s world nothing can be hidden and, sooner or later, everything is known. So it will be very easy to add to the long list of crimes, that the regime has committed and is committing, this criminal proceeding against an intellectual amid growing outrage while his tormentors bury themselves ever deeper in their rotten and fearful actions. And this must always be paid for.

We also remind them, once again, that the same rights we demand for Angel, we demand for the entire prison population, and in particular we demand the immediate release of prisoners of conscience.

They will never silence the truth. History has proved it. When they are digging their claws into Angel Santiesteban they are further strengthening the symbol of freedom he has already become.

So the demand is clear: Raul Castro, do the right thing and order justice done for Angel and do not forget even for a moment that you are and will remain solely responsible for the physical and mental integrity of Angel.

On behalf of the family and friends of Angel Santiesteban-Prats

The Editors

Note: In this documentary, and especially from minute 24.30, you can see and understand how the Nazis manipulated and hid what they did in the concentration camps by preparing a perfect theater in Theresienstadt where they took the Red Cross delegates and showed them the “wonderful” life of the Jews there. The strategy of staging the Nazis used then was copied by the regime in Havana and so continue to lie to international public opinion about what really happens in their concentration camps. What is curious and incomprehensible is that today, when we have the help of technology and nothing can be hidden and all the evidence of what happens is within reach of everyone, there are still those who deny it and defend it from above.

The Red Cross the Third Reich

Site manager’s note: This third-party video is in Spanish (and German, French and English) and is included here to show the whole post as it was posted, but is not translated.

13 May 2013

SOS: Attempted Riot in Prison 1580. Increase in Repression Against Angel Santiesteban and the Other Inmates

After the attempted riot in Prison 1580

Last night, Sunday May 5 at 7:45 PM, an inmate — Reniel Agramonte Valle — was beaten by two guards: Jesus and Andy the karate man. The inmates of both barracks started shouting against abuse and almost all looked through the windows and bars while the guards continued the abuse of the black, slight and famished 24-year-old.

The prisoners began to hit the gate until it broke and opened; the guards seeing the possible population unnerved all about them, fled and forgot how numerous they and their batons were, the same ones who minutes before struck the prisoner in question, and who by then had been taking their pills for chronic mental illness that are supplied  to them several times a day.

To stop the potential riot, the senior officer, when he reached the scene, freed the prisoner, and when they saw him return to the barracks it began to calm the spirits of his comrades who had already begun yelling “Down with Fidel,” “Down with dictatorship,” “Tomorrow we will get the news to Radio Martí,” “Assassins,” and “Abusers,” among others.

This morning, when the inmates attended the breakfast, they were met with German shepherds, the ones who on just seeing a prison uniform begin to bark and are very aggressive with them, Nazi-style.

In previous days they also beat several prisoners and after the beatings, they put them in cells hidden from the eyes of the rest of the prison population to hide their injuries and bodily signs of violence against them.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Prison 1580, San Miguel del Padrón

Sowing Terror

One day after the attempted riot in the prison, they began the interviews and the removal of all persons who regularly conversed with me.

They want to keep inmates away from me because they consider a dangerous element my relating to them. And so they were taken to other barracks.

Now the prisoners afraid to approach me because they don’t want to be harmed. I am also concerned about some who claim not to care; because when they receive reprisals for being close to me, my guilty conscience is great because their fates are worse just for talking to me.

Even so, some have changed strategy and started to leave me papers on my bed with silent solidarity messages.

A prisoner on a hunger strike, Jesús Guerra Camejo, for talking with me, has also been taken from the company to an unknown destination.

The inmates are constantly interviewed to obtain information about me, writing or any data they might provide about me.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Prison 1580, San Miguel del Padrón

10 May 2013

Tribute from El Fogonero to Angel Santiesteban / Angel Santiesteban

While we wait with growing worry for news of Angel, we share here this tribute dedicated to him by his close friend Camilo Venegas El Fogonero.

When Fatties Go on Hunger Strike

In Clandestinos, one of the Cuban films I most enjoy, there is a moment that I really like. It’s near the beginning. Dozens of young revolutionaries who remain prisoners in a jail in a dictatorship, decide to declare a hunger strike.

One of them, who is fat — they call him El Gordo — and who was played by Amado del Pino, is taking a shower when a decision is made. With his head still soapy, he looks at the camera and raises his index finger, “Hey, no, no hunger strike, better suicide,” he says.

Then, when those who were selected for the strike are transferred with their mats to another cell block, the fat guy tries to sneak. The group leader (Luis Alberto Garcia) persuades him and he says he can not resist: “Look, I have this support this,” answers el Gordo, and hefts his enormous paunch, “I have more than you.”

