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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 25, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Still going strong.
That's the message that four Cuba solidarity activists- the Rev. Lucius Walker, Jim Clifford, Lisa Valenti, and Brian Rohatyn-are sending as they enter the ninth week of their hunger strike. The members of IFCO/Pastors for Peace are demanding the release of 400 medical computers that the U.S. Treasury Department seized en route to Cuba.
Their sacrifice has become a lightning rod for actions against the 35-year-old U.S. blockade of Cuba.
On April 15, as thousands of people filed into New York's main post office to mail their tax returns, scores of opponents of the blockade turned up to protest tax dollars going to fund the U.S. government's blockade of Cuba.
Reporters and cameras were massed in the post office for the story of late tax filers. So the friends of Cuba took their protest into the building.
Once inside, they unfurled a giant banner. Police arrested six activists-including three Cuban-Americans and the Rev. Luis Barrios of St. Mary's Church in Harlem-for refusing to leave the building.
Similar demonstrations took place in three other cities.
Walker, Pastors for Peace executive director, said, "The U.S. government has spent more than a million tax dollars to prevent U.S. and Canadian volunteers from fulfilling their mission to send donated humanitarian aid to churches in Cuba."
Treasury cops seized the computers on Feb. 21 as a Pastors for Peace "friendshipment caravan" attempted to bring humanitarian aid to Cuba through Mexico. The computers were destined to be part of the Cuban Infomed system, a network linking Cuban hospitals and universities with rural health clinics.
Cuba's socialist government has developed one of the most advanced health-care systems in the developing world. Besides providing Cubans with free basic care-resulting in the lowest infant-mortality rate in Latin America-Cuban hospitals have provided health care to tens of thousands of victims of the Chernobyl nuclear accident and many thousands of African war veterans.
Cubans pride themselves on not having shut a single hospital or clinic, despite the enormous difficulties following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the tightening of the U.S. blockade.
"The Fast for Life provides a timely and dramatic opportunity for the entire Cuba solidarity movement to carry the struggle against the blockade to a new level, rather than retreat in the face of seemingly insurmountable advances by the right wing," Pastors for Peace noted in an April 11 news release.
The fast has brought support from a wide stratum of people. Dennis Rivera of the National Health and Human Service Employees Union, writer Alice Walker, and film maker Sydney Pollack have all sent their support.
Internationally, the Revolutionary Democratic Party of Mexico, former Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega of the Sandinistas, and several members of Canada's parliament have expressed solidarity with the fast. European non-governmental organizations have donated over 1,000 computers to Cuba in response to the U.S. seizure of the Pastors for Peace shipment.
Pastors for Peace activists also announced that they had received a leaked document from the U.S. government detailing a secret government operation to confront the first border crossing. The group is currently the target of a U.S. grand jury investigation. A federal subpoena demands information on many Cuba solidarity activists and groups.
Responding to concerns for the fasters' health, Clifford said, "We hope that everyone is spending 10 times as much energy working against the embargo as they are worrying about us."
Walker told concerned supporters: "When workers go out on strike, you don't ask them to go back to work. You tell management to negotiate in good faith."
The fasters are calling on all supporters to contact President Bill Clinton and members of Congress and demand the government release the humanitarian aid. The Treasury Department and U.S. Customs Service, inundated with calls, were forced to install a special line specifically for responding to these calls.
Workers at the Southern Children's Hospital in Cuba have also sent a message of support to the fasters: "We wish you health and strength to keep going until the final victory, and be completely sure that we are with you, together as one."
Activists are also planning a demonstration on April 19 in Washington. For further information, supporters can call Pastors for Peace at (202) 544-3825, or send an e-mail message to p4p@igc.apc.com.
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(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@wwpublish.com. For subscription info send message to: ww-info@wwpublish.com. Web: http://www.workers.org)