Hunger strikes by Cuban political prisoners sadden me, for protest by suicide is no way to defeat the dictatorship. Life is much more valuable than that, and the struggle for Cuban liberty needs these brave men and women to be alive and fighting.
But I do not condemn the condemned, because for many prisoners, all they have to give, the only thing with which they have to protest, is their lives. And by putting themselves at risk to protest the regime, they demonstrate the extent of their desperation, and of their courage.
Benito Ortega Suárez and Arcelio López Rojas, both inmates in a prison in Santa Clara, are the latest political prisoners to resort to hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their confinement, according to a dispatch posted at Payo Libre.
Via telephone, López told independent journalist Idania Yanes Contreras that he started the hunger strike because he has been confined to a maximum security cell for more than year, preventing him from seeing his family and receiving adequate time in the sunlight.
Ortega is seeking a transfer to a prison in Matanzas, to be closer to his ailing mother, according to Yanes' report.
Ortega was returned to prison earlier this year, to complete the remaining 30 months of an 11-year prison term for allegedly assaulting a police officer. López, who formerly lived in the United States, was arrested last year and charged with illegal entry into Cuba. Whether his case had been adjudicated by the Cuban courts could not be determined.
For all their apparent futility, hunger strikes sometimes do help prisoners receive some concessions from their captors, if only to spare the dictatorship the embarrassment of having a prisoner die on them. Hopefully, that, too will be the case for Ortega and López.
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