A cut puts the viewer in the dark night of the galley. All are in bed and hungry. El Gordo is joking with his companions and about to pronounce one of the most delicious speeches of Cuban film history:

“Pino, Pinito, what you doing now, bro, if the old guy shows up out there with a little plate or two…what’s more, with a bucket of soup?” he says, savoring it.

“A little soup with cheese, delicious. Mommy, throw me a bucket of soup, enough to go around. Enough to get our mouths dirty. You’re not messy when you eat? Ah, whoever doesn’t get messy isn’t enjoying it.”

“Gordo, for Pete’s sake, shut up,” his companion says.

“It’s so delicious to get messy, buddy!”

“Keep it up, Gordo.”

“Me, since I was a kid, I get the food all over my face. Me, I’m an eater, and if I’m an eater I’m going to keep on eating.”

“Gordo, fucking can it. Stop, dammit!”

“Well fuck me,” he insists. “Here, at first I dreamed of women, but now I dream of tamales…!”

First, they throw a show. Later, the leader of the group goes and threatens to kill him if he keeps talking about food.

Invisible Threads

Through the same invisible threads that helped Antonio Gramsci to get his writings out of prison, this message came to me from a punishment cell in Havana, Cuba.

“To El Fogonero Camilo Venegas
“Love is not surrendured as long as I breathe. The pain and the injustice multiply. And I wake up happy.”

Ángel Santiesteban

Published in El Fogonero

23 April 2013

Prison Diary XIV. The Punishment of the “Master” / Angel Santiesteban

In Castro’s Cuba those who dare to confront the system, like the Creoles who faced the Crown during the colonial period, will be imprisoned, tortured, killed or exiled.

Nothing has changed. The Castro regime continues to harass those who think differently; they are making me pay for my posts by bringing me to this closed prison to which they have “sentenced” me, according to their own laws, it is  another violation of my rights as because I should be in a prison camp, as I was in La Lima Prison.

But it’s not enough that they unjustly condemned me without any proof or that they locked me in prison, I have been put in a cell block where the prisoners are on a severe regime, those who have committed serious crimes. Because it is State Security who controls my fate in jail and Lieutenant Colonel Reuben of Section 21 warned me so, on his visit to the La Lima prison.

Here in the 1580 Prison, the inmates at times pressure me because everyone wants me to listen to their pain, for me to tell the world of the injustices and abuses that the Cuban prison system commits against them. And I leave my writing and reading to listen. And they show me the beds of those who have committed suicide.

Beside me, one shows me his arms marked all along their length, cuts that he has made more and more as a protest against injustice. The re-educators should ensure that they respect our “rights,” but they’re incapable of it, and sometimes you see them move from one place to another with their military uniforms waiting for their work shifts to end.

Many prisoners have completed their sentences but because of bureaucratic paperwork remain imprisoned.

They, in their silence and in the opposition with their voices, one day very soon, will be rewarded with a society of Rights.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

1580 Prison, San Miguel del Padrón. April 2013

28 April 2013

Prison Diary XII: The Birth of a Dissident / Angel Santiesteban

Just days before Angel was moved illegally and by force from La Lima prison, where he was incarcerated for crimes he did not commit, and when we are still without news of him except that he was locked in the 1580 Prison, or The Pitirre, in San Miguel del Padron, on a severe regime, well away from possible visits international and national journalists and human rights and without even being allowed to make a call to his family, managed to get this post out for the world to remember the terrible case of a prisoner of conscience with whom he shared his prison, Lamberto Hernandez Planas.

Lamberto’s case became known well outside the island and was even brought before the Congress of Deputies in Spain. Even so, and after denouncing it for years, Lamberto has spent more than two decades incarcerated and is a clear example of how the Havana regime systematically violates human rights and how it punishes dissent.

Angel has included links at the end of the post for those who want to know more and initiate action to also demand justice for him.

Thank you very much.
The Editor

Lamberto Hernández Planas or How a Dissident is Born

In La Lima Prison, where I am serving an unjust sentence for crimes I didn’t commit, I met another political prisoner, Lamberto Hernandez Planas, who is 43 and will soon have served 22 years in prison. Neither the tortures and horrors that I will related to you have made him budge a single inch from his ideas of freedom.

I shall digress. Whenever I hear the testimonies of the victims of the violence of the dictatorship I think of the people of Cuba, of those who, when we achieve a free system and the terrible abuses of the Castro government are brought to light, will say that they knew nothing of the atrocities committed against their brethren. I especially think about the intellectuals who support the regime and silence in their works the truths that they should collect and capture in their art.

Lamberto Hernández, despite over two decades of imprisonment and being subjected to inhuman special security regimes — in which he has suffered and endured the unspeakable — has not ceased to fight.

