HAVANA, Cuba. – On February 6, Lieutenant Colonel Euclides Reloba Baños, head of the Combinado de Sandino prison in Pinar del Río, burned several photos belonging to political prisoner Yasser Fernando Rodríguez González, as reported by him via telephone on Monday, February 16.
According to the political prisoner, they were three photographs brought by his daughter in which he appeared with the American flag. The soldier declared that the measure had been carried out by order of him and the command post because they were “counterrevolutionary photos.”
As additional retaliation, Rodríguez González denounced, the uniformed officer prevented him from receiving another 75 family photos that his daughter had brought him.
In protest of the punishment, the political prisoner noted, he remained on hunger strike from that day until February 11.
During the strike, he noted, the prison director threatened to “disappear” him, to which he responded that “he could disappear, since they were starving the prisoners anyway.”
In this sense, Rodríguez González expanded that they were “serving a gota of rice and a teaspoon of hash.” As a consequence, he stressed, “there are a large number of dystrophic inmates and many faint,” in addition to “there are no medications.”
The political prisoner also referred to the strict rationing imposed by the prison authorities on food brought by family members, which is evident in the practice of blocking the entry of a large quantity of this food. For example, they do double searches “and if they bring 10 packages of cookies they only let 5 through.”
The justification given for this is that “prisoners do business,” which, Rodríguez González assures, is false, since “pills, rum, or knives do not enter the prison.” “The only business they can do is exchange cigarettes for food to be able to support themselves in some way,” he said.
Despite the hunger that the prisoners are experiencing, he added, the military does not allow them to return to the detachment with the food that they have not consumed at the end of the visit, but rather they take it from them at the rake.
The political prisoner also thought that they should not limit the food that prisoners receive from their families, because on the street “rice, beans, meat and all food is expensive,” so “they should let go of the little that the family can get.”
As a result of his protest, he assured, they took him to “15 and K,” as the inmates call a small cell where the uniformed officers process those who commit “indiscipline.”
In his case, it was decided to lock him up as a punishment “in a dark cell, without light or anything.” In addition, they took off his padding and left him only his shorts and prisoner’s shirt, which made him cold, he said.
The political prisoner also pointed out that on February 6, another prisoner named Luis Raúl Sánchez Alfonso, nicknamed El Guayabo, was processed in the aforementioned cell. This inmate stood in the cell next to his, and in the early hours of February 10 to 11, he tried to hang himself. According to Rodríguez González, they took him to the hospital and, until the time of their phone call, nothing more had been heard from him.
