Word: combinado
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...Apartheid-era jailing in South Africa. One name to start with—a name that a majority of Americans, and many Cubans, for that matter, are probably unaware of—is Francisco Chaviano Gonzalez. He has endured almost nine years of torture in the Combinado del Este prison for publicly attacking Castro on Cuban human rights violations. But Chaviano is only one of some 240 estimated political prisoners who are being held in Castro’s jails. Meanwhile, their families are subjected to constant harassment and intimidation...
Chanes and Diaz are kept in isolation at the Combinado del Este prison on the outskirts of Havana in a windowless cell so tiny they have no room to walk. Both are said to be in failing health...
...Castro announced that he would lighten some prison sentences. I was taken to a civilian hospital, where I began to receive appropriate treatment. However, the publication of Castro's Prisoner in France resulted in the suspension of this treatment. I was sent back to prison, this time to Combinado del Este, where I remained until my release. In April 1981, the military transferred me to las celdas de castigo (punishment cells), which, at the time, housed 67 people who had been sentenced to death either for political reasons or for common crimes. I saw young boys and workers...
...Cuba, minors are sent to detention centers for offenses, which, in most countries, do not result in imprisonment. In Combinado del Este I met a twelve-year-old boy named Roberto. At night he would weep and cry out for his mother, pleading to be allowed to go home. To silence him, the guards would throw buckets of cold water and bottles at him or beat him with a rope. Roberto had been sentenced to prison because, while walking in the street, he had seen a pistol lying on the seat of an automobile belonging to a commander...
While I was in prison I also met four Jehovah's Witnesses, all of whom are probably still imprisoned in Combinado del Este. I saw several Protestant churches on Isla de Pinos that had been turned into fertilizer stores. Many Catholic churches have been closed and traditional religious ceremonies banned. The celebration of Christmas has been suppressed, and even the smallest of Christmas trees is looked upon as counterrevolutionary. Only a few people, generally the aged, run the risk of going to church; young people who attend Mass are stigmatized as "enemies of the revolution" and run the risk...
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