In the early ‘90s, he dedicated himself to bringing pottery from the Isle of Youth to Havana with the intention of reselling it, and thanks to having mastered Portuguese, he became friends with African students. His life passed totally normally until a State Security official approached him intending to propose that he collaborating over some foreign students suspected of being counterrevolutionaries.

His job would be to extract information, and in particular some information about the possible intention to create a political party. If he obtained this information, he should go to the police station at Gerona to send it.

Lamberto, who up to then had had no political inclinations, accepted the proposal and promised to see if he could obtain this information. But his real intention was to shake off the official.

They waited months and after having giving him several warnings to cooperate and understanding that he would not, they decided to act: he was arrested and taken to the police station, where he was charged with theft. They presented it as a complaint from a young person he didn’t know.

Then he learned that it was a 23-year-old who’d been blackmailed because she prostituted herself with foreign students. He didn’t even have a residence permit in that city, and for more proof presented be the defense, on the date of the supposed events he was not in Gerona because he was in Havana. Of course his witnesses were useless.

It was known ahead of time that he was already sentenced (any resemblance to other realities is purely coincidental). From the time of his unjust conviction and entering the penitentiary, he started his activity in the opposition, first claiming his innocence and civil rights, but then his conscience grew and with it his political activism as he circulated through prisons all over the island, seven in total. He met the opponents most representative of the Cuban dissidents, and, like in school, he took in readings and practices and citizenship.

His convictions were growing along his protests about the penalties and those hiding behind common accusations. For this he received beatings and suffered multiple fractures. He undertook several hunger strikes, sometimes the only weapon left to Cuban political prisoner to demand justice, which have left many injuries in his body.

He describes how he bore those years of “special regimes,” especially the first eight, six of them without any family visits.

They kept adding new sentences “for inciting the masses” in prisons, “boycott,” “organizing political activities” in prisons, but all of them dressed up as common crimes to prevent recognizing them as a political prisoner of conscience.

In 2003, state security, in a gesture of desperation, offered for him to serve as an informant and then a witness in the trials of the 75 dissidents arrested in the “Black Spring,” to which, of course, he flatly refused and so he came to be known as prisoners of conscience when he returned to the cell.

For his refusal to collaborate again and pronounced stance against the Government he has been the victim of intense torture and have even attempts to kill him. His body carries the burden of chronic diseases such as peripheral neuropathy, second-degree internal hemorrhoids, and amblyopia (shortsightedness), hiatal hernia, esophagitis, bleeding chronic gastritis, duodenitis, a cyst on a testicle caused from the kicks – which causes inflammation and severe pain, and rectal bleeding that doctors have not yet been able to discover the cause of.

When he reached the famous special regime Kilo 7, the guards were waiting at the entrance of the prison to warn: “You reeducate yourself or we will reeducate you,” to which Lambert replied: “If they kill men here, I came to defy death.” Immediately he  received the first of the many beatings that later did not cease.

“I always wonder,” Lamberto tells me, “why we suffered so much that we have given everything for the freedom of Cuba … it is not enough to have given my entire youth and endured pain and humiliation.” But when you think of what you can all Cubans could enjoy, but above all genuine freedom for our children and grandchildren, it seems little to commit to the cause.

He assures me that, despite his now twenty-two years of imprisonment, the physical and mental health and the twelve hunger strikes, he is still up in arms but not with the same strength but with the same spirit multiplied to continue defending our human rights, unyielding, and always without falling into the sentimental trap of offering freedom that they have announced since 2011.

Lamberto Hernández belongs to the Human Rights Committee, he was part of Hard Line Front and the Orlando Zapata Tamayo Boycott, and today is part of the Cuban Republican Party (PRC). His wife Niurka Rivera Despaigne is part of the Ladies in White and the Latin American Federation of Rural Women (FLAMUR).

“That’s my modest contribution, brother,” he says and walks away because he’s been warned that recount is starting. I look at the silhouette of this humble man who struggles from complete anonymity.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

La Lima Prison, March 2013

http://www.plantados.org/?p=6329

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y01/ago01/13a5.htm

http://www.primaveradigital.org/websitepublisher//articles/1092/1/HUELGA-DE-HAMBRE-EN-CANALETAS/Page1.html

http://elpais.com/diario/2007/03/24/opinion/1174690804_850215.html

http://angelicamorabeals1.blogspot.com.ar/2011/05/campana-internacional-por-la-libertad.html

http://www.libertadsindical.com/liberado-diosdado-gonzalez-marrero-y-oscar-e-biscet-denuncia-estado-de-las-prision-combinado-del-este-en-la-habana/

http://www.pinceladasdecuba.com/2010/09/huelga-de-hambre-el-prisionero-politico.html

http://www.directorio.org/comunicadosdeprensa/note.php?note_id=2851

http://defiendecuba.blogspot.com.ar/2012/03/lamberto-hernandez-plana-un-luchador.html

http://www.congreso.es/public_oficiales/L9/CONG/BOCG/D/D_467.PDF#page=14

11 April 2013

URGENT SOS: Angel Santiesteban forced to swallow a strange liquid that made him feel sick

We just received a very worrying message from Havana from Angel, who so far has told us in other communications that he is being treated badly and is held under severe conditions in Prison 1580.

