OneWorld.net (U.S.)

SAN FRANCISCO, June 10 (OneWorld) - The director of an independent Cuban news agency is in critical condition after more than four months on hunger strike.

Guillermo Farinas, who has refused food since the government took away his Internet connection, was still unconscious five days after emergency surgery to remove fluid from his left lung, according to the New York-based media watchdog group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

The head of an independent news agency called Cubanacan Press, Guillermo Farinas went on hunger strike January 31. He has been in the hospital for much of the time since then, receiving fluids and vitamins intravenously.

"We are shocked and appalled that Guillermo Farinas has become critically ill protesting the government's policy of depriving Cubans of access to the Internet, something which should be theirs by right," CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said in a statement.

© Committee to Protect Journalists / Cubanacán PressAccording to Farinas' mother who is a nurse, the journalist has suffered kidney failure twice since the beginning of the hunger strike and experienced a pneumothorax--a collection of air in the pleural cavity surrounding the lungs. He also developed a blood clot after bleeding into the pleural cavity, requiring him to undergo a minor surgery.

"I am ready to die," Mr. Farinas told another media watchdog group, Reporters Without Borders, in February. "Fidel knows my position," he said, referring to his demand that the Castro government end its ban on independent journalism and allow the Cuban public unrestricted use of the Internet.

Officials at the Cuban Mission to the United Nations in New York and the Cuban interests section of the Swiss Embassy in Washington (Cuba has no formal diplomatic relations with the United States) could not be reached for comment.

According to CPJ, Cuba has jailed 25 journalists, more than any other country except China. Many of them were picked up in a series of raids in March 2003, while world attention was focused on the invasion of Iraq. The Cuban government arrested at least 75 dissidents in the sweeps, including 29 journalists who were given sentences from between 14 and 27 years.

Havana claims the dissidents arrested were American spies, carrying out a policy of illegal intervention in Cuba officials say has been in effect throughout Fidel Castro's 47-year rule.

Larry Birns, director of the Washington, DC-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, blames the arrests on James Cason, who headed up the U.S. interests section in Havana from September 2002 to 2005. Birns told OneWorld Cason traveled across Cuba handing out short-wave radios, mimeograph machines, and money to human rights activists and journalists.

"These people were arrested and jailed not for expressing their opinion but for taking money from the United States government, a government that has repeatedly tried to assassinate Castro," he said.

In any case, Birns said, the journalists arrested aren't reporters in the way most Americans understand the term because the Cuban government does not permit an independent press.

"Some of these people who are self-designated journalists are not journalists," he said. "That's because there haven't been many opportunities for people to become journalists. You could write for Granma (the government newspaper) and be pro-government, but there's no such thing as an anti-government newspaper, radio station, or television station in Cuba."

Those interested in distributing reports free of government censorship resort to distributing pieces of paper to their neighbors, posting notices on telephone polls, and sending out e-mails to interested citizens.

CPJ says those methods were building toward a freer press when the Castro government cracked down in March 2003.

CPJ's Americas program coordinator, Carlos Lauria, added there is no proof that any of the dissidents arrested took money from the U.S. government.

"Two weeks after the detentions of the dissidents and journalists, they were tried summarily without any access to lawyers. The trial lasted just one day, they were behind closed doors and the Cuban government never provided any proof [of their alleged offenses]," Lauria said.

"They are saying that these people are spies, but this is ridiculous," he added. "They were jailed solely for doing their job as a journalist. This violates the most basic norms of international law, which gives everyone in the world the right to seek, receive, and impart information through the media."

CPJ is also alarmed by a report about the health of one of the jailed journalists, Jose Luis Garcia Paneque. The organization says his condition has worsened since his transfer in November from Havana's Combinado del Este prison to Las Mangas prison in Granma province. According to CPJ, he is suffering from severe intestinal problems and internal bleeding.

His wife told the rights group he is not receiving adequate medical care in the prison infirmary, and has been repeatedly mistreated by common criminals.

Garcia Paneque, director of the independent news agency Libertad, was sentenced in March 2003 to 24 years in prison. His weight has plummeted in jail, and his wife believes he is suffering from malnutrition. In November 2005, she requested medical parole but the authorities have not responded.