Posted: August 27, 2010 03:10 AM
Juan Juan Almeida's Hunger Strike Succeeds: He Is Allowed to Leave Cuba
The day that Juan Juan Almeida announced the start of his hunger strike
was like reliving the nightmare we'd experienced with the long fast of
Guillermo Fariñas. "This is the worst of all decisions," we, his friends
who love him, told him, sure that he would not withstand the rigors of
starvation, nor that the authorities would yield before his empty gut
rebellion. Fortunately we were wrong. It turned out that the talkative
JJ -- as his close friends call him -- was not only willing to take his
chances arm wrestling with the government, but seemed willing to
sacrifice himself for all of us, who have repeatedly been denied
permission to travel outside this archipelago.
The jovial forty-three-year-old leaves us a painful but effective
lesson, because although we have no elections to vote directly for those
who govern us, nor courts to accept claims of police abuse, much less
means by which a citizen can denounce the immigration restrictions
holding the national territory in their grip, we still have our bones,
our skin, our stomach walls, to reclaim, by way of the fragile terrain
of our bodies, the rights they have taken from us."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/juan-juan-almeidas-hunger_b_696582.html
No comments:
Post a Comment