As we denounced yesterday, they only allow him phone calls of a few minutes, because of which the uncertainty is still greater, as in those few minutes there is not enough time to explain what’s happening.

Right now the information we have is that Angel had asked to eat food and wear clothes that the prison authorities don’t allow, and he is not receiving the letters sent by family and friends.

Today he was able to call — for just a couple of minutes again — and denounced that they held him by his hands and feet and forced him to swallow a strange liquid, and he didn’t know what it was.

Apparently this is a method of reprisal because Angel has not been eating any of the prison food, only the food brought to him from outside: cookies and things like that, very little nourishment.

Today he also asked that we send pants a size smaller than his usual size. And said he didn’t feel well. We don’t know if it is because of what they forced him to drink.

It is no secret to anyone what resources the regime’s assassins have up their sleeves. There are enough denunciations from prisoners who have been made ill by treatment of this kind, some of them gravely so, because they’ve been made to drink strange things.

ALL THE EYES OF THE WORLD ARE FOCUSED ON RAUL CASTRO: ONCE MORE WE WANT TO EXPRESS THAT WE HOLD HIM DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE, ALONG WITH HIS HENCHMEN, FOR WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN TO ANGEL.

Angel is an honest man, a good person, a loving father. No lie from the Regime can change that reality. What they are doing does more damage than they have already done and dispels the doubts in any honest minds who still believe they are not consummate assassins.

We, the families and friends of Angel, will remain here to denounce what is happening to him and to demand that he be immediately returned to La Lima Prison — from where he never should have been removed — and that he be guaranteed the full enjoyment of all of his rights.

22 April 2013

Prison Diary XIII. They have dubbed me “Mandela.” I have started to be their hope.

The 5 spies, who committed bloody acts and spied for a foreign country, have not been punished like they do with any prisoner in Cuba. Here they humiliate and constantly harass them.

They, the Castros, say that at the Guantanamo Naval Base they commit horrors, but they don’t say what they know because they commit the same abuses they “denounce” daily.

Here the prisoners swallow nails, springs or pieces of spoons to demand their rights, or at least have the opportunity to explain to someone.

Amused, I always have to laugh and respond to my new name, no matter how many times I tell them to call me Ángel or Political — like they used to — but they have baptized me Mandela. I have begun to be their hope despite finding me isolated, although without them letting the two prisoners who helped me get even to the door of my cell; I’m totally isolated.

I asked for my glasses and they also refused me. The only thing I can do is write on the walls, except that there is less space left, and I’ll have to figure out how to reach the ceiling; I’ll have to do something about it. Writing is a mania, a necessity and a duty. When they searched me on my arrival, twelve guards commanded by Major Erasmus did it.  And I told them that my weapons were in my mind and they couldn’t get them out of there.

I thank God for giving me the protection and constant companion in my lonely hours, but I’m also grateful to be here, they provide me Literature and complaints against the regime.

God, forgive the dictators and their henchmen.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
1580 Prison. April 2013.

Editor’s Note: Ángel Santiesteban-Prats finishes on his ninth day of a hunger strike today.

The slap of the intellectual is almost always eternal even if it costs him his life.

Dear Members of UNEAC (the Writers and Artists Union of Cuba): (take note). Angel Santiesteban [is a worm in prison]. Revolutionarily, Me [Raul]

The honeymoon between the Intellectual and Power will always be incestuous. They are distant, different roads that will be forced to converge, an arm wrestling where the same one doesn’t always win, even though when it’s Power’s turn it hits harder, but eventually it will be forgotten in time except to remember its negativity.

The slap of the intellectual is almost always eternal even if it costs him his life.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Urgent: Angel Santiesteban Prats Was Transferred And His Whereabouts are Unknown

Today the Human Rights Commission was scheduled to visit La Lima Penitentiary. Because of this they planned to take Angel Santiesteban to the Salvador Allende Military Hospital so that he would not have access to this Commission. At his blunt refusal to enter the hospital they were going to give him a pass for a few hours to go home. He woke up expecting to be taken there. But instead he found himself handcuffed and taken no one knows where. Since this morning we have been waiting in vain for news. We hope there wasn’t an incident when he was transferred but we don’t know any more.

We pray that you spread this news as widely as possible.

9 April 2013