Cuban independent journalist Fabio Prieto Llorente, imprisoned since the "black spring" of 2003, on Jan. 28 started a hunger strike to protest the bad food served prisoners at the El Guayabo prison on the Isle of Youth Isle of Pines. Not only is the food bad, it is served on dirty trays, according to a report filed by independent journalist Tania Maceda Guerra.
Prieto has chosen to use one of the few weapons — his body — that Cuban political prisoners have to fight back against the Castro dictatorship and its agents. I do not advocate such protest by suicide, but that a prisoner feels compelled to take such a drastic measure is evidence of the cruelties they face every day and their determination to fight such evil.
Prieto knows the danger he potentially faces, for the gulag has already taken a terrible toll on his body. He suffers from a variety of ailments, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), hemorrhoids, hypertension and chronic duodenitis.
But he is not alone in his protest. Maceda reports that another prisoner, Francisco Rangel Sánchez, has joined Prieto with his own hunger strike.
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