"His human rights record is not stellar but it is far better than what China imposes."

The Inter-American Commission received testimony taken secretly from the Mar Verde prison in Santiago de Cuba. It reports that "in Mar Verde prisoners suffer from constant harassment, and the cells are too small for the number of prisoners locked up in them. For example, in the so-called Detachment Nº 44, there are nine prisoners held together in cells that measure approximately 2 m by 3m. In Detachment No. 1, the cubicles are 6 by 5 meters, and each holds 18 prisoners. In Detachment Nº 7, where the cells measure 1.5 by 2.5 meters, there are six prisoners in each compartment. The prisoners sleep in three-place bunks with mattresses made of canvas and stuffed with unrecognizable materials". This testimony also relates how the "common prisoner Jose Ismael Martínez Lavigne, confined in Detachment Nº 4, was brutally beaten on April 26, 2000, by an internal security officer named Angel Luis Fonseca, as a result of which Martínez Lavigne suffered inflammation of the testicles and the right eye. This attack occurred when the officer objected to the prisoner's walking in the prison corridor, which, as he explained, he was doing at the orders of the physician, because of a pulmonary illness. In protest at this cruel treatment, Jose Ismael Martínez Lavigne stabbed himself in the stomach with a piece of thick wire."