Guillermo Fariñas: A profile in courage

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel this morning published a profile of Cuban indiependent journalist Guillermo Fariñas. Considering how rare it is when the American MSM gives this kind of attention to a Cuban dissident, I re-publish here, in its entirety.

Just read, and re-read, the man's words, and you will come to believe what I believe — the days of the tryant, and his tyranny are numbered. In the end, it cannot prevail against the courage of Guillermo Fariñas and hundreds like him doing freedom's work.

Dissident: `Down with corruption, I'm on hunger strike'

Fariñas uses nonviolence in bid to force change in Cuba

By Doreen Hemlock
Havana Bureau

February 11, 2007

SANTA CLARA, Cuba · After a seven-month hunger strike in a bid to seek Internet access for Cubans, the independent journalist still has no direct access to the World Wide Web.

Maybe worse, few Cubans know Guillermo Fariñas' name. Even fewer know about his protest, or that this time, he nearly died.

Still, the 44-year-old dissident is undeterred. This strike, one of 20 he's held in the past decade, gained international attention.

"The Cuban government controls the media inside the country, but it can't control the media outside," said Fariñas, from his mother's home in this provincial capital, nearly 200 miles from Havana. He is in Santa Clara recuperating, confined to a wheelchair, unable to walk because of the muscle he lost during the fast.

A psychologist by training, Fariñas has repeatedly stopped eating and drinking to express his dissent with Cuba's communist government and to appeal for democracy. The peaceful protests spark solidarity within the country and worldwide, he said.

Fariñas said he launched his most recent strike on Jan. 31, 2006, after the government denied Cubans access to the one Internet café in Santa Clara. Fellow independent journalists had filed an e-mail reportfrom the café, claiming authorities depleted the local blood bank to ship blood to Pakistan with Cuban medical teams. Without the café, Fariñas and his colleagues can only phone and fax reports abroad, delaying publication.

A recent United Nations report found Cuba had the lowest Internet usage rate in the Americas and among the lowest worldwide: fewer than two of every 100 residents. The Cuban government limits most Cubans only to e-mail accounts or access to a controlled Cuban intranet, denying the World Wide Web to most.

Fariñas said he did not set out to clash with Cuba's government. As a teenager, he was a member of the communist youth group, then attended a military academy. He served as a military cadet in Angola and the former Soviet Union, he said.

Along the way, he became disillusioned.

As a cadet guarding leaders' homes around 1980, Fariñas said he saw they had what most Cubans lacked: nice cars and better food. He learned the island's top brass sometimes attended cockfights, which were supposed to be illegal.

"I saw there was a difference between what they said and what they do," he said sadly.

After military service, Fariñas returned to Cuba to study psychology. But his thesis on the re-education of minors was never circulated, he said, because it criticized the system for keeping violent and non-violent youth in the same jails.

Problems escalated after graduation when he went to work for a Havana hospital. As hospital union leader, he denounced managers for allowing donations of sheets and other basics to disappear. Fariñas said he was jailed and later fired. After the hospital administration was changed, he appealed to get his job back -- to no avail.

Frustrated, on March 6, 1997, Fariñas said he donned a placard in front of the hospital that read, "Down with Corruption, I'm on Hunger Strike." Within days, he was hospitalized and fed intravenously.

After four months, Fariñas said he was rehired, scoring a victory.

It was short-lived. He quickly was pushed to retire on disability.

Yet he learned the power of hunger strikes to prod change.

Since then, Fariñas has stopped eating to push a variety of causes during the past 10 years, from prison conditions to a phone for his mother's home. His longest hunger strike lasted 18 months, surviving in a state hospital on intravenous feedings.

The impact of the strikes is hard to measure. A whispered expression of solidarity from a hospital caregiver. Word that sympathizers abroad have stopped eating too. Only recently, he received the two strongest signs of international recognition: a human rights honor in Germany and a "cyber-dissident" award by Reporters Without Borders, based in Paris.

"The only way I find to fight is the hunger strike because it earns admiration both from those like me who resist and others who repress," said Fariñas. "And it moves international public opinion because it's an extreme way to press for rights."

Many Cuban dissidents agree with Fariñas that violence is easily quashed in their homeland, and they seek change peacefully. They admire Fariñas' courage but fear for his health.

"He's almost a heroic figure," said human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez in Havana.

During the seven-month hunger strike that ended Aug. 31, Fariñas said he lost 66 pounds. One of his lungs filled with blood, he said, and doctors had to break three ribs and operate to drain it. He was in a coma for five days.

Now, he is recuperating, but remains thin and weak. With continued physical therapy, he hopes to walk this month.

He has resumed work as an independent journalist, while also directing a social studies group and an independent library from his mother's home.

Fariñas said he worries that a permanent government under Raul Castro, now the acting leader, may loosen restrictions on businesses but bring greater political repression.

Even so, he vows not to give in, just as blacks in the United States including Martin Luther King did not waver in their struggle for civil rights.

"I want pluralism in Cuba," Fariñas said, "not only Internet access."