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Three
jailed journalists on hunger strike
Reporters
Without Borders. 25 august 2003.
Reporters Without Borders expressed great concern
today at the plight of three imprisoned independent
journalists - Mario Enrique Mayo, Adolfo Fernández
Sainz and Ivan Hernández Carillo - who
have been on hunger-strike for the past 10 days
in the town of Holguin (eastern Cuba). They are
demanding proper food and medicine for prisoners
who have serious illnesses.
"Most jailed independent journalists in
Cuba, especially Mayo, are being held in bad conditions
that gravely endanger their lives," it said.
"Their transfer to prisons hundreds of kilometres
from their families exposes them even more to
illness and lack of food." It called for
the release for "humanitarian reasons"
of Mayo and other journalists who were ill
Mayo, head of the Félix Varela news agency,
and Fernández Sainz and Hernández
Carillo, both of the Pátria news agency,
stopped eating on 15 August, along with four other
political prisoners in Holguin.
The hunger-strike was launched by Mayo after
prison authorities refused to allow his wife,
Maydelín Guerra Álvarez, to give
him a box of medicine and special food to help
his high blood pressure and haemorrhoids. He said
he would stop eating until he was given food suitable
for his condition (a request the authorities refused)
and he was immediately backed by other political
prisoners. Unconfirmed reports said he and Fernández
Sainz were transferred to the prison clinic soon
after they began the strike and were in a very
poor way.
Blanca Reyes, wife of jailed journalist and poet
Raúl Rivero, told Reporters Without Borders
on 4 August she was very worried about her husband's
conditions of detention and that he had lost 40
pounds (18 kg) since his arrest on 20 March. She
said she had been able to speak to him by phone
on 31 July.
Reporters Without Borders defends
imprisoned journalists and press freedom throughout
the world, as well as the right to inform the
public and to be informed, in accordance with
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. Reporters Without Borders has nine national
sections (in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany,
Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United
Kingdom), representatives in Abidjan, Bangkok,
Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Montreal, Moscow, Nairobi,
New York, Tokyo and Washington and more than a
hundred correspondents worldwide.
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