Paxety Pages

MAY 29, 2006 Cuban human rights activist, Juan Carlos González Leiva, is suffering constant and systematic acts of provocation and threats to his person and his home by Cuban State Security.

On May 24, 2006, the activist and his father were awakened suddenly when a huge stone was violently thrown against the gate of the house on Honorato del Castillo #154 between República and Cuba in the city of Ciego de Avila.

According to testimony by Juan Carlos, a post of military personnel that constantly keeps a vigil on him has been established facing his house. When he walks through the streets of Ciego de Avila, State Security agents threaten to beat him up, they shout insults at him, and they chant pro-governmental slogans at him, humiliating him publicly.

Juan Carlos González Leiva was incarcerated without a trial and suffered physical and psychological tortures for 26 months for having peacefully demonstrated along with other members of the Cuban Foundation of Human Rights at a hospital in Ciego de Avila where an independent journalist who had been brutally beaten by forces of State Security was taken. He was accused before a tribunal of committing common crimes in a trial on April 26, 2004, and had to serve the rest of a four-year sentence under house arrest.

The Cuban Foundation of Human Rights is a peaceful, pro-democracy organization that struggles for the development of a civil society and the defense of human rights in Cuba. It has delegates all across Cuba and has created agencies of independent press and has established more than 40 independent libraries.

(Testimony of Juan Carlos González Leiva obtained by telephone on May 25, 2006. Taped, transcribed, and translated by the Coalition of Cuban-American Women. LAIDA CARRO / Tel: 305-662-5947 / Fax: 305-740-7323 / Email: Joseito76@aol.com Tanya Wilder / Email: tswilder@charter.net )