Cuban Doctor and Prisoner of Conscience, Dr Jose Luis Garcia Paneque, is suffering from bouts of profuse bleeding.

On December 22, 2007, Cuban prisoner of conscience, Dr. José Luis García Paneque, confined in Las Mangas Prison in Bayamo, informed his mother, Mrs. Moralinda Paneque that that morning, he had suffered from dizziness due to a serious episode of diarrhea and profuse rectal bleeding. According to the physician sent from Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Hospital who examined him, this could indicate the development of a duodenal ulcer. However, Dr. García Paneque, who hardly weighs 100 pounds, told his family that this bleeding is really a complication related to the malabsorption Syndrome he suffers from, an illness that he developed in prison and which does not allow the food he ingests to nourish his body.
In 2004, Dr. García Paneque was submitted to invasive medical evaluations for the inadequate absorption of the food he was eating in prison. The doctors from Vladimir Lenin Hospital in Holguín told him the results showed a clinical pattern of prolonged chronic diarrhea. Then, towards the end of 2006, Dr. Paneque began to suffer from incessant bouts of rectal bleeding that are now more numerous and profuse.
In June, 2007, Dr. García Paneque was admitted to the criminal ward of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Hospital where he was diagnosed with a kidney tumor and pneumonia. As a result of the pneumonia, he suffers from pleural effusion of the right lung and constant chest colds. Since the beginning of this year, prison authorities at Las Mangas Prison in Bayamo have not allowed him access to fresh air or sunlight.
The Cuban doctor is confined in a barrack next to ten common prisoners whom he fears because of their violent and difficult nature. It has been a practice of Cuban prison authorities to confine political prisoners next to violent delinquents as a method of physical and mental torture. Cuban State Security offers special privileges to common prisons provided they provoke, beat up, and humiliate, etc., Cuban political prisoners.
Dr. García Paneque was arrested on March 18, 2003, and sentenced to 24 years in jail during the wave of repression that the Cuban government carried out against members of the civil society who were promoting independent ideas on the island.
Dr. García Paneque’s wife and four children were forced to seek exile in the United States on March 8, 2007, because of the violent acts of repudiation that were being carried out against their home by mobs instigated by Cuban State Security.
Dr. García Paneque’s family makes an URGENT APPEAL to the international community since they fear for the safety and physical and psychological well-being of this Cuban physician who is unjustly imprisoned in a maximum-security prison for defending the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in his own country.
Information obtained from Mrs. Moralinda Paneque via telephone from Las Tunas, Cuba, by the Coalition of Cuban-American Women / LAIDA CARRO / E-mail: joseito76@aol.com / FAX: 305-740-7323
Translation into English: The Coalition of Cuban-American Women / TANYA WILDER /
NET FOR CUBA INTERNATIONAL.