Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela: tyrannies that fill jails with political prisoners

By Nehomar Hernández*

(Opinion) It is no coincidence that until recently, the United States, under the Trump administration, considered Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela from the same point of view: one that spoke of the existence of an “axis of evil” in the Americas.

These three countries are ruled by tyrants who pull together through the international criminal organization that the São Paulo Forum has become, and they also share commonalities in a very negative sense.

Apart from everyday problems such as electricity or drinking water supply, which are recurrent in Díaz-Canel’s Cuba and Maduro’s Venezuela, or the social control policies developed by the Ortega regime, these three countries are affected by the unfortunate peculiarity of being almost the only ones in the region whose prisons are overcrowded with opposition members.

This is no small matter, and it calls attention to the main point: No truly democratic regime-regardless of the ideology it espouses-can fill entire prisons with dissidents simply because they do not share the government’s view of things. It’s as simple as that.

VENEZUELA: POLITICAL PRISONERS AS BARGAINING CHIPS

Today’s Venezuelan politics cannot be explained without considering that Nicolás Maduro, after becoming president, decided that almost any means would suit him to never leave the country again.

And he has been even more successful than his predecessor, the late military putschist Hugo Chávez, in imprisoning those who oppose Chavism as a system.

To this end, Maduro has built elaborate police, military, and judicial apparatus in which conspiracies to overthrow the established power are pointed out repeatedly, resulting in the usual prison sentences for men and women in the South American country.

According to the Venezuelan human rights organization Foro Penal, Maduro has 245 political prisoners to date.

In the case of Chavismo, these prisoners have ultimately become great assets to the revolution.

Caracas is currently maneuvering to regularize relations with the United States, and the prisoners are being used as leverage in negotiations with the Biden administration.

For example, a few weeks ago, Maduro exchanged seven U.S. nationals (five Venezuelans with dual citizenship and two native-born U.S. citizens) with Washington for the two nephews of his wife, Cilia Flores, who was arrested by U.S. justice, tried and sentenced to 18 years in prison for organizing the importation of a shipment of 800 kilograms of cocaine into the United States.

CUBA: FAST-TRACK TRIAL IN THE FACE OF PUBLIC SERVICE PROTESTS

The island of Cuba has a long history of repression during more than 60 years of dictatorship, once led by tyrant Fidel Castro, then passed to his brother Raúl and currently led by Miguel Díaz-Canel.

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Ivan in late September and the poor state of the communist regime’s public services on the island triggered a wave of public outrage over ongoing power outages in much of the Caribbean country.

Last week, for example, an estimated 40% of Cuba’s territory was affected by power outages.

The non-governmental organization Prisoners Defenders recently put the number of people detained by the tyranny last year at 1261, pointing out that 34 of them are minors.

It is also striking that the regime uses a kind of summary trial method to quickly convict those detained.

Díaz-Canel is obviously trying to extinguish the fire of popular unrest through the demonstration effect: Anyone who dares to raise their voice against the miserable living conditions on the island is immediately arrested and sentenced, without the right to defend themselves.

NICARAGUA: DESPERATE POLITICAL PRISONERS ON HUNGER STRIKE

Things do not appear to be fundamentally different in Nicaragua, which dictator Daniel Ortega has ruled for 15 years.

Since 2018, when massive demonstrations challenged the tyrant’s hold on power, the ruling Sandinistas have spared no means to imprison anyone who opposes them.

This is how the Evaristo Vásquez Police Complex, or simply “Nuevo Chipote” as the prison is popularly known, became famous. Inaugurated in 2019 by the Ortega regime, the prison holds dark stories of the torture of political dissidents.

In a report for the Voice of America, a former detainee of this prison camp, who does not reveal his identity, describes his experience.

“It’s total hell because you know you’re meeting people who have turned into monsters, people who have no heart and because you know you can’t breathe in this place, you don’t have the air, you don’t have the sun, you don’t have everything you need as a human being.”

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) estimates that there are currently more than 155 political prisoners in Nicaragua, more than twenty of whom went on hunger strike in late September to protest the neglect and mistreatment they face in prisons like “El Chipote.”

Ortega has recently intensified repression against parts of the Catholic Church and non-governmental organizations. Since 2018, the dictatorship has dissolved 2,375 such institutions.

* Venezuelan journalist (Universidad Central de Venezuela) and Master in Political Science (Universidad Simón Bolívar).

He is currently working on his doctoral thesis in Political Science and hosts the radio program “Y Así Nos Va”, on Radio Caracas Radio.