US Jails or Hell on Earth
Cuba has been in the center of a US-headed media campaign attempting to distort a reality of full respect for human rights and huge efforts for that same objective in the rest of the world.
That move, fully coordinated abroad with anti-Cuban groups and rightist sectors particularly from the US and Europe, uses false arguments on penitentiary centers on the island and prisoners' treatment.
The drive undoubtedly ignores that current Cuban facilities have among their main tasks to work for prisoners' reintegration into society through education projects, remunerated work, and benefits according to their behavior.
Regardless of what media campaigns allege, not a single case of torture or death due to maltreatment of lack of healthcare has ever been reported, no matter the offense committed.
However, it is interesting to look at the prison situation of the US, the main instigator of anti-Cuba attacks.
According to official data, nearly 7,000 convicts die each year in US jails. When the George W. Bush term was over, US prisons were housing 22,480 prisoners infected with HIV-AIDS.
This is not surprising, taken into consideration that nearly five percent of convicts in state and federal jails have suffered rapes, including attacks by other inmates or staff from the penitentiary system itself.
In addition, about 200,000 minors are tried as adults, and part of them go to jail, without forgetting that some are given the death penalty.
Drug consumption and trafficking within penitentiary centers is a recurrent topic in US films themselves, which sometimes recognize their prisons are true hell on earth.
Referring to political prisoners, the most recent example is the case of the five Cuban anti-terrorists imprisoned in the US for infiltrating US-based violent groups, with the objective of collecting information to avoid terrorist acts and save lives.
They have not only suffered isolation and unfair sanctions, but have been prevented from having contact with their family for over eleven years, as it is the case of two of them.
Comparisons are not actually necessary. Not even the attempt to turn common prisoners into patriots who denounce alleged abuses at Cuban penitentiary centers can free the US from being considered the true human rights violator.
That move, fully coordinated abroad with anti-Cuban groups and rightist sectors particularly from the US and Europe, uses false arguments on penitentiary centers on the island and prisoners' treatment.
The drive undoubtedly ignores that current Cuban facilities have among their main tasks to work for prisoners' reintegration into society through education projects, remunerated work, and benefits according to their behavior.
Regardless of what media campaigns allege, not a single case of torture or death due to maltreatment of lack of healthcare has ever been reported, no matter the offense committed.
However, it is interesting to look at the prison situation of the US, the main instigator of anti-Cuba attacks.
According to official data, nearly 7,000 convicts die each year in US jails. When the George W. Bush term was over, US prisons were housing 22,480 prisoners infected with HIV-AIDS.
This is not surprising, taken into consideration that nearly five percent of convicts in state and federal jails have suffered rapes, including attacks by other inmates or staff from the penitentiary system itself.
In addition, about 200,000 minors are tried as adults, and part of them go to jail, without forgetting that some are given the death penalty.
Drug consumption and trafficking within penitentiary centers is a recurrent topic in US films themselves, which sometimes recognize their prisons are true hell on earth.
Referring to political prisoners, the most recent example is the case of the five Cuban anti-terrorists imprisoned in the US for infiltrating US-based violent groups, with the objective of collecting information to avoid terrorist acts and save lives.
They have not only suffered isolation and unfair sanctions, but have been prevented from having contact with their family for over eleven years, as it is the case of two of them.
Comparisons are not actually necessary. Not even the attempt to turn common prisoners into patriots who denounce alleged abuses at Cuban penitentiary centers can free the US from being considered the true human rights violator.
Source:
Prensa Latina
Date:
19/03/2010