In Cuba, 4 prisoners, 1 activist refusing food to protest dissident hunger striker’s death

4 Cuban inmates, 1 activist declare hunger strikes

HAVANA — Four Cuban inmates considered political prisoners and an opposition activist who is not behind bars vowed Friday to stop eating in protest after another jailed dissident died this week following his own lengthy hunger strike.

Such strikes have long been used by the island’s tiny dissident community to try to pressure the communist government to free inmates held for their political beliefs. But they rarely draw much attention outside the Cuban-American exile community in South Florida because those involved often continue to drink water and juice and eat soups and other nutrients that keep them alive.

The death Tuesday of an imprisoned construction worker and government critic named Orlando Zapata Tamayo after he refused solid food for weeks has energized the opposition community, however, and many of its members claim hunger strikes are one of the few ways they can get noticed.

To honor Zapata Tamayo, prisoners Diosdado Gonzalez Marrero, Eduardo Diaz Freitas, Fidel Suarez Cruz and Nelson Molinet, held in high-security Kilo Cinco y Medio prison in the western province of Pinar del Rio, are refusing solid food, according the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

Prison authorities, and the government, had no comment.

All four were captured in a crackdown on dissent in March 2003, when authorities jailed 75 leading activists for allegedly taking money from Washington to destabilize Cuba’s government — charges that dissidents call dubious. The human rights commission says Cuba holds about 200 political prisoners, though that list includes some inmates imprisoned for violent acts.

Despite limits on freedom of expression, assembly and the press, Cuba’s government claims it holds no political prisoners and respects the rights of its citizens more than most countries by providing free education and health care, as well as subsidized housing, utilities, transportation and even food on the monthly ration book. It says all dissidents are paid agents of the U.S. government.

Also on a new hunger strike is Guillermo Farinas, an activist-journalist in the central province of Las Villas who reports independently on Cuba in defiance of state controls on the media.

Farinas has now held no fewer than 24 hunger strikes since 1997, but this time said he has stopped ingesting food and water as of late Wednesday. He said he is doing so to honor Zapata Tamayo and to press for the release of 33 political prisoners who are in poor health.

“They let Zapata Tamayo die,” Farinas said by phone from his home in the city of Santa Clara, adding that he already was experiencing headaches and foot pain from a lack of food.

Zapata Tamayo was jailed in 2003 for disrespecting authority but had his sentence extended to 25-years for political activism behind bars. His death drew condemnation from the U.S., Europe and others, while leaders in Latin America, many of them sympathetic to Cuba, have largely been silent.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, a frequent visitor to Cuba, was one of the few to weigh in. He called Zapata Tamayo’s death “very painful,” but also decried Washington’s 48-year-old trade embargo against the island.

“In Cuba, a lot of things have to change,” he said late Thursday, “but the principal impediment to those changes is the criminal U.S. blockade.”

Cuban President Raul Castro took the unprecedented step of expressing public regret for Zapata Tamayo’s death — though he adamantly denied the prisoner was mistreated and said the only torture taking place on the island is at the U.S. military prison for terror detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Also Friday, Amnesty International added a 55th name to the list of people it considers prisoners of conscience in Cuba and demanded that Raul Castro’s government release him.

Darsi Ferrer, a Havana physician and human rights activist, was arrested in July and accused of illegally obtaining black-market building materials to repair his home.

Opposition leaders say officials selectively prosecuted Ferrer for a crime that is often overlooked — and quite common in a country where the state controls nearly all construction and such materials are hard to come by legally.