Dissident hunger strike in central Cuba rushed to hospital after week without food

Cuban hunger striker unconscious, hospitalized

HAVANA — A Cuban dissident who has spent a week on a hunger strike has been rushed to a hospital in central Cuba after losing consciousness, a family spokeswoman told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Guillermo Farinas, a journalist who files Internet dispatches in defiance of state control of nearly all domestic media, has held at least 24 hunger strikes since 1997 but said this time he was prepared to go until he dies to honor Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a construction worker who died on Feb. 23 after refusing food for weeks.

The death of Zapata Tamayo, considered a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International, has energized the island’s small political opposition community. Farinas was one of five dissidents — four of whom are in prison — to stop eating in his honor.

Farinas was taken to a hospital near him home in the central city of Santa Clara around midday, said Licet Zamora, who is the family’s spokeswoman.

Farinas said his hunger strike was also to demand the release of 33 political prisoners who are in poor health.