RIGHTS-CUBA: Hunger Strikers Demand Human Rights

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jun 12 1999 (IPS) - A hunger strike by four Cuban dissidents has spurred other citizens to protest against alleged human rights violations committed by the government of President Fidel Castro.

The strike began Monday and the action was without precedent since Castro’s successful revolution in 1959. The four hunger strikers said they would abstain from solid food for 40 days – as a token of the 40 years the government has been in power.

The protestors demanded “respect for human rights and the release of political prisoners,” said Oscar Elias Bicet of the dissident Lawton Foundation – who is participating in the strike. The others were: Marcos Lazaro Torres of the November 30th Party, Rolando Munoz from the Lawton Foundation and William Herrera of the Marti Civic League.

The four men said they would take only vitamins and liquids for the duration of their strike which began Monday. They have been joined by 20 other Cubans for about six hours each day.

The dissidents set up an office in Havana to receive complaints of human rights violations and “many people are coming forward and we are taking notes on all accusations,” Elias told foreign journalists.

Political opposition of any type is prohibited in Cuba and the current criminal code calls for severe punishment of dissident activities. Cuban authorities viewed internal opposition as g only small groups who did not represent the island’s population.

The government has alleged that opposition was organised and financed from within the United States. US president Bill Clinton announced a policy package in January that included financial support for non-governmental organisations inside Cuba, some of which reportedly included opposition groups.

The National Civic Union, another dissident group, declared its support for the hunger strike, stating that this action is necessary in the non-violent fight for human rights and is “in full use” of the “right to freedom of expression.”

“Forty years is more than enough time to prove what works and what doesn’t; the efficiency or inefficiency of a system,” the group said in a statement that also demanded a general amnesty for political prisoners and prisoners of conscience.

The protest harkens back to the trial in February of four other members of a dissident group after they wrote a report, critical of a Cuban Communist Party document, that was distributed inside Cuba and abroad.

The organisers of the current hunger strike said that, according to their calculations, there are “more than 1,000” political prisoners in Cuba.

The strikers are fasting in a modest apartment belonging to activist Migdalia Rosa Hernandez, in the Havana neighbourhood of Santos Suarez. They are taking liquids such as juice, water, milk and broth every six hours.

The walls of the house are covered in Biblical quotes and images of Jesus Christ, as well as pictures of several Cuban independence notables, of opposition figures who were allegedly assassinated, and of the late Cuban exile leader in the US, Jorge Mas Canosa.

Mas Canosa led the Cuban American National Foundation, an influential organisation of Cuban exiles that Castro’s government accused of being behind terrorist attacks on the island.

The hunger strikers said their action was part of a civil disobedience campaign that extended to other provinces in the country and which had the support of several anti-Castro groups in the United States.

Hernandez stated that the dissidents also were protesting the use of Rivanol, a medication used in some of Cuba’s hospitals to induce abortion, because it allegedly had been used on women in an advanced stage of pregnancy.

Abortion has been legal in Cuba since 1965 for terminating a pregnancy through the fourth week – at a woman’s request. Abortion is legal after four weeks only if the mother or foetus faced serious health problems.

“We may be completing our hunger strike in prison,” said Elias, who predicted that such an open dissident act might just provoke a reaction by authorities.