Distributed by The Cuba Free Press Project.

Villa Clara, December 15, 1997, CNP

More denunciations from Marilis Blasquez Aparicio, President of the Hunger Striker's Support Group, Pro Human Rights Party in Villa Clara.

Last November 30, 1997, several guards at the Las Grimas prison, located in Placetas, Villa Clara, approached several common prisoners to provoke political prisoner Jose Manuel Llera Benitez, with the promise of passes as a reward. This offer was turned down by the inmates. Llera Benitez, one of the hunger strikers for the Pro Human Rights Party in Villa Clara, who was unjustly sentenced to 18 months in jail, is in very poor health, with pain in the joints, vomits, and faint spells.

Blasquez Aparicio adds that last December 2, the doctor in charge of wing 2 at the provincial hospital in Santa Clara, a man by the name of Elvis Lopez, went to the sick bed to another hunger striker, Jose Alvarado, and started talking to the sick man in glowing terms about the government, to which Alvarado replied that, as a doctor, he was to limit himself to doing his job and demanded respect for his differing views. The next day Alvarado was released from the hospital, something which, due to his weak condition because of the loss of more than 40 pounds due to the hunger strike, is very premature.

Reported by Hector Trujillo Pis, Democratic Solidarity Party. Translation