A Call to Solidarity with Doctor Pulido, a Peaceful Cuban Political Prisoner

By: Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas.
Christian Liberation Movement
Havana, October 19, 2006- Doctor Alfredo Manuel Pulido López, a Stomatologist, led the Christian Liberation Movement and the Varela Project campaign, along with Alejandro González Raga, in Camagüey province. After March 2003 they were each sentenced to fourteen years in prison. They are two of the "Cuban Spring" prisoners.
They are confined in the horrific prison of "Kilo 7" in Camagüey alongside common prisoners, some of them very dangerous. It is a common practice of the State Security and the prison guards to regularly use criminal prisoners to harass peaceful political prisoners.
Doctor Pulido worked at a dental clinic of the Public Health department until he was detained for his peaceful civic activities. He was well-known and respected by hundreds of patients whom he cared for with dedication. Nevertheless, he was treated without any respect in a swift trial that could not have been any less false and unjust.
He has already been in prison for three years and seven months and continues to preserve his values and principles and his love for the people of Cuba and for liberty and he has not succumbed, or accepted to be "reeducated" as his jailers propose, who remain ingrained with
the methodology of Stalinist jails and Chinese Communists, of stomping the heart of those who have the courage to raise their heads and their voices in the face of totalitarian oppression.
What has been the price paid for this dignified and serene attitude? Doctor Alfredo Pulido is victim to a systematic process of physical and psychological annihilation.
He suffers from a chronic gastritis, his bodyweight is almost that of his bones, he vomits almost everything he eats and he certainly cannot eat the concentration camp meals that the prison provides. He suffers from horrible and repeated discomfort in one eye that has a stabbing pain that is truly unbearable for a human being, and he also has ischemic cardiopathy. He has cervical osteoporosis, which puts him in danger of suffering a trauma that can completely paralyze him, and could be very likely in the inhumane conditions in which he is imprisoned. It is a cruel irony that this dentist, who has treated so many people, is losing many of his own teeth.
A prison psychiatrist coldly told him that "he was not adapting to prison life and that he could ultimately suffer a heart attack."
Doctor Alfredo, his wife Rebeca and his 19-year-old son together suffer this cruel separation and every minute of this unjust detainment. This punishment is inhumane and absolutely unjust against a doctor, who only devoted himself to treating his fellow man, and who at the same time was a human rights defender and independent journalist. He did not commit any crime, nor did he commit or plan any act of violence, nor did he conspire, but rather he only proclaimed openly and transparently the right of human beings to have rights and he worked on the Varela Project. That is why he is in prison. In the trial against Pulido, the prosecutor accused him of enemy activity and of "fabricating denunciations of supposed human rights violations."
Doctor Pulido endures permanent stress that deteriorates him physically and psychologically and his life is in peril. The prison psychiatrist is right, "he could suffer a heart attack."
Our call is, first and foremost, to all Stomatologists around the world, to appeal for the liberation of your colleague whose life is wearing away, but we also call to all those who love justice to raise their voices to save Doctor Pulido.

For more information or to obtain a copy of the press release, please contact: Francisco De Armas, International Representative, Christian Liberation Movement, (305) 285-7970, fdamcl@cs.com

Complete information in Spanish made CLICK HERE.