Cuba says it will not be “blackmailed” by a dissident journalist who is on hunger strike to seek the release of ailing political prisoners.

Guillermo Farinas, 48, began his action after Orlando Zapata Tamayo died while on hunger strike in jail.

Communist Party newspaper Granma, which reflects government policy, said it would not bow to pressure.

It said Western media were “calling attention to a prefabricated lie” by reporting his case.
“Cuba, which has demonstrated many times its respect for human life and dignity, will not accept pressure or blackmail,” the newspaper said.

Mr Farinas says he will continue to refuse food and water until the Cuban authorities release the country’s 26 most vulnerable and ailing political prisoners.

He has said he is not seeking the overthrow of the government or greater freedom of expression in the country.

“I say to them – either they free the 26 political prisoners who are sickest, or nothing. I am going to stick to my position to the end,” he told reporters.

Some 43 Cuban political prisoners released a statement in support of his protest, saying they were “profoundly touched” by his sacrifice.

But Granma said Mr Farinas was “an agent in the service of the United States”, Cuba’s foe and added: “It is not medicine that must resolve a problem created with the intent to discredit our political system but the patient himself and the stateless people, foreign diplomats and the media who manipulate him”.

Mr Farinas began his strike on 24 February, a day after Zapata died following an 85-day hunger strike to protest at prison conditions.

The case of Zapata, whom human rights campaign group Amnesty International declared a prisoner of conscience, drew widespread international condemnation and calls for the release of all Cuba’s detained political dissidents.

His death marked the first time in nearly 40 years that a Cuban activist had starved himself to death to protest against government abuses.

Cuba’s illegal but tolerated Human Rights Commission says there are about 200 political prisoners still held in Cuba, about one-third less than when Raul Castro took over as president from his brother Fidel.

The 48-year-old psychologist and freelance writer stopped eating and taking liquids on February 24, a day after Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo died from an 85-day hunger strike and became a martyr for the Cuban opposition.

Farinas vowed that Zapata’s death, which Cuban President Raul Castro said he regretted, would not be in vain and undertook his own hunger strike to demand freedom for 26 political prisoners said to be in bad health in the Communist-ruled island’s jails.

“Plain and simple, we want to say that if Raul regretted the death of Zapata, it’s normal that he would release them as a gesture of goodwill so he doesn’t have to regret any others,” Farinas told Reuters at his modest home in Santa Clara, 168 miles east of Havana.

Zapata’s death triggered widespread international condemnation of Cuba’s government, with the United States and Europe calling on it to release its estimated 200 political prisoners. Havana blamed the United States, which it said supported dissidents to try to undermine its socialist system.

Analysts said Zapata’s hunger strike death likely killed any near-term hopes for improved relations between Havana and the United States and the European Union.

Farinas, who says he has served time in jail for his dissident activities, is on his 23rd hunger strike — all with a common goal of obtaining change in one form or another in Cuba, he said.

His longest was 18 months. Another lasted eight months, centered on a demand for access to the Internet, which is limited in Cuba. The other hunger strikes ended without much success but there is no turning back from this one, Farinas said.

“I am ready in this hunger strike to go to the ultimate consequences, including my death,” he said.

“If in the end they let me die, it will show that political murder in Cuba forms part of the government’s essence from 1959 to now,” he said. 1959 was the date of Fidel Castro’s Revolution, which subsequently installed communism in Cuba.

Cuba has tried to defuse the criticism over Zapata’s death by making the case that he was a common criminal who became a political dissident because of “material advantages” bestowed on the opposition by foreign critics of the island’s communist government, including the United States.

Havana also said he received good medical treatment but reached a point where he could not be saved.

Raul Castro blamed the United States for Zapata’s death on the grounds that it was the result of a long U.S. campaign to topple communist rule in Cuba.

Cuba views dissidents as U.S.-hired subversives, calling them “mercenaries” and “traitors.”

Farinas said he was receiving no aid from abroad during his hunger strike but regularly gives interviews by telephone to international media, including U.S.-funded Radio Marti, whose broadcasts in Spanish to Cuba are jammed by the government.

He said he was hoping his hunger strike rallied international support for his cause. “What we cannot do is leave our brothers to be so treacherously murdered,” he said.

He insisted this could end easily if the government wanted. “If they release those political prisoners, I stop my strike,” he said.