In case you thought things have changed

Via Babalu Blog, comes this story about Francisco Chaviano, recently released from hell Combinado del Este and sick as can be.

One of Cuba’s longest-serving political prisoners, Francisco Chaviano, was released Friday on ‘’conditional freedom’’ after serving 13 years in prison—and immediately blasted prison conditions on the island.

‘’I am back from hell,’’ Chaviano, 54, told El Nuevo Herald from his home in Jaimanitas, west of Havana. ``If Dante had known the Combinado del Este [prison], he would not have needed his imagination to write The Inferno. He simply would have told what he saw there.’’

‘’I spent five years stuck in a cell without seeing the sun, two years without receiving visitors and four years without conjugal visits,’’ he added. ``It was a cruel, merciless treatment that was also extended to my family, my wife and my children.’’

Chaviano, a mathematics professor at Havana’s Institute of Chemistry, was arrested on May 7, 1994, and sentenced by a military tribunal to 15 years in prison on charges that he ‘’disclosed secrets concerning the state security’’ and falsified documents.

He had been chairman of the Cuban Civil Rights Council, an organization that supported civil liberties and denounced the penetration of State Security agents into the dissident movement. His case had been brought to the attention of the human rights branches of the United Nations and Organization of American States.

Chaviano said prison life had seriously harmed his health, and that he now suffers from a rapidly growing tumor in one of his lungs and a serious heart condition. During the last two years, he was hospitalized several times with serious pulmonary and cardiac problems, he said.

‘’The damage in my lungs I owe to them [the government]. In Cuba, imprisonment kills,’’ Chaviano said.

But he added that he will not seek exile abroad and vowed to continue to actively oppose the government from inside the island.

‘’This country is a disaster,’’ he said. ``The economic pauperization is visible.’’

Chaviano was one of 73 Cubans regarded as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International, and of about 200 listed by the illegal but tolerated Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation based in Havana.

‘’We consider his release to be good news, but we regret that—in his case, as in the cases of many other political prisoners—the government of Cuba continues to violate the terms of early release, as established by the current penal code,’’ said commission President Elizardo Sánchez.

Sánchez said that under the code, Chaviano should have been freed unconditionally on May 7.

However, Chaviano remained in prison an extra three months and his release was termed ``conditional.’’

This is for every Moore-on who thinks that things have changed at all in Cuba in the last 35 years or so.  Also, how can this man be so ill?  Cuba has the best care, and surely they treat citizens, even imprisoned ones, better than we treat enemy combatants at Gitmo, right?

Or not…