José Daniel Ferrer And Nelva Ortega Declare a Hunger Strike As a Protest for the Police Siege on the UNPACU Headquarters

José Daniel Ferrer leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba and Dr. Nelva Ortega Tamayo started a hunger strike on January 14, 2021 in protest for the 6 month police siege of their home and also the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Cuba located in Altamira, Santiago de Cuba.

José Daniel denounced how the regime stubbornly insist on preventing (through food confiscation-theft) UNPACU from carrying out their social and community role consisting providing food and medicine for the elderly and the sick in their community and stopping them from exercising their fundamental human rights as peaceful pro democracy defenders.

According to the Observatorio Cubano por los Derechos Humanos in 2020 there were 1,647 forced home arrests and raids on pro democracy and human rights activists to prevent them from exercising their fundamental human rights to free. Forcing dissidents to be confined in their homes constitutes according to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention an arbitrary arrest as it is imposed to restrict the freedom of movement and to prevent activists from exercising their fundamental rights to articles 7, 13, 14, 18 19, 20 and 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In 2020 human rights defenders in Cuba staged numerous hunger strikes as a last resort method to defend their fundamental rights. Here is a referent to some of the most recent and known cases but there are more.

On August 11, Yósvany Aróstegui Armentero died after a 40 days hunger strike in Kilo 8 Prison´s hospital in Camagüey. He protested over the fabricated charges laid against him and wrongful imprisonment. Voices in Cuba and abroad condemned Armentero’s death including the Center for a Free Cuba that denounced the case to international human rights organizations and demanded an independent investigation into his death. Civil society in Cuba also mobilized in a campaign initiated by artivist Tania Brugera called “Chorus of Voices” (#CoroPresosPoliticos) in which people read in social media the name of all political prisoners in Cuba as a way to make them visible to the international community .

Roilán Álvarez Rénsoler, an activist with the Patriotic Union of Cuba staged a 30 days hunger strike over wrongful imprisonment and for the “inhumane” conditions he was kept in his prison cell in the Malverde Prison in Santiago de Cuba where he denounced being confined to a cell “naked, in cold temperatures and subjected to psychological and verbal abuse.” He was released on December 5 due to an international campaign for his release.

Also in November, 2020 artist/activist (one of the most visible face of the San Isidro Movement), Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara led a hunger and thirst strike and later a hunger strike for several days to demand the release of rapper and Human Rights activist Denis Solís wrongfully imprisoned in retaliation for his membership in the San Isidro movement and public protest in support of the Cubadecide citizen initiative. Whereas Otero ended his hunger strike, his civic initiative led to a nation wide movement of solidarity and to the largest public demonstration of artists in intellectuals in decades. On November 27, 2020 protesters gathered in front of the Ministry of Culture in Habana in solidarity with Otero Alcántara, Solís and to condemn state security repression and harassment unleashed by the regime against dissident artists and Cubans who think different .