On November 30, 2024, Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas died in a Cuban prison, according to the official version, from asphyxiation due to hanging. However, Manuel’s body and his clothes had signs of torture, including mud on his shoes and pants wet with urine. In the video that went viral, his mother, Dania María Esplugas, claims that her son was murdered by prison officers. He believes that Manuel did not die by suicide, as authorities claim, but rather that he was beaten to death, and his hanging was a farce to cover up the abuse. Dania observed the marks on his neck, back and arms and concluded that he was tortured and beaten with a military belt and a tonfa before being hanged.
Manuel de Jesús, 27, was arrested on July 17, 2021 for sharing videos of the July 11 protests on social media. He was accused of public disorder and vandalism and was sentenced to 6 years in prison, after being detained for a year and a half without being brought to trial. His mother’s efforts to file a writ of habeas corpus to secure his parole were futile. He was a prisoner of conscience.
In prison, Manuel faced inhumane conditions, including being infected by bedbugs and rats, lack of medical care for scabies contracted during his confinement, poor nutrition, and being kept alongside dangerous criminals. His death in prison attracted attention and reports suggest he was beaten before he died. Some prisoners maintain that he was hanged by the authorities, not because he committed suicide, as they officially say.
This is not an isolated case, but part of a pattern of abuse by the Cuban dictatorship that systematically violates international standards.
Christopher Simmons, a retired counterintelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified before the United States Congress on May 17, 2012, and described the Havana regime this way: “In many respects, Cuba can be characterized as accurately as a violent criminal organization masquerading as a government. The five intelligence services of the Island do not exist to protect the nation but to ensure the survival of the regime.”
And this applies to the conduct of the dictatorship on the island, and internationally, but here we will focus on the prisons.
The Cuban government has blocked the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from entering Cuban prisons for 64 years. No visits occurred between July 1959 and April 1988, and after international criticism, the ICRC was allowed access in 1988 and 1989. However, there have been no visits after this date. This is similar to what happened in Beijing, with Human Rights Watch’s 1999 world report, both countries, Cuba and China, have prohibited the ICRC from providing basic humanitarian aid to prisoners.
Numerous prisoners of conscience have died in Cuban prisons while protesting mistreatment by government officials, a tragic pattern that has persisted for decades. Among the most notable cases are that of the student leader Pedro Luis Boitel (1972), the human rights defender Orlando Zapata Tamayo (2010), the UNPACU member Wilman Villar Mendoza (2012) and the political prisoner Yosvany Aróstegui Armenteros (2020 ). These deaths highlight the continued repression, human rights abuses faced by political dissidents in Cuba, and the absence of international oversight.
The political prisoners They are especially attacked because from prison they continue to defend human rights and report on prison conditions and the mistreatment suffered by all prisoners by officers. This provokes special animosity against them on the part of regime officials. Thanks to them, international organizations can report, for example, that 72 prisoners have died in the last two years. Cubans under the custody of the authorities. This is a partial figure, but without their brave testimony and their willingness to report, the poor conditions of the prisons and these deaths would be unknown.
The total number of political prisoners in Cuba over the past 65 years is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands, although the Cuban government does not reveal official figures.
The Cuban Cultural Center of New York invites you to commemorate Human Rights Day this Tuesday, December 10, 2024 at 7:00 pm in conversation about the legacy of the Cuban political prison in the context of human rights with William Navarrete and Janisset Rivero, author of Cartas a Pedro, the novel inspired by the life of Pedro Luis Boitel, a Cuban student leader and prisoner of conscience who died in a Cuban prison after years of torture by prison officials.
Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas was repressed because he continued to denounce injustices and poor prison conditions. As did Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who was murdered 14 years before, being subjected to cruel treatment for 7 years.
According to Amnesty International, on October 20, 2003, after asking for medical attention, Orlando Zapata was dragged across the floor of the Combinado del Este Prison and beaten by prison guards. This attack left his back lacerated. Despite the harassment he suffered, he managed to clandestinely obtain a letter from prison after these events. The letter was published in 2004, where Zapata addresses the Cuban opposition:
“My dear brothers of the internal opposition of Cuba,” wrote Zapata in his letter, “I have many things to tell you, but I have not wanted to do it with paper and ink, because I hope to come to you one day when our country is free and without dictatorship Castro. Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you, so that you keep it as part of the savagery of which we in the Pedro Luis Boitel political prison are victims.”
The suffering and eventual death of Pedro Luis Boitel in prison in May 1972, that of Orlando Zapata Tamayo in prison in February 2010, as well as that of Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas now, and of all of the most for more 65 years old demand truth and justice for themselves, for their families and for the future of a free Cuba.
On this International Human Rights Day, let us say a prayer for them and other victims of the dictatorship, and let us redouble our efforts so that the truth is known and justice is done for these and all the martyrs of the Cuban dictatorship.
