On the weekend of April 20th, I attended the Princeton-Harvard Cuba Conference held by Raices de Esperanza, Inc at Princeton University to awaken young people in the United States and abroad to the situation in Cuba and to establish networks among youth on the island and abroad. This conference was a life-altering experience. The knowledge that I gained from engaging with speakers and attending discussions with world-renowned Cuban figures such as Grammy Award Winner Gloria Estefan, the legendary Huber Matos, and prolific writer and journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner to name a few, is invaluable to me.

The most impacting part of this conference was having the rare opportunity to speak via telephone with remarkable students and youth on the Island who shared personal accounts of being denied basic human rights and treated unjustly by the Cuban dictatorship. Amongst these individuals was Rolando Rodriguez Lobaina, who along with his brother Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina, started the Movement of Cuban Youth for Democracy (MCYD), an organization that seeks academic freedom and university autonomy. This telephone conversation was not only moving because it expanded my consciousness of the plights of young adults in Cuba, but also, because on April 25th, just three days after the conference call, Rolando Rodriguez Lobaina was arrested under the guise of "illegal enrichment/profiteering" charges.

State Security officials are currently torturing Rolando in the Operational Headquarters of State Security in Guantanamo. His wife, brother and father have confirmed that he is confined to a solitary cell that has no windows or openings and is maintained at a scorching 104 degrees Fahrenheit by a light bulb that is kept on inside the cell 24 hours a day. Moreover, Rolando is being seriously undernourished and his health is rapidly deteriorating. The same vibrant young man that I was speaking with a couple of weeks ago is being tortured as I type.

The most heartbreaking part being that he is INNOCENT of the charges being brought against him. As his own wife, Janet Mosquera Cayon expressed: "[Rolando] is not enriched in any sense because he has no house, no car, no equipment. They have no proof that [Rolando] has been 'enriched/profited' illegally, or in any other fashion.
They are trying to find a common sentence to imprison him due to the fact that they can not accuse him for political reasons being that according to them 'no one is politically imprisoned.'"

This is not the first time that the Castro regime has unjustly imprisoned Rolando Rodriguez Lobaina. When we spoke to Rolando at the Conference he shared with us that several years earlier, when he first organized the group of pro-democracy Cuban youth, he was subsequently imprisoned for SEVEN years. The regime used the fact that Rolando had red meat in his refrigerator to justify the warrant and the charge. Having red meat was considered a crime since cows are property of the state, and because Cubans are not allowed to purchase any more food or goods than what the regime has rationed to them.

Having been imprisoned for seven torturous years for "the piece of red meat he had in his refrigerator" did not deter Rolando from organizing youth to discuss democratic principles or from sharing his situation with the world. Thus, once again he is in prison undergoing severe human rights abuses. I am urging all readers of this who are currently exercising their democratic rights, to help this courageous young man fight for his life. The only thing that Rolando is guilty of is believing that he is a human being who deserves the right to express his point of view. He is paying for this belief with his life.

Please send me an email if you would like to sign a letter that I will be sending to all major Cuban agencies detailing our knowledge of the human rights violations being committed against Rolando and placing pressure on them to take large scale action.

I hope to hear from you soon.