Cuba: Jailed Cubans are better off than those outside?

That's the impression Castro's Cominado prison director would give as he let reporters tour the Combinado Del Este prison, to the east of Havana.

For five hours on Wednesday, uniformed Interior Ministry officers rapidly ushered a bus load of media through the freshly-painted rooms and halls reeking of disinfectant. Intensive care units were outfitted with air conditioners and freshly starched sheets topped with yellow towels twisted into the shape of a swan dressed beds.

Combinado hospital director Dr. Aurelio Gonzalez said the facility built in 1977 has 200 beds, but the press saw only a handful of patients, most of whom appeared primed for the visit. Gonzalez denied being hampered by the shortages plaguing Cuba’s national health care system.

“We have everything we need,” he insisted, showing off a well-stocked pharmacy and heart monitors.

None of the prisoners interviewed complained about conditions or food. Most shrugged and said things were “adequate.”

Some, like 31-year old Enrique Prieto, said, “I don’t think the United Nations is acting correctly,” in reference to the UN Human Rights Commission. The 53-nation body will be voting shortly on a resolution reproaching Cuba for jailing 75 dissidents last year.

The 75 were convicted of “working for a foreign power [the U.S.], not for thinking independently”, Cuba’s foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, said last week. He added, it was the “provocative actions” of the U.S. ambassador, James Cason, that landed them in prison. Nevertheless, he insisted the dissidents were being treated with “respect”.

Prieto, who is serving a 30-year sentence for armed robbery, is one of 16 inmates enrolled in a new two-year training course for nurses. Dr. Nestor Azcano, the hospital’s Deputy Director for Education, proudly showed off their small neat classroom, its students crisply uniformed.

“The inmates in this program must have a 12th grade education and of course, rapists and murderers are excluded,” he said. The men will graduate with a nursing certificate enabling them, once they are paroled or complete their sentences, to get jobs in hospitals on the outside or to study for a bachelor’s degree in nursing. In a small room adjacent to the classroom, these inmates were being taught the basics of Windows on desktops.

The staging of the visit got totally out of hand with the claim in the final paragraph. If Prieto is serving a 30-year sentence and is enrolled in the "new two-year training course for nurses," then when is he likely to be paroled or set free to get that nursing job or study for the B.Sc. in nursing? Is it likely that his 30-year sentence might be drastically curtailed upon completion of the program? Who knows? It may be, especially in light of Cuba's shortage of medical personnel for servicing the average Cuban. If it did, that would be a wonderful rehabilitative move, one that other countries, upon studying the Cuban mobel, might emulate. However, the success of the program might be difficult to determine given the repressive nature of the Cuban government. Who knows what threats and observations might attend such a parole.