According to Diario de Cuba, Wilman Villar Mendoza passed away on January 19, 2012 at the Clínico Quirúrgico Juan Bruno Zayas Hospital in Santiago, Cuba, at the hands of the Cuban government. Mendoza had been on a hunger strike since November 2011 to protest his unjust imprisonment and demand his freedom. He was arrested and beaten on November 14 for staging a peaceful demonstration for human rights. His doctors and his wife, Maritza Pelegrino Cabrales, say he suffered from pneumonia, which started to affect his lungs, and slowly moved to his kidneys and liver, keeping him in a coma. Opposition groups blamed authorities at Aguadores Prison for his condition, saying that Mendoza did not receive medical treatment during his detention, according to Diario de Cuba.

 

Acting in solidarity, opposition groups such as UNPACU (Unión Patríotica Cubana) and Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White) supported Mendoza by recently surrounding the hospital and putting pressure on the authorities not to let him die. According to Aplopress, several activists around the hospital were arrested or evicted from the area. Authorities also pressured Mendoza’s relatives to keep quiet and not release any information regarding his medical condition. Castro’s secret police waited until Wilman was on the brink of death to pressure his wife to renounce her affiliation with the Ladies in White as a condition for Mendoza’s release. When she refused, agents threatened to take away