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HAVANA, November 4 (Reinaldo Cosano Alen / www.cubanet.org) - The blind
activist, Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva, imprisoned by the political police at the
Pedernales detention center in Holguin province, has been fasting since
September 4, wearing black clothes and shaving his head, moustache and beard in
protest for being unjustly jailed.
According to the blind activist's wife, Maritza Calderon, Gonzalez Leiva
began the protest exactly six months after detention.
"In this act of shaving and dressing in black, my husband was inspired
by Mordecai, the jewish biblical figure who dressed in sackcloth and ashes,
shaved himself and captured the attention of the queen Esther and succeeded in
stopping the king Ahasuerus from exterminating the Jews", Calderon point
out.
Mrs. Calderon revealed the psychiatrist at Pedernales, Dr. Idania Marquez,
asked him to stop fasting, warning him about health risks. He refused..
The lawyer Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva was detained on March 4 of this year
along with seven other activists for having carried out a peaceful protest in
the provincial hospital of Ciego de Avila, where they had taken an independent
journalist who was assaulted by police officers from the Interior Ministry. On
that day the independent journalists Juan Carlos Brizuela and Lexter Tellez
were also arrested as they were covering the story.
Maritza Calderon added that Gonzalez refuses to take antianxiety tablets
(meprobamate) prescribed by Dr. Marquez, because he considers them harmful to
the central nervous system.
"Juan Carlos no longer has access to the courtyard where he went to
pray and meditate. They have locked up the door which provided the only
ventilation in the cell since it has no windows. They also told him they would
confine another prisoner in that place., Mrs. Calderon said.
Versión
original en español
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