Thursday, January 29, 2009

Christian Liberation Movement says “other Guantanamo” should not be forgotten

In a statement issued last week, the Christian Liberation Movement, which works for the recognition of human rights in Cuba, praised the decision of President Barack Obama to close the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo, but he said the other prison in the same region of the island where hundreds of prisoners of conscience languish should not be forgotten.

“On previous occasions,” the statement said, “we have expressed our position against the existence of that prison on Cuban soil,” but “it is essential that we remember that a few kilometers from there is located the horrible provincial Prison of Guantanamo, where the government of Cuba has incarcerated and still holds Cuban citizens in inhumane conditions who were unjustly condemned for freely speaking, writing or collecting signatures for the Varela Project.”

The CLM recalls that there are still more than 200 prisoners of conscience in Cuba, and it denounced “the hypocrisy of those who (rightly) denounce the prison camp at Guantanamo but consciously forget about the imprisonment of defenders of human rights at that other Guantanamo which is all Cuba’s.”

The statement recalls that at the Cuban prison of Guantanamo, the inmates include Jesus Mustafa Felipe, “who in 2003 was sentenced to an arbitrary condemnation of 18 months, and one day without any warning, was taken from his cell, put on trial without legal representation and sentenced to another 25 years.”
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(Source: CNA)