Dissident slams U.N. and OAS for silence on torture in Cuba

Havana, Cuba, Aug 26, 2009 / 13:30 pm

The leader of the Christian Liberation Movement in Cuba, Oswaldo Paya, criticized the United Nations and the Organization of American States this week for responding with silence to the open letter he sent denouncing the torture that prisoners of conscience are being subjected to in Cuban jails.
 
“We have already denounced this situation [of torture] in a public letter addressed to the president of the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Miguel Descoto, and the secretary general of the Organization of American States, and the response we received was just silence,” Paya said.
 
In a statement, Paya referred to the cases of Antonio Diaz and Rolando Jimenez, both being held in inhumane conditions, one at the Canaletas Prison and the other at the Guayabo Prison, for their promotion of the Varela Project. The project agitates for the rights of all Cubans in the face of the Castro regime's oppression.
 
“This duel between the jailers, the State security and the government on one side and the prisoners of conscience on the other is disproportionate and abusive, since the former has all of the powerful resources and cowardly metes out cruel treatment.” “The prisoners are at a total physical disadvantage in the face of such sadism,” Paya said.
 
He called on “Amnesty International, Justice and Peace and the U.N. Human Rights Commission, and on all people and institutions to urgently defend the dignity and lives of Antonio Diaz and Rolando Jimenez and of all prisoners of conscience in the jails of Cuba.”
 
Paya called the Communist government’s cruel treatment a sign of its “powerlessness and cowardice” against those who, with great courage and faith, refuse to give in, “because their cause is the defense of the rights of Cubans.”