Guillermo Fariñas

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Guillermo Fariñas (2014 in Havana)

Guillermo Fariñas Hernández (born January 3, 1962 in Santa Clara ) is a Cuban independent journalist and political dissident . He became known through numerous hunger strikes against the Cuban regime, first under Fidel Castro , later under his brother and successor Raúl , during whose tenure Fariñas was a political prisoner in prison for a total of eleven years .

The penultimate, 135-day hunger strike from February 24 to July 8, 2010, with which he wanted to protest against the death of Orlando Zapata , who also died on a hunger strike , and to secure the release of 26 sick political prisoners , attracted international attention .

In the same year, Guillermo Fariñas received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought for his services to human rights in Cuba .

biography

Origin and education

Guillermo Fariñas was born in Santa Clara, Cuban, in 1962. His parents were supporters of the Cuban Revolution . His father fought alongside Che Guevara in Congo in 1965, along with two brothers , his mother worked as a nurse. Fariña's most important male caregiver was his paternal grandfather, who, unlike his sons, was anti-communist.

Fariñas, who initially aspired to a career in basketball as a competitive athlete as a teenager , was sent to a cadet school by his father . There he began military training , in the course of which he took part in the Cuban military operation in Angola , where he worked in various special forces, was wounded several times and received numerous awards. As part of officer training, he began a specialization course in Tambov in what was then the Soviet Union , where he suffered permanent health damage as a result of an accident and therefore had to break off his military career in 1983. He then began studying psychology , which he completed in 1988. He then worked in a polyclinic and was also the local general secretary of the UJC communist youth organization . He was dismissed from both positions in 1989 after he criticized the shooting of general and Angola hero Arnaldo Ochoa for high treason at his workplace .

Prison sentences and political activity

Fariñas himself states in his autobiography that from this time on he became an opponent of the government around Fidel Castro. From 1993 he worked in the “Pedro Borrás” children's hospital in Havana , where he made his first public appearance when he met Fidel Castro in person in 1993 in the presence of international press representatives and asked him to keep his promise to reopen the hospital six months after it had been closed for renovation . Fariña's colleagues subsequently elected him general secretary of the (illegal) union of health professionals. In 1995 he reported the clinic management to the police for corruption and misappropriation of donations from the European Union. He was then arrested and later sentenced to prison for alleged possession of weapons, among other things. More prison sentences followed in the years that followed.

The Cuban party newspaper Granma said that Fariñas was sentenced to three years probation in 1995 after attacking a colleague in the hospital where he worked. He then made himself a victim of political persecution. In 2002 he was sentenced to five years and ten months in prison as a repeat offender after allegedly beating an old man with a club and seriously injuring him. However, Fariñas was released from prison in 2003 because of his poor health.

In 2003, Fariñas founded the small, independent news agency Cubanacán Press . In 2009 he founded the group “Foro Antitotalitario Unido” (United Anti-Totalitarian Forum, FANTU) in Santa Clara, and he was elected Secretary General. In February 2013, the FANTU, which is mainly active in the western half of Cuba, merged with the opposition organization “Unión Patriótica de Cuba” (UNPACU), which is strongly represented in the east of the country and whose name was taken over. In the new UNPACU, Fariñas took over the office of spokesman.

When Fariñas was first arrested in 1995, he began a series of hunger strikes. By October 2010 there should have been a total of 23. For example, in 2006, one of the longest, he wanted to achieve free access to the Internet for Cubans. However, the limited access of Cubans to the Internet with simultaneous censorship continues to this day. In 2006 he was awarded the Cyber ​​Freedom Prize by Reporters Without Borders . In the same year, awarded the human rights prize of the city of Weimar .

In November 2013, Fariñas and Berta Soler , spokeswoman for the Ladies in White , were received by US President Barack Obama for a talk about Cuba when he was in Florida for a day.

Hunger strike after Orlando Zapata's death

On February 24, 2010, the day after Orlando Zapata died from a hunger strike, Guillermo Fariñas began his 23rd hunger strike. According to an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País , the aim is, on the one hand, that the Cuban government pays a high political price for the death of Zapata, on the other hand, the immediate release of numerous political prisoners in poor health, and thirdly, if he should die himself, that the world saw that Cuba was letting its opposition die and that the Orlando Zapata case was not an isolated incident. An article appeared in the Cuban party newspaper Granma on March 8, 2010, according to which the state would not allow itself to be blackmailed by the counterrevolutionary Fariñas or a foreign press campaign controlled by the US interest group in Cuba , including the alleged crimes of Fariñas from the perspective of the Cuban State were enumerated. Similarly, in a televised speech at the closing of the UJC congress on April 4, 2010, President Raúl Castro referred to Fariña's convictions for common crimes and denied any responsibility for his possible death.

Due to his steadily deteriorating condition, Fariña was transferred to the university hospital in his hometown of Santa Clara. At the beginning of July 2010 Fariñas was in acute danger of death, whereupon another article was published in Granma, according to which the doctors would do everything possible to save Fariñas' life.

