Weak from fast, dissident fights on in Cuba
By Doreen Hemlock
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
SANTA CLARA, Cuba - After a seven-month hunger strike in a bid to seek
Internet access for Cubans, the independent journalist still has no
direct access to the World Wide Web.
Maybe worse, few Cubans know Guillermo Farinas' name. Even fewer know
about his protest, or that this time, he nearly died.
Still, the 44-year-old dissident is undeterred. This strike, one of 20
he's held in the past decade, gained international attention.
``The Cuban government controls the media inside the country, but it
can't control the media outside,'' said Farinas, from his mother's home
in the provincial capital of Santa Clara, nearly 200 miles from Havana.
He is recuperating, using a wheelchair, unable to walk because of the
muscle he lost during the fast.
A psychologist by training, Farinas has repeatedly stopped eating and
drinking to express his dissent with Cuba's communist government and to
appeal for democracy. The peaceful protests spark solidarity within the
country and worldwide, he said.
Farinas said he launched his most recent strike Jan. 31, 2006, after the
government denied Cubans access to the one Internet cafe in Santa Clara.
Fellow independent journalists had filed an e-mail report from the cafe,
claiming authorities depleted the local blood bank to ship blood to
Pakistan with Cuban medical teams. Without the cafe, Farinas and his
colleagues can only phone and fax reports abroad, delaying publication.
A recent U.N. report found Cuba had the lowest Internet usage rate in
the Americas and among the lowest worldwide: Fewer than one in 50
residents. The Cuban government limits most Cubans only to e-mail
accounts or access to a controlled Cuban intranet, denying the World
Wide Web to most.
Farinas said he did not set out to clash with Cuba's government. As a
teenager, he was a member of the communist youth group, then attended a
military academy. He served as a military cadet in Angola and the former
Soviet Union, he said.
Along the way, he became disillusioned.
As a cadet guarding leaders' homes around 1980, Farinas said he saw they
had what most Cubans lacked: nice cars and better food. He learned the
island's top brass sometimes attended cockfights, which were supposed to
be illegal.
``I saw there was a difference between what they said and what they
do,'' he said sadly.
After military service, Farinas returned to Cuba to study psychology.
But his thesis on the re-education of minors was never circulated, he
said, because it criticized the system for keeping violent and
non-violent youth in the same jails.
Problems escalated after graduation when he went to work for a Havana
hospital. As hospital union leader, he denounced managers for allowing
donations of sheets and other basics to disappear. Farinas said he was
jailed and later fired. After the hospital administration was changed,
he appealed to get his job back -- to no avail.
Frustrated, on March 6, 1997, Farinas said he donned a placard in front
of the hospital that read, ``Down with Corruption, I'm on Hunger
Strike.'' Within days, he was hospitalized and fed intravenously.
After four months, Farinas said he was rehired, scoring a victory.
It was short-lived. He quickly was pushed to retire on disability.
Yet he learned the power of hunger strikes to prod change.
Since then, Farinas has stopped eating to push a variety of causes
during the past 10 years, from prison conditions to a phone for his
mother's home. His longest hunger strike lasted 18 months, surviving in
a state hospital on intravenous feedings.
The impact of the strikes is hard to measure. A whispered expression of
solidarity from a hospital caregiver. Word that sympathizers abroad have
stopped eating, too. Only recently, he received the two strongest signs
of international recognition: a human rights honor in Germany and a
``cyber-dissident'' award by Reporters Without Borders, based in Paris.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/16695074.htm
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