(RSF/IFEX) – Reporters Without Borders is extremely anxious about Guillermo Fariñas Hernández, director of the Cubanacán Press news agency, who is on the verge of death after a nine-day total hunger strike in which he has refused both food and water. The journalist has said he is ready to die unless the Cuban authorities give […]
(RSF/IFEX) – Reporters Without Borders is extremely anxious about Guillermo Fariñas Hernández, director of the Cubanacán Press news agency, who is on the verge of death after a nine-day total hunger strike in which he has refused both food and water.
The journalist has said he is ready to die unless the Cuban authorities give all Cubans free access to the Internet and allow independent journalists the right to freely inform the public.
“Guillermo Fariñas could die at any moment. His fate is in the hands of the authorities,” said Reporters Without Borders. “We urge the government to listen to his message and reply to it, giving him at least the right to use the Internet for his work. Failing that, we ask for the journalist to be allowed to receive visits from foreign representatives based in Cuba,” said the press freedom organisation.
Fariñas’s mother has given the organisation details about her son’s condition: “He sleeps badly, he can hardly walk. His blood pressure is very low,” she said on 8 February 2006.
There has been a sudden deterioration in the state of health of the Cubanacán Press editor, who started refusing food and water at midday on 31 January. He is confined to his bed and barely moves.
Since 6 February, the news agency’s 18 full-time staff and other dissidents have been fasting on alternate days to keep Fariñas company, one of them told Reporters Without Borders. The same source said that the political police had twice prevented the journalist from receiving visits at his home in Villa Clara in central Cuba, on 3 and 6 February. According to his mother, he is being examined twice a day by a doctor.
He is supported by all the leading dissident figures, including journalists Raúl Rivero and Manuel Vázquez Portal, who were imprisoned in March 2003 and now live in exile.
Fariñas has warned that he is ready to die unless the Cuban government gives way to his demands. “I want assaults on independent journalists to stop,” he said. “I want all Cubans to be allowed access to the Internet, if the government can provide this as it said it could at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis in December.”
“I am ready to die. Fidel [Castro] knows my position,” Fariñas, who sent a letter to the Cuban head of state on the first day of his hunger strike, told Reporters Without Borders.
According to Vázquez, his warning should be taken very seriously. “‘El Coco’ (the journalist’s nickname) has already staged several hunger strikes. And he is not a man to give in.” This view is shared by the Ladies in White – wives and mothers of prisoners of opinion.
