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Imprisoned journalist on
hunger strike
Committee
to Protect Journalists.
New York, August 24, 2005-The Committee
to Protect Journalists is deeply worried
about the health of imprisoned journalist
Adolfo Fernández Saínz, who
began a hunger strike last week to protest
the mistreatment of another imprisoned dissident.
Fernández Saínz began the
strike on Friday, after learning that imprisoned
dissident Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique had been
beaten by a prison officer on August 17
and later placed in a punishment cell, according
to his daughter, Joana Fernández
Núñez. He will continue his
hunger strike until Ramos Lauzurique is
taken out of the punishment cell, she said.
Fernández Saínz, 57, one
of 24 independent Cuban journalists now
imprisoned, is currently at the Holguín
Provincial Prison in eastern Holguín
Province, hundreds of miles from his home
in Havana. His wife is entitled to visit
three times per year; she and other family
members may visit another four times per
year.
A journalist with the independent news
agency Patria, Fernández Saínz
was sentenced to 15 years in prison in April
2003 for committing acts "aimed at
subverting the internal order of the nation
and destroying its political, economic,
and social system." This is his fourth
hunger strike to demand adequate food and
medicine or to protest the mistreatment
of other imprisoned journalists or dissidents.
Fernández Saínz suffers from
several ailments and has lost considerable
weight, his family has said. His wife, Julia
Núñez Pacheco, told CPJ in
April that he was 25 pounds below his normal
weight. In December 2004, a medical checkup
revealed that he had pulmonary emphysema,
hiatal hernia, high blood pressure, and
a small kidney cyst, Núñez
Pacheco said.
"We are very worried about the health
of our colleague, Adolfo Fernández
Saínz, who has been imprisoned for
almost two and a half years solely for exercising
his right to express his views," CPJ
Executive Director Ann Cooper said. "We
renew our calls on the Cuban government
to release all imprisoned journalists immediately
and unconditionally."
CPJ is a New York-based, independent, nonprofit
organization that works to safeguard press
freedom around the world.
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