(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has expressed great concern about a hunger strike begun by three independent Cuban journalists – Manuel Vázquez Portal, Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta and Normando Hernández González – in Boniatico prison, in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba. The journalists are protesting their conditions of detention. Since they went on hunger strike […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has expressed great concern about a hunger strike begun by three independent Cuban journalists – Manuel Vázquez Portal, Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta and Normando Hernández González – in Boniatico prison, in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba. The journalists are protesting their conditions of detention. Since they went on hunger strike on 31 August 2003, they have been transferred to another prison in an unknown location.
“This is the second hunger strike in the space of a month by journalists who are jailed in Cuba,” RSF recalled. “They are being held in very bad conditions. Most have been sent to prisons hundreds of kilometres from their families. The conditions are unsanitary, the food is inadequate and medical care for ailing prisoners is minimal,” the organisation said.
RSF called on authorities to promptly inform the three journalists’ families of their whereabouts and to allow them to visit the detainees as soon as possible.
Vázquez Portal, of the Grupo de Trabajo Decoro news agency, Hernández González, of the CPIC agency, and Herrera Acosta, of the APLO agency, as well as three political prisoners, began the hunger strike to protest against what they termed “unfair” and “inhumane” treatment in Boniatico prison, including solitary confinement, no access to television or the press, the distance from their families, unsanitary conditions and bad food.
Yaraí Reyes, Hernández González’s wife, said the food is often rotten, the journalists have no electricity in their cells and they are being refused medical care. Herrera Acosta’s wife, Ileana Danger Hardy, said the journalists were also protesting against the disciplinary action that was taken against one of them.
The three journalists, along with one of the political prisoners, were transferred to another prison on the night of 1 September. According to Reyes, the move was aimed at separating them from other prisoners and forcing them to end the hunger strike. She said she was “extremely worried” that reprisals might be taken against them.
Three other jailed independent journalists – Mario Enrique Mayo, Adolfo Fernández Sainz and Ivan Hernández Carrillo – began a hunger strike on 15 August to demand that chronically ill prisoners be provided with proper medical treatment and suitable food (see IFEX alert of 26 August 2003). They ended their protest on 25 August when the authorities agreed to provide Mayo with a proper diet. Fernández Sainz reportedly lost 15 kilogrammes during the hunger strike.
