CUBA: Dissidents vow to continue month-long hunger strike in support of jailed U.S. contractor

Record ID: 340228

  • Title: CUBA: Dissidents vow to continue month-long hunger strike in support of jailed U.S. contractor
  • Date: 30th April 2011
  • Summary: FERNANDEZ'S TATTOO READING 'DOWN WITH FIDEL (CASTRO), MURDERER' (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) FERNANDEZ SAYING "We are going to continue even if it means more Pedro Luis Boitels and more Orlando Zapatas. We will do it so the international community knows how people live in the Cuba's prisons run by the Castros, so they know about the human rights violations committed in Cuba." MI
  • Embargoed: 15th May 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Cuba, Cuba
  • Country: Cuba
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVABGEMQNEPH1S4T5A88J3BJGHYR
  • Story Text: Two Cuban dissidents who sewed their mouths shut completed 30 days of a hunger strike on Friday (April 29), demanding the release of jailed U.S. contract worker Alan Gross.
    Cuba's highest court recently handed Gross a 15-year sentence, accusing him of helping set up unauthorized Internet access for Cuban dissidents.
    Now Alejo Miranda and Angel Enrique Fernandez say they are prepared to starve themselves to death if the government doesn't pardon Gross.
    In a room surrounded by relatives, Miranda said the two have rejected medical attention.
    "Until we have an answer in our favor in the case of Alan Gross, we are not going to left this hunger strike. We canceled medical visits. We don't want to go the hospital. We are going to maintain this strike, no matter what the price," he said.
    The wives of the men looked on in a room full of anti-Castro protest signs and a picture of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a dissident who died during a hunger strike last year.
    Fernandez, who has a tattoo on his arm accusing aging communist leader Fidel Castro of being a murderer, brought up the names other hunger strikers who have died in protest.
    "We are going to continue even if it means more Pedro Luis Boitels and more Orlando Zapatas. We will do it so the international community knows how people live in the Cuba's prisons run by the Castros, so they know about the human rights violations committed in Cuba," he said.
    Gross has appealed his sentence and Cuban courts are reviewing the appeal. The case brought a brief warming in long-hostile U.S.-Cuba relations and threatens to keep them that was as the United States has said there will be no progress while Gross is being held.
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