Young opponent maintains hunger strike in protest for the new attack position

The political prisoner Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez García would take about ten days on hunger strike in the kilo 5 and a half prison, of Pinar del Río, demanding that he be exempt from a position that he considers unfair.

«My son declared a hunger strike on May 28 in protest against the maneuver of the penitentiary and judicial authorities who want to process him in a new cause for a crime of attack,» said Martí News, Nilda García Fleitas, resident in the town of Herraura, in the Pinar del Río province.

«The pretext is an argument that my son had with an prison officer named Norges Martínez Rodríguez who behaved despoticly, both against him and me, during an activity that occurred on February 8 in which they allowed prisoners to see their relatives.»

That day the controls of the penitentiary establishment organized a party for the children of the inmates, an activity to which he went with his grandson García Fleitas.

At the end of the activity, the prison chiefs allowed the relatives to deliver the foods that brought the inmates, but did not happen with the political prisoner, which «supposedly» were seized.

Upon realizing, Manuel de Jesús claimed the officer, but the dispute was brief and without violence, according to the political prisoner himself in an audio to which Martí News had access.

According to his mother, the prison authorities transferred the inmate to a punishment cell, «dark and without conditions of any kind,» and stripped him of his right to sun.

Although the right to sun is not explicitly mentioned in the minimum rules of the United Nations for the treatment of inmates, access to sunlight is an implicit right, since its absence can negatively impact the physical and mental health of inmates.

In 2016, Rodríguez García, coordinator of the Cuba initiative first in his town, was sentenced to eight years of deprivation of liberty for contempt, attack, sexual outrage and defamation of institutions and organizations, as well as the heroes and martyrs. After serving more than seven years in prison, he was released under probation that months later revoked him.