The Mail CUBAN PRISONERS' APPEAL

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In the CRIMSON of February 8, there is a letter from Lee Lockwood regarding a "Center for Cuban Studies," whose purpose is to make available to all interested persons "a comprehensive collection of documents and study materials about Revolutionary Cuba."

I trust Mr. Lockwood will include in his Center the document. "From the Prisons of Cuba-A Cry for Help!" which appeared in the May-June number of the socialist magazine Dissent. The document is signed, with all names given, by 47 political prisoners held in the political prison La Cabana in Cuba. The document was dated December 1969 and submitted to the United Nations through the League for the Rights of Man, a civil liberties organization headed by Roger Baldwin, the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The document details the cruel and harsh treatment of more than 800 prisoners and tells of the events which led to some hunger strikes on their part. The document states:

Those miserable conditions led to two great hunger strikes, one in October 1968 for 19 days and another last August and September for 35 days. The latter was as inhuman an event as the world has ever seen. The number of prisoners who fell ill or went insane prove the cruelty of our jailers. They denied medical assistance to prisoners suffering from heart attacks, stomach upsets, diarrhea, and even total paralysis unless they changed their attitude. It was horrible to see 800 men in a state of total malnutrition thrown to the mercy of cruel, unpredictable jailers.

Special Graduate Student