Cuban Activist Tomas Nunez Magdariaga Rejects Serums That Keep Him Alive

Tomás Núñez Magdariaga remains in the hospital of Santiago de Cuba and is hardly allowed to receive visits from relatives.

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 12 October 2018 — Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu) activist Tomás Núñez Magdariaga, on a hunger strike to denounce his sentence of one year in prison, for several days has rejected the serums necessary to keep him alive, according to his brother Óscar Núñez, who visited him on Tuesday.

Núñez Magdariaga is in the prison ward of Juan Bruno Zayas Hospital (Santiago de Cuba), where he was able to see his brother for a few minutes. On the other hand, the authorities did not allow Unpacu activist Yenisey Jiménez to visit.

“I saw him in very bad shape, he said he would not eat if he was not freed and that he is unjustly imprisoned and they were humiliating him,” the brother told 14ymedio on Tuesday. Oscar Núñez is on his way to the capital of the island to take several efforts legal issues related to the case.

“I’m crazy to get to Havana to go to the prosecutor’s office because in Santiago they told me that Tomás’s file had been sent there and I’m going to look for an answer,” he said. Currently, as he was informed in the hospital, the case was in the hands of the Attorney General of the Republic, who was reviewing it and who could make a decision on the sentence at any time.

The activist was accused of “threatening” an agent of the political police, but the agent later retracted and claimed that he was blackmailed by State Security to accuse Núñez Magdariaga in exchange for a job and housing.

On Wednesday, Yenisei Jiménez, also an Unpacu activist, returned to the hospital with the intention of personally speaking with Núñez Magdariaga, but was not allowed to see him because, as they explained to him, they “could no longer give out any information about the activist.” The nurse in the prison ward informed him that he again refused to be treated by the doctor and put on serums. “He does not want anyone to touch him,” she told Jiménez.

The archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, Dionisio García Ibáñez, visited the activist last weekend and, according to what Unpacu member Carlos Amel Oliva reported to this newspaper, the archbiship was told that Núñez Magdariaga “would be released in a couple of days because the case [against him] did not hold up.”

“It’s been four days or five days and nothing,” said Amel Oliva.

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