After nine days of refusing food and water, Guillermo Farinas is on the point of death

Cuba 8.02.2006
After nine days of refusing food and water, Guillermo Fariñas is on the
point of death

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 allows 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.”

The mother of Fariñas Hernández 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 12am on
31 January. He is confined to his bed and barely moves.

The news agency’s 18 full-time staff and other dissidents have since 6
February been taking it in turns to fast for one day to keep Guillermo
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 Villa Clara in central Cuba, on 3 and 6 February.
According to his mother, he is being checked twice a day by a doctor.

He is supported by all the leading dissident figures, including
journalists Raúl Rivero and Manuel Vazquez Portal, who were imprisoned
in March 2003 and now live in exile.

Fariñas Hernández 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 do as it said at the World Summit
on the Information Society in Tunis in December, and give it to them.

“I am ready to die. Fidel [Castro] knows my position”, Guillermo
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 Manuel Vazquez Portal, his warning should be taken very
seriously. “’El Coco’ (the journalist’s nickname) has already staged
several hunger strikes. And he is not the man to give in.” This view is
shared by the Ladies in White - wives and mothers of prisoners of opinion.

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=16397