Three jailed journalists on hunger-strike

Reporters Without Borders expressed great concern today at the plight of three imprisoned independent journalists - Mario Enrique Mayo, Adolfo Fernández Sainz and Ivan Hernández Carillo - who have been on hunger-strike for the past 10 days in the town of Holguin (eastern Cuba). They are demanding proper food and medicine for prisoners who have serious illnesses. "Most jailed independent journalists in Cuba, especially Mayo, are being held in bad conditions that gravely endanger their lives," it said. "Their transfer to prisons hundreds of kilometres from their families exposes them even more to illness and lack of food." It called for the release for "humanitarian reasons" of Mayo and other journalists who were ill Mayo, head of the Félix Varela news agency, and Fernández Sainz and Hernández Carillo, both of the Pátria news agency, stopped eating on 15 August, along with four other political prisoners in Holguin. The hunger-strike was launched by Mayo after prison authorities refused to allow his wife, Maydelín Guerra Álvarez, to give him a box of medicine and special food to help his high blood pressure and haemorrhoids. He said he would stop eating until he was given food suitable for his condition (a request the authorities refused) and he was immediately backed by other political prisoners. Unconfirmed reports said he and Fernández Sainz were transferred to the prison clinic soon after they began the strike and were in a very poor way. Blanca Reyes, wife of jailed journalist and poet Raúl Rivero, told Reporters Without Borders on 4 August she was very worried about her husband's conditions of detention and that he had lost 40 pounds (18 kg) since his arrest on 20 March. She said she had been able to speak to him by phone on 31 July.