From: Directorio Revolucionario Democratico Cubano (directorio@netside.net)

To: Olga Cechurova (o.cechurova@agora.stm.it)

Subject: Letter of Directorio to Mrs. Robinson

Date: Sat, 6 Jun 1998 15:41:28

Miami, February 18th , 1998.

Mrs. Mary Robinson

High Commissioner for Human Rights

United Nations

Dear Mrs. Robinson:

The purpose of this letter is to deliver to you the following urgent message from the well known Cuban political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez", who is going to begin a hunger strike on May 25th . Antúnez is sending this message to your attention with the hope that you could help him achieve his just demands.

During the meeting of the Human Rights Commission in Geneva on April 16, 1998, you met with three Cuban women, Ana Carbonell, Sylvia Iriondo and the person who is submitting this information to you Janisset Rivero. At that time, we gave you, among other reading materials, a book called "La Vida en la Prisión Kilo 8" (Life in Kilo 8 Prison), a testimony written by Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez", the same prisoner of conscience that is going to begin the hunger strike next week. It would be of great service to the cause of respect for human rights in Cuba if you could help "Antunez" by conveying to the Cuban government these three simple demands which constitute human rights that must be granted for all prisoners.

I am attaching to this letter the original statement given to us via telephone from the city of Placetas, Villa Clara which states Antúnez' demands. I have translated and reproduced them in English below. The statement was read to us by a human rights activist, Pedro Herrada.

Requests made by Political Prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez":

1. To stop the unjust and arbitrary action of preventing him from participating in the religious services that are provided at the prison by a Catholic priest.

2. To demand medical attention for his hypoglycemic condition which has been ignored by the prison authorities. His condition has worsened because of the severe and inhumane life living conditions to which he was submitted to during his last hunger strike, which took place during Pope John Paul II's visit to Cuba.

3. To stop the arbitrary exile to which he is subjected by being kept in a prison 600 kilometers away from his home without a judicial or legal cause to warrant it.

Mrs. Robinson, I ask you for this humanitarian act of solidarity because I feel it is important to save Antúnez' life. We know he is willing to lose his life in this hunger strike. He has asked for these demands in several occasions during the past, and he is tired of not receiving any attention from the authorities.

In July, 1997 as a result of his denounciation the critical violations of human rights in the Kilo 8 Prison in the Province of Camaguey he was transferred to this prison in Guantánamo that is far away from his home in Placetas, Las Villas. His sister has to travel many hours and has to go through many difficulties in order to see him. Sometimes she is not even allowed to see him. We ask you to intercede in this case on his behalf with the Cuban authorities. If you would like to talk with Antúnez sister, Berta Antúnez, you can reach her or her husband Alejandro at this friends' phone: (53)-(42)-83255, in Placetas, Cuba. You can also reach me at 305-279-4416 in Miami, Florida United States of America.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF JORGE LUIS GARCIA PÉEREZ (ANTUNEZ)

Jorge Luis García Pérez was born on a historical date, October 10th, 1964, ninety six years after Carlos Manuel de Céspedes made his famous Yara Cry proclaiming the independence of Cuba from Spain. The economic situation of his home and the delicate health of his mother forced him to study at the ESBEC (Basic Secondary Schools in the Fields) and the IPUEC (Preuniversitary School in the Fields), where his first political questioning about the Castro's regime emerged, when he was able to read some articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. From that moment on he started to reject all the indoctrination that was taught in the school, and for that reason he was admonished in front of the professors and the staff of the school. Because of this situation, and the imperative necessity to earn money to alleviate the terrible economic situation of his family, Jorge Luis understood that his long kept dream of becoming a lawyer was vanished, so he began working in the most diverse and tiring jobs, such as s

ugar cane cutter, construction worker and farm laborer. He was expelled from many of those jobs, just fir expressing his political points of view against the dictatorship ruling his country.

By that time Jorge Luis started to be watched closely by the Cuban government, and after he spent six months working at the Cuban Atomic Plant at Juraguá, Cienfuegos, he was fired as the result of an investigation carried out by the Ministry of Labor, which classified him as "disaffected to the process". In the last days of 1983, while he was chatting with some friends at the XX Anniversary Square in the city of Placetas, he said that the sole responsible for the 23 Cubans died in combat with the US Army at Granada was Fidel Castro, and he was immediately beaten by agents of the so called National Revolutionary Police (PNR). He was taken from there to the Instruction Department of the State Security Police in Santa Clara, where he was released after being issued a "warning act". But none of this intimidation and repressive acts stopped Jorge Luis' will to express himself accordingly to what his beliefs. On march 15, 1990, while he was again at the same XX Anniversary Square listening to a official radio tra

nsmission calling for the IV Congress of the Communist Party, he started to shout that "communism is an error and an utopia" and "we want and we need reforms like the ones performed in Eastern Europe". He was immediately beaten by agents of the PNR and the State Security Police, who took him again to the their headquarters in Santa Clara, where he was charged this time for "oral enemy propaganda".

That is the way that Jorge Luis' long and courageous history as a political prisoner began. In June of the same year, being already held in the Provincial Prison of Santa Clara, he was sentenced to 6 years in prison, and for that reason he started a hunger strike that lasted 21 days. This was the first of a long series of occasions that Jorge Luis appealed to this action to protest against the innumerable and brutal beatings, locking in punishment dungeons without water or access to sunlight, and the uncountable offenses directed against his person because of the color of his skin. But none of this acts has achieved to broke the unbridled spirit of this young prisoner of conscience. On February 19, 1991 he declared himself as a Preso Plantado ( ), refusing to wear the same uniform as the non-political prisoners and rejecting the so called "Communist Re-education". Among the multiple actions of rebellion and protest made by Antunez, one which outstands above others is his escape from the Las Grimas prison, i

n Placetas, on October 17, 1992. In 1995, while he was held in the Kilo 8 Major Severity Prison, known by the nickname of "Se me perdió la llave" (I have lost the keys), he founded, among other prisoners of conscience, an organization called Pedro Luis Boitel Political Prisoner's Movement, dedicated to denounce the terrible situation of the political prisoners inside Castro's prison and to promote the usage of civic resistance against the brutality of the jailers of the regime.

From his very day of birth, the life of Jorge Luis García Pérez (Antúnez), has been marked by his commitment to freedom and the courage with which he has known how to defend it A young man (actually only 32 years old), a member of the black race and from a humble origin, his sole humanity and the rage and racial antagonism that the dictatorship has directed against him, are a true and more than convincing example that the tyranny of Fidel Castro is, more than an utopia, a pharisaic and criminal nightmare.