Cuban journalist goes on hunger and thirst strike in communist prison

Citizen journalist Esteban Rodriguez, imprisoned since an April 30 demonstration on Obispo Street in Havana, went on a hunger and thirst strike on Wednesday, October 20, to demand his release from the communist prison.

The ADN Cuba reporter said on an interview from prison: "I have not eaten anything for two days and today I am starting to stop drinking water as well. My strike is one of hunger and thirst".

"They are violating all my rights. I have not committed any crime to be here in prison," Rodriguez denounced in a telephone call.

"I feel a little weak. It is the second strike I am doing (...), but this time I am going all the way. I am going all the way with this, even if it is a matter of death", said the reporter who is also a member of the San Isidro Movement (MSI in spanish, a group of artists demanding free speech in Cuba and the respect of human rights.

Rodriguez explained that his lawyer had informed him that "the punishment against him is from three months to one year". I has already been in prison for six months, which means that he is "over the minimum sanction they would give me". I am already serving a sanction without having gone to court", denounced the journalist.

Rodriguez sent a message through ADN Cuba: "I ask everyone to support me, to be with me and give me strength. I ask you to echo what I am saying: I am standing up and going head-on against the dictatorship. I would rather die than continue to comply with the will of a nefarious regime, which simply tramples on the people of Cuba".

Recently, journalist Héctor Luis Valdés, collaborator of ADN Cuba, received a call from Rodríguez who told him that "he will not stop fighting for what is right and defending the total freedom of our land".

Valdés recalled in a Facebook post that the young MSI member has been "unjustly imprisoned for almost six months in the maximum security prison of Combinado del Este, in East Havana, under the alleged crime of public disorder".

Esteban Rodriguez lawyer "has presented two changes of measure and the Prosecutor's Office has denied it on both times", pointed out Valdés. He added that "he was infected with Covid-19 on more than one occasion, something which frightened him very much, given his preconditions of hypertension and bronchial asthma".

Last April 30, Esteban Rodriguez and a group of activists and independent journalists tried to reach the MSI headquarters in Old Havana, where artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara was surrounded by the political police and on hunger and thirst strike.

Faced with the resistance of the military forces to allow them access to the house at 955 Damas Street, Rodriguez and others sat down with their hands clasped and peacefully protested in a small park at Obispo and Aguacate Streets.

Images of the events show how a plainclothes political police agent applied strangulation techniques to reduce Rodriguez and prevent him from demonstrating against the abuses.