A group of human rights activists and Cuban dissidents have sent the Catholic Church in Cuba a letter asking them to intervene for Fariñas who has been on a hunger strike for almost five months.
The letter informs the Church the reasons of his hunger strike – that he is denied the right to access the Internet for political reasons – and calls on the Church to prevent the death of this 42 year old psychologist and independent journalist.
El Nuevo Herald has more in Spanish.
Venti: I think the headline word you want is ‘intervene’ not ‘interfere.’
That’s it!!! Thank you, I’m having an English challenged morning
But your news judgment is excellent, it’s a great item!
I hope that the groups that asked the Cuban church to intervene on behalf of Farin~a’s don’t hold their breath! With Cardinal Jaime Ortega’s spineless record vis-a-vis human rights in Cuba, it is very unlikely that he will do anything.
In 1966, Franciscan priest Miguel Angel Loredo was sentenced to 15 years in a Castro prison on a trumped up charge of hiding a fugitive. He served more than a decade in jail, where he was beaten, starved, and kept in solitary confinement. The Cuban Catholic Church never publicly denounced his situation. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that they will speak out on behalf of Fariñas.
Some Cuban priests did join Castro’s guerrillas during the Sierra Maestra campaign.
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/rebel-priests.htm
Ytet, the Cuban Catholic Church does not have the same activist record as their counterparts in Poland, Chile and El Salvador.
Protestant and Jewish religious leaders also maintain the same silence when it comes to human rights in Cuba.