Héctor Julio Cedeño Negrin, a native of Banes, Holguin will be sixty years old in three months. Cedeño Negrin declared a hunger strike on Tuesday February 5, on being arbitrarily arrested while taking photographs of police abuse in Havana, where he has lived for more than five decades.
Cedeño Negrin told Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez of Hablemos Press that he feels weak and has some dizziness. “An officer of the political police officer came to see me in the cell, but no one else has communicated to me about my arrest. It is a small cell of 9’ x 12’,” he told the news agency, adding that he continues not to take food or water.
The freelance writer has repeatedly denounced abuses of the Ladies in White, human rights activists and the general public, specifically in the district of Jesus Maria, a neighborhood with difficult living conditions in Habana Vieja.
Cedeño Negrin is not one of the better known independent journalists from the Cuban alternative press, for this reason it is necessary to make an urgent call the international organizations responsible for ensuring freedom of the press and protecting internal dissidents and regime opponents. Cedeño Negrin has also been arrested when he went to show solidarity with his brothers in the struggle at the times of arrests, beatings or hunger strikes.
This is the time to be with him in the defense of his rights.
February 12 2013
