From our Bureau of Valiant but Potentially Lethal Quixotic Gestures
He is not as well known as other dissidents, so his story hasn’t been receiving much attention until the past few days. But Walfrido Rodríguez Piloto has been on hunger strike for 27 days. He was sentenced to ten years in prison for taking part in last year’s July 11 protests and is trying to attract attention to this injustice.
Fearing that he is near death, his brother has now given permission to prison authorities to force feed him. Some try to flee by boat, some try to flee by plane and a trek to the Mexico/U.S. border. Some try to flee by killing themselves slowly.
One more item to the infinite list of accomplishments racked up by the so-called “Revolution”. . . Vamos bien!
Loosely translated from Marti Noticias
Political prisoner Walfrido Rodríguez Piloto had to be transferred to the Prison Ward of the National Hospital in the Havana municipality of Boyeros, because his life is at risk due to the hunger strike he has been on since July 9 demanding his freedom.
“I am here in the hospital where my brother was brought in very badly on Wednesday and he refuses medical care. They let me watch it for five minutes. I’m trying to get him to stop the strike, which isn’t going to solve anything by dying. He is very skinny, he can hardly speak anymore, he is very weak ”, his sister, Marly Sonia Rodríguez Piloto, explained to Radio Televisión Martí.
“The doctors told me that if he refuses, they can’t do anything, that I have to give consent. And I gave it to him because I am very afraid that my brother will die on me.”
Forced intravenous feeding of hunger strikers is legal on the island, with the approval of relatives of the strikers.
The opponent sentenced to 10 years in prison for his participation in the July 11 protests in the Havana neighborhood of El Palenque de La Lisa, considers that his sanction is disproportionate and unfair.
The hunger strike becomes a political struggle challenging the limits that the human body can withstand in the face of the impassiveness of the authorities whose attention is being asked with the protest.
In reference to the hunger strike, the Cuban government has assured, in the official press, that it does not give in to “pressure and blackmail”
Continue reading HERE in Spanish