Following the mediation of the Catholic Church , led by Cardinal Jaime Ortega and the Spanish government, represented by Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos , the Cuban government promised the release of 52 political prisoners within four months on July 7th and the first five of them left their prisons Guillermo Fariñas ended his hunger strike, which was currently 135 days.

In mid-December 2010, in his absence, Fariñas was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought for his services to human rights in Cuba . The Cuban government had refused to give him permission to travel to Strasbourg for the award ceremony . Fariñas called on the European Union to maintain its critical stance towards Cuba and not to open diplomatic relations.

At the end of February 2011, Fariñas was jailed for 27 hours after shouting slogans from his rooftop reminding of Orlando Zapata.

Hunger strike after Juan Wilfredo Soto's death

From June 3 to 10, 2011, Fariñas was on hunger strike again. With the 24th protest action of this kind, he called for the punishment of those responsible for the police beating, who, in his opinion , triggered the death of his friend Juan Wilfredo Soto (like Fariñas member of the "United Anti-Totalitarian Forum") on May 7th, as well as the declared that the government would refrain from any future violent actions against peaceful opposition members. Fariñas had already announced on May 8 (and confirmed on May 19) that he would start a joint hunger strike with other opposition activists from July 26 if the government did not take action to clarify the police violence in Sotos by then, but decided in favor a move forward without supporters after the dissident and former political prisoner Jorge Luis Artiles Montiel broke off his hunger strike, which was linked to the same demands and started on May 9, on June 3 for personal reasons. Artiles' protest had largely received no international attention. The Cuban government responded to the action of the much more prominent Fariñas on June 4th via “Yohandry's Weblog”, a semi-official, pseudonymous blog from Havana, with the warning that Fariñas might not be able to do what (apart from acute conditions) during his hunger strike receive medical care in a hospital ward in the previous year. In addition, the blog claimed that unnamed experts were of the opinion that due to a lack of international media coverage, the action could be expected to be terminated after a few days. A worldwide support campaign by the human rights organization Amnesty International has been running since May 19, which also calls for an independent investigation into the circumstances of Soto's death. On June 6, the Cuban state website “Cubadebate” published a militant opinion article in which the hunger strike was presented as a phenomenon separate from “peace, security and everyday tranquility” in Cuba. Rather, it is a weapon in a "media war" against Cuba, for which, in addition to the "Mafia of Miami, New York and New Jersey" as the initiator, the European partners of the USA as supporters are not a shame, the German being Government was explicitly highlighted as one of the "unconditionally allied and subservient NATO governments" in the context of the Soto case. Washington is calling on its mercenaries to "commit suicide as a method of struggle" to produce martyrs in this media war. After numerous Cuban opposition members had urged him to do so, he broke off the hunger strike after a week on June 10, 2011, saying that he was doing this to prevent other former political prisoners from joining his action against his will, for which he did not Want to take responsibility.

Support for the Belarusian opposition

Fariñas also supports the Belarusian opposition and said: "The most important thing for a political prisoner is to be stronger than the prison guards. I have been imprisoned three times. For me, the question of pride is the medals I wear. It is important for you To understand prisoners that they are physically stronger than you because there are many of them, they have power and they have their laws, but psychologically you are stronger than any of them, than any prison guard - from private soldiers to generals and even presidents Lukashenko, because our strength is that we have our cause.

A very important thing for a political prisoner is never to lose the dignity, not to be presented, to always remain a rebel and to spread what is happening in the prisons about the prison regime. And God will always bless us.

Prices

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c "Hay momentos en la historia en que tiene que haber mártires". In: El País . March 2, 2010, accessed October 23, 2010 (Spanish).
  2. ↑ Hunger for freedom. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . October 21, 2010, accessed October 23, 2010 .
  3. ↑ a b Premio Sakharov 2010: Guillermo Fariñas debe poder recibir su reconocimiento en Estrasburgo el 15 de diciembre. (No longer available online.) In: Reporters Without Borders . October 21, 2010, archived from the original on September 26, 2013 ; Retrieved October 23, 2010 (Spanish). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / es.rsf.org
  4. ↑ a b c d e Autobiografía de Guillermo Fariñas Hernández. (PDF; 182 kB) (No longer available online.) In: cubanet.org. April 2010, archived from the original on June 2, 2010 ; Retrieved October 24, 2010 (Spanish). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cubanet.org
  5. ↑ Guillermo Fariñas: cuando la voluntad se transforma en alimento In: El Imparcial of July 5, 2010, accessed on June 4, 2011 (Spanish)
  6. ^ A b Alberto Núñez Betancourt: Cuba no acepta presiones ni chantajes. (No longer available online.) In: Granma . March 8, 2007, archived from the original on December 9, 2010 ; Retrieved October 29, 2010 (Spanish). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.granma.cu
  7. ^ André Scheer: EU is stubborn. In: young world . October 25, 2010. Retrieved October 29, 2010 .
  8. ↑ a b Cyber-freedom prize for 2006 awarded to Guillermo Fariñas of Cuba. In: Reporters Without Borders . December 13, 2006, accessed October 24, 2010 .
  9. ↑ Opponents in Cuba Hope to Build Dynamic Mass Organization,  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.asipress.us   in: Institute of American Studies, March 1, 2013, accessed June 17, 2013
  10. ↑ La salud del disidente Guillermo Fariñas, en huelga de hambre, se resiente. In: EFE in libertaddigital.com. March 1, 2010, accessed October 24, 2010 (Spanish).
  11. ↑ "Ready to go to extremes for freedom of expression" - Fariñas Hernández: Hunger strike as a weapon against state repression in Cuba. (No longer available online.) In: Amnesty International . July 20, 2007, archived from the original on June 17, 2010 ; Retrieved October 24, 2010 (Spanish). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / amnesty-meinungsfreiheit.de
  12. ↑ Juan O. Tamayo: 'Incredible night' as Obama meets Cuban dissidents in Miami. ( Memento of the original from November 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Miami Herald, November 8, 2013, accessed November 16, 2013  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.miamiherald.com
  13. ^ Raúl Castro: Cuba no teme a la mentira ni se arrodilla ante presiones speech before the IX. Congress of the Communist Youth Union UJC on April 4, 2010, in: Cubadebate of April 4, 2010, accessed on September 12, 2011 (Spanish)
  14. ↑ The struggle for life is our duty. (No longer available online.) In: Granma . March 8, 2007, archived from the original on December 16, 2010 ; Retrieved June 4, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.granma.cu
  15. ^ Dissident after hunger strike in mortal danger. In: The Standard . July 3, 2010, accessed October 24, 2010 .
  16. ↑ Fariñas abandona la huelga de hambre por la liberación de los 52 presos cubanos. In: El País . July 8, 2010, Retrieved October 24, 2010 (Spanish).
  17. ↑ http://www.igfm.de/fileadmin/igfm.de/pdf/Publikationen/Menschenrechte-2010.3-4-IGFM.pdf
  18. ↑ cf. Sakharov Prize for Cuban dissidents at dw-world.de, December 15, 2010 (accessed December 15, 2010)
  19. ↑ Cuban dissident Fariñas released. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . February 25, 2011, accessed February 28, 2011 .
  20. ↑ Guillermo Fariñas inicia su 24ª huelga de hambre In: Diario de Cuba of June 3, 2011, accessed on June 4, 2011 (Spanish)
  21. ↑ Fasting against repression: Cuban dissident on hunger strike In: NZZ Online from June 4, 2011, accessed on June 4, 2011
  22. ↑ Huelga de hambre masiva si gobierno no soluciona el caso Soto García ( Memento of the original from May 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Primavera Digital of May 20, 2011, accessed June 4, 2011 (Spanish)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.primaveradigital.org
  23. ↑ Responderán con huelga de hambre masiva al asesinato de Juan Wilfredo Soto García  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Martí Noticias of May 8, 2011, accessed via paraclito.net on December 11, 2012 (Spanish)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / paraclito.net  
  24. ↑ Fariñas inicia un ayuno para que se investigue la muerte de un disidente In: La Voz de Galicia of June 5, 2011, accessed on June 5, 2011 (Spanish)
  25. ↑ Llaman a fila a Fariñas para evitar debacle de la oposición en Cuba ( Memento of the original of June 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Yohandry's weblog of June 4, 2011, accessed June 4, 2011 (Spanish)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.yohandry.com
  26. ↑ Amnesty International: Death following alleged police assault in Cuba: Health professional action Action call of May 19, 2011, accessed on June 5, 2011 (English, Spanish)
  27. ↑ Buscando visas…, buscando un muerto In: Cubadebate from June 6, 2011, accessed on June 7, 2011 (Spanish)
  28. ↑ Knut Henkel: Number 24 in Latin @ rama (blog on taz.de) from June 9, 2011, accessed on June 11, 2011
  29. ↑ Tamayo: “El pueblo está perdiendo el miedo”  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: El Nuevo Herald of June 10, 2011, accessed June 11, 2011 (Spanish)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.elnuevoherald.com  
  30. ↑ Dissident Farinas ended hunger strike: Weakened In: Der Standard from June 11, 2011, accessed on June 11, 2011
  31. ↑ Fariñas depone su huelga de hambre In: Diario de Cuba of June 11, 2011, accessed on June 11, 2011 (Spanish)
  32. ↑ http://charter97.org/en/news/2013/6/20/71030/
personal data
SURNAME Fariñas, Guillermo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fariñas Hernández, Guillermo (full name); El Coco (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban psychologist and dissident
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH Santa Clara , Cuba