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Political Prisoner Receives Award from Young Cuban Journalists
By Cuban Democratic Directorate

Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta

Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta

The Youth without Censure Press Agency selected prisoner of conscience Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta as its Most Distinguished Contributor of 2006. The independent journalist and Varela Project activist who was arrested during the Spring of 2003 in a crackdown on 75 dissidents is serving a 20 year prison sentence in Camagüey’s maximum security Kilo 8 prison.

 

Herrera Acosta and other reporters from the news agency have reported more than 90 cases of human rights violations committed by Castro authorities in that prison. The recognition also mentions three other distinguished contributors: political prisoners José Daniel Ferrer García and Randy Cabrera Bayol, as well as human rights activist Marta Díaz Rondon.

Herrera Acosta, a member of the Cuban Youth for Democracy Movement, had conducted a grisly protest by sewing his mouth shut on December 26, 2006, and only unsewing it on January 1, 2007. The consequences of this symbolic act of self-mutilation were confinement to a narrow punishment cell.

He had conducted a similar protest in October, sewing his mouth shut to protest against being denied telephone calls which he used to report the abuses undergone by Kilo 8 prisoners. On that occasion, he was dragged along the floor, beaten, and confined to a punishment cage in inhuman conditions and infested with rats.

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Directorio Democrático Cubano Cuban Democratic Directorate

 

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