Hostage Family Interview

Apparently Castro must think that a little fancy editing and questioning under duress is all he needs to undo some the damage he has done by the arrest of the dissident librarians, journalists and writers last year:

Cuba on Thursday released videotaped interviews with several relatives of 75 jailed dissidents, confirming the families' fears that their comments to Cuban TV would be manipulated to discredit allegations of prison abuses.

[edit]

'I felt depressed and cried a lot after the interview when I figured out what they could do,'' said Dulce María Amador, whose husband Carmelo Díaz is serving a 16-year sentence. ``I said the truth. I didn't lie, and if they manipulate it then that's a different story.''

It was not clear whether the two women interviewed by The Herald were among the seven included in the government video shown Thursday.

Amador, 42, said she became suspicious when the reporter only wanted to know about her husband's health and their prison wedding, while ignoring her pleas for her husband's freedom.

The Cuban TV interviewer ''had specific questions and knew everything about our situation,'' Amador said.

According to both women, the reporter also asked about their husbands' personal hygiene, eating schedule, reading materials, visitation rights, and any type of torture or mistreatment.

The women said they told the interviewer that although their husbands were not mistreated by authorities, they did not belong in jail.

''I am not pleased. I would be pleased if my husband was free,'' Borges said she told the Cuban reporter.

You can fool some of the people some of the time . . .

Immediately after being interviewed, Borges and Amador called other wives and relatives to prepare them in case the TV crew showed up at their homes.

The crew did visit at least one other home but was turned away.

Cuban authorities are complaining of distortions:

''There is a campaign against Cuba,'' Pérez Roque said, according to Agence France-Presse. He described the charges of mistreatment as ``manipulated, tendentious information . . . lies.''

[edit]

Pérez Roque said Cuba ''does not have a vengeful attitude'' toward the dissidents, adding that Cuba is ''fulfilling minimum United Nations requirements on treatment of prisoners,'' Agence France-Presse reported from Havana.

He said prisoners are treated with ''respect for their physical and moral well-being,'' and ``receive adequate medical attention, good food. They do not sleep on the floor but on a bed with a mattress, and are not in darkened cells or in isolation.''

There's a simple solution to all this. The Cuban authorities should do what every nation in the Americas does except for Cuba: Allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to inspect their prison conditions. Why would any nation not allow this, unless, of course they have something to hide . . .