THE EUROPEAN parliament yesterday awarded its prestigious Sakharov human rights prize to a Cuban dissident who almost died on a 135-day hunger strike earlier this year.
The decision to honour Guillermo Farinas, a psychologist and journalist who has spent more than 11 years in prison and staged more than 20 hunger strikes, comes amid attempts by Spain to normalise relations between Cuba and the EU.
“The civilised world, the European parliament, is sending a message to the Cuban governing class that it’s time for democracy and freedom of thought and expression . . . an end to the dictatorship,” Mr Farinas told the AFP news agency from his home in Cuba after the award was announced.
Mr Farinas, who ended his most recent hunger strike in July after Havana agreed to release 52 political prisoners, is the third Cuban nominee to receive the prize, named after the late Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov.
In 2002 political activist Oswaldo Paya was honoured by MEPs. Three years later, Las Damas de Blanco (the Ladies in White) a group of women whose husbands are imprisoned in Cuba, were awarded the prize. The latter decision prompted Fidel Castro to criticise the European parliament, and the women were not permitted to travel to collect their award.
Announcing the winner yesterday, president of the parliament Jerzy Buzek said he hoped that Mr Farinas and Las Damas de Blanco would be able to collect their awards in person in December.
He described Mr Farinas as someone who “was ready to sacrifice and risk his own health and life as a means of pressure to achieve change in Cuba”.
Mr Buzek, who repeated calls for the immediate release of all political prisoners in Cuba, said Mr Farinas used hunger strikes to “protest and to challenge the lack of freedom of speech in Cuba, carrying the hopes for all of those who care for freedom, human rights and democracy”.
European foreign ministers will discuss EU relations with the island at a meeting in Luxembourg next week.