Wednesday, May 31, 2006

by Isabel Sanchez

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Frail and fed through an intravenous tube, hunger-striking Cuban dissident journalist Guillermo Farinas finishes a fourth month Wednesday defying communist authorities and demanding Internet access even to his death, relatives and dissidents say.

The 42-year-old journalist and opponent of President Fidel Castro's rule is in hospital in the central province of Villa Clara where he is rejecting solids and liquids, sustained only by an IV solution, they said.

Over four months his weight has plunged from 78 to almost 50 kilos (172 to 110 pounds), they added.

Fellow dissidents have pleaded urgently with him, in a letter signed by 100 of them, not to keep endangering his life.

But he vowed in a letter he released five days ago, that: "My hunger strike will continue until my death unless Cuban authorities give me the right" to get on the internet and obtain information freely.

Farinas, also a psychologist by training, launched his bold protest against the Americas' only one-party communist regime on January 31.

The government, which controls all local media, has ordered him not to operate his Cubanacan news agency, based in Santa Clara, which it deems illegal.

Farinas has said he wants to use the Internet to report on the 300 or so political prisoners in Cuba, as well as government repression of dissidents.

"We are going to have bad news at any time; he is in critical condition. This man could die. The government is being rigid, and it has his life in its hands," Elizardo Sanchez, president of the outlawed Cuban Committee for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, told AFP.

Relatives and dissident sources say Farinas' digestive system has sustained serious damage and that he has had blood in his thorax and around his lungs.

"He really started the hunger strike over his own case, but now he wants free access to the Internet for all Cubans, not just for him," said Sanchez. "It is a price too dear for this government which is not going to give in, because it sees the Web as a danger and a threat."

Economist Oscar Espinoza, one of the more than 70 dissidents rounded up in a 2004 crackdown, and later released due to his health problems, said the Internet was a "formidable enemy of the government.

"I doubt it is going to give into (Farinas') demand," Espinoza said.

In the letter from Farinas, released by dissidents on Thursday, Farinas pleaded with the new United Nations human rights council to sanction Cuba for denying Cubans the right to communicate and seek information freely.

"I demand that the Castro government instal Internet in my home to set a precedent, as all Cubans want to communicate freely with the civilized and democratic world," wrote Farinas. Dissident sources say this strike was his 20th protest hunger strike.

The government maintains that limited Internet access is a result of the US economic embargo on the island that prohibits the use of underwater telecoms cables just off the coast. It also cites the high cost of Internet service hookups. Havana describes Cuban dissidents as US-funded mercenaries.

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