A dying dissident: Cuban cops 'killed me'
A pastor says an activist complained of a police beating before he died
in Cuba.
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@elnuevoherald.com
A Cuban dissident who died after an alleged police beating had
complained shortly after the confrontation last week that the police
agents had "killed" him, a Baptist pastor who knew him said Monday.
"His face showed an immense pain, and I recall him saying, 'They killed
me,' " said Pastor Mario Lleonart Barroso, who ran into Juan Wilfredo
Soto García as the 46-year-old dissident was leaving a hospital Thursday
in the central city of Santa Clara.
Soto's death on Sunday sparked widespread allegations that the police
beating caused his death, demands for a government investigation and
comparisons with the death last year of political prisoner Orlando
Zapata Tamayo.
Zapata died in prison after a lengthy hunger strike, touching off a
round of harsh international condemnations of the Cuban government that
eventually helped lead ruler Raúl Castro to agree to free about 100
political prisoners.
Santa Clara dissident Guillermo Fariñas said he had spoken with about 15
people who claimed to have seen at least one policeman beat a handcuffed
Soto with a rubber truncheon Thursday morning at the downtown Vidal Park.
Soto was talking with friends during a regular morning gathering at the
park, not protesting, when a policeman approached only him, asked for
his ID documents and ordered him to leave. Soto argued, the policeman
cuffed him and then beat him, according to Fariñas' version.
A police officer passing by in a patrol car then told the others that he
knew Soto suffered from various ailments and ordered that he be driven
to the Arnaldo Milian Castro Hospital, where he was treated and
released, Fariñas added.
Lleonart, a pastor in the town of Taguayabon, 20 miles from the central
Cuba city of Santa Clara, told El Nuevo Herald that he was in Santa
Clara Thursday morning when he spotted Soto, a friend and fellow Baptist
who lived in Santa Clara.
The dissident was going home from the hospital aboard a "bicitaxi" – a
pedal-powered three-wheeler – and stopped to ask the pastor to notify
his friends that police had beaten him at the Vidal Park, the pastor noted.
"Just now they beat me savagely in the park,'' the pastor quoted Soto as
saying. "They handcuffed me and beat me with truncheons on the back."
Lleonart said he alerted the friends and then posted a tweet reporting
that Soto "was just beaten in S.Clara park by PNR" – the National
Revolutionary Police. The post on Twitter was timed at 11:55 a.m. Thursday.
Fariñas said Soto had to be returned to the hospital early Friday
because of his increasing pain and an examination showed he had a liquid
in the stomach cavity. He was admitted to the intensive care unit where
he died at 12:30 a.m. Sunday. He was buried later Sunday.
One hospital doctor told him in private that the liquid probably came
from a pancreas damaged by the beating, said Fariñas, who spent months
at the hospital being fed intravenously during his long hunger strike
last year demanding the release of all political prisoners.
Soto was a little-known member of the Central Opposition Coalition,
created in 2008 to coordinate opposition activities in the island's
central region. He was reported to have served at least two jail terms
for dissident activities starting when he was 17 year old, when he was
convicted of damaging state properties and nicknamed "the student."
A pro-government blogger Monday quoted a physician in the Milian Castro
Hospital, Ruben Aneiro Medina, as saying Soto suffered no violence and
died from natural causes. The Cuban government had no immediate comment
on the incident, but the blog report was republished by Cubadebate, the
government's official website.
The cause of death was "acute pancreatitis and renal insufficiency, as
well as diabetes, hypertension and a miocardiopathy,'' Norelys Morales
Aguilera, a Santa Clara journalist who works for the government news
media, wrote in the blog Islamia.
Lleonart said Soto was known to be in ill health — he had asked Baptists
abroad to send him medicines for the dissident – but there was no doubt
in his mind that his sudden death was linked to the police beating.
Soto suffered from several common ailments "but I have no doubt that the
beating aggravated them," human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez Santa
Cruz said by phone from Havana.
A person who identified himself only as "male nurse at hospital" wrote a
comment on one of the Internet stories on Soto's death alleging that his
autopsy showed evidence of the police beating.
There was no way to independently confirm the writer's identity, and
Cuba has no independent forensic doctors who could conduct a separate
autopsy.
Lleonart and other Cubans commented that Soto's death also reflected
what they perceive to be a recent increase in government brutality
against its opponents.
"I confess that I have been talking and writing about this for awhile,
but never expected that it would be confirmed by this death,'' said
Lleonart, who has often criticized the government in his Twitter
account, "MaritoVoz."
Popular blogger Yoani Sanchez tweeted that "growing violence by those in
uniform is murmured about, and many describe the details without daring
to denounce it in public."
And Elizardo Sanchez pointed out that Raúl Castro had issued a thinly
varnished threat to dissidents during the Communist Party congress last
month, warning that "the people" retained "the right" to defend the
revolution.
South Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said Monday that "if
reports are accurate, the Castro regime has taken another innocent life"
and called on democratic nations "to strongly condemn this
state-sponsored murder and send an unequivocal message to the Castro
brothers that their abuses … will not be tolerated."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/09/v-fullstory/2209273/a-dying-dissident-cuban-cops-killed.html
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