Who is Sonia Garro?

Wednesday's Example of Media Bias   —   Posted on April 3, 2013

From Mary Anastasia O’Grady’s column posted at wsj.com (original post date 3/31/13):

Sonia Garro with her ​​husband in an undated photo.

…Sonia Garro is a dissident who has been sitting in a Cuban jail since Pope Benedict XVI visited the Castros in Cuba in March 2012. Ms. Garro’s sister, Yamilet, recently told the independent online newspaper Diario de Cuba that Sonia “feels she has been forgotten.”

That’s exactly how her jailers want it.

Ms. Garro is a 37-year-old mother and a member of a women’s group that supports the Ladies in White. Both groups work for the release of political prisoners. Ms. Garro just spent her second Easter in lock-up even though she has never been charged with a crime. She is now being held at the notorious Manto Negro prison.

Her husband, Ramón Alejandro Muñoz, who tried to defend his wife, was arrested at the same time and also has never been charged. He is being held at Havana’s maximum-security Combinado del Este prison. Both jails are run down, rat-infested dungeons where neither international Red Cross observers nor the United Nations special rapporteur on torture are permitted. Government investigators say they are still mulling over their cases. The couple’s 16-year-old daughter is in the care of her aunt.

Welcome to the surreal world of Cuban “reform,” where the more the regime talks of change, the worse things get for anyone with a conscience. …Political prisoners have been left behind. Their inhumane treatment, rarely covered by the media, underscores how little progress has been made.

For speaking about human rights, Sonia Garro has been held in prison without charge since March 18, 2012.
…
Cuban dissidents know her story well, and it is meant as a warning to them. That you have probably never heard of Sonia Garro, put away for daring to speak about human rights ahead of Pope Benedict’s visit, is a testament to the power of regime propagandists and the weakness of American journalism.