Hunger strikes are deplorable because taken to the extreme, they end with death.
There is nothing noble about protest by suicide, no matter how just the cause.
But in the Cuban gulag, a hunger strike often is the only form of protest available to a political prisoner. It is their only weapon.
Two political prisoners who recently put themselves on the front lines of the continuing struggle against the dictatorship, by starting hunger strikes, are Lorenzo García Rodríguez and Randy Cabrera Mayor, according to stories posted at Payo Libre.
Cabrera, 36, started his protest on Feb. 28 to protest the harsh treatment he has received from guards at the Boniato prison since mid-January, according to a story by journalist Pedro Martinez Machado. Marianis Rodríguez Peña told Martinez that her husband was placed in the prison's "hall of death," where earlier this month guards beat him with baseball bats.
Cabrera, imprisoned since October 1996, is serving a 16-year sentence for "illegal exit" from the country and "evasion."
García also is protesting his treatment by jailers. He started a hunger strike March 16, after his wife and mother were denied permission to visit him at the Cuba Sí prison in Holguin.
García said he will continue his protest until he is released from prison, according to a story by journalist Liannis Meriño Aguilera.
García, who is president of the Claridad Human Rights Movement, in late 2006 was sentenced to one year in prison for "illicit economic activity."
Please remember Cabrera and García as they put their lives on the line for freedom.
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