By Alberto de la Cruz on 04/11/2011 – 4:56 am PDT -- Headlines
Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina, a Cuban prisoner of conscience who was
banished from the island by the Castro regime and forcibly exiled to
Spain with the help of that government, is exposing the ongoing
complicity of Spain with the Cuban dictatorship.
After arriving in Spain, the Spanish government of socialist president
Rodriguez Zapatero has done all it can to silence Rodriguez Lobaina and
keep him separated from fellow Cuban political prisoners already
banished to the Iberian nation.
Former Cuban Political Prisoner Rails Against Spanish Government
MALAGA, Spain – Freed former Cuban political prisoner Nestor
Rodriguez Lobaina, who was recognized as a prisoner of conscience by
Amnesty International, complained in an interview on Sunday about the
treatment he received from the Spanish government after his arrival in
Spain, saying that it reminded him of the "Cuban tragedy."
Last Friday, after he arrived in Madrid by plane, the group with
which he was traveling was taken to a "very discrete place," which
prevented him from speaking with the press, and later he was transferred
by bus to Malaga with his wife and 6-month-old daughter, Rodriguez
Lobaina said.
"They've prevented me from going to the press. What can I expect
from the immediate future in Spain?" the founder of the Cuban Youth for
Democracy Movement asked.
The activists, who made clear that he does not intend "to fight the
(Spanish) government" because his aim is "to raise my voice to denounce
the tyranny being suffered by the Cuban people," said, nevertheless,
that he feels "deeply wounded" by the treatment and called the conduct
of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government
"counterproductive."
Rodriguez Lobaina said that he was transferred directly from the
prison where he had been held since Dec. 9 to the Havana airport, that
he was "taken" by soldiers, adding that upon his arrival in Madrid it
seemed to him that "I was in Cuba, that I was in the hands of the soldiers.
Rodriguez Lobaina, who accepted "exile" in exchange for his release from
prison 12 years early, after having been imprisoned for 10 years already
for crimes that he claims he never committed, said that he feels
"isolated" since he only has his family around him in Malaga and has no
money, and he would have preferred to be in Madrid "near my people" from
the so-called Group of 75.
Regardless of the fact that the "gesture" of transferring him to Malaga
is intended to be humanitarian in nature, "the mechanism is not
humanitarian," Rodriguez Lobaina said.
"It pains me that a government that says it's democratic is doing to me
the same thing that the dictatorship did: gagging me and not letting me
express (myself) and denounce the crime," and that it had tried to
"cover up that tragedy," Rodriguez Lobaina said.
The Cuban dissident said that his family had been "broken up" since his
ill 78-year-old mother is still in Cuba along with an 11-year-old
daughter from his first marriage, a marriage which he "lost" during the
time that he was in prison, and he justified accepting exile in exchange
for his release by the fact that he "didn't want to lose a second family."
Rodriguez Lobaina said that he is not tired of fighting and he is
writing a book entitled "Entre el terror y la sombra" (Between terror
and shadow) about his life in prison and the "repression" his fellow
prisoners suffered, a work that he hopes to publish soon.
The dissident arrived in Spain on Friday along with 36 other former
prisoners and their families on board a jet chartered by the Spanish
government.
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