RIGHTS-CUBA: Hunger Strikers Seek Freedom for Political Prisoners

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jun 15 1999 (IPS) - Opponents of Fidel Castro’s government, who are on a 40-day hunger strike sent a letter to the president Monday seeking amnesty for all “political prisoners and prisoners of conscience” on the island.

The opposition group met accredited members of the foreign press at a gathering which also was attended by some 55 activists from various groups – all of which are illegal in Cuba.

Magaly de Armas, the wife of jailed activists Vladimiro Roca, said that her husband would join the strike from his prison cell. Roca, the leader of the anti-government Internal Dissidence Work Group, was sentenced last march to five years in prison for crimes against State Security as well as sedition.

The six strikers began their protest one week ago. They are taking only fruit juice and other liquids, have been joined by 165 people at various times during the protest. Another 143 human rights activists have visited the strikers to express their solidarity.

The hunger strike is taking place in a small apartment on Tamarinda street in the low-income Havana neighbourhood of Santo Suarez. At Monday’s news conference, several family members of political prisoners claimed that authorities were mistreating their relatives.

Members of a group known as Naturpaz unfurled a sign and shouted “Freedom!” several times, during the conference.

Government reaction to the protest has been muted. Foreign Ministry spokesman Alejandro Gonzalez external affairs dismissed the hunger strike as a “propaganda maneouvre that has no significance for the Cuban people.”

But Ayda Valdez Santana of the national coalition of former olitical prisoners who is participating in the strike, told IPS that there are 425 people on a partial list of political prisoners, including 13 women.

Valdez Santana stated that the group has decided to continue the hunger strike for 40 days, adding, “We will only leave if we are dragged out by police or taken away in an ambulance.”

She said the strikers are in “good health, physically and mentally,” thanks to the “foreign and internal” support they have received.

The group of hunger strikers is made up of Oscar Elias Biset and Rolando Munoz Yyobre of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights, William Herrera of the Marti Civic League, Marcos L. Torres of the November 30 Party, and Nelson Vazques of the Civic Union Movement.

Biset explained that the 40 days of the strike represented 40 years of Castro’s government and was meant to be a call that Cuba has suffered “enough injustice” and show show respect for human rights and release political prisoners.

Any form of political opposition is illegal in Cuba, where the law calls for severe punishment of dissident activities.

Cuban authorities claim that internal opposition is made up of small groups that are not representative of the island’s population and that they are organised and financed from the United States.

The group of hunger strikers responded that they are “not being manipulated by any exile organisation,” and said their request of Castro’s government is “just.”

Among the many photographs covering the walls of the apartment where the strike is taking place, those of Jorge Mas Canosa stand out. He was head of the Cuban American National Foundation until his death in 1997.

Castro accused Mas Canosa’s influential, Miami-based Cuban exile organisation of backing terrorist attacks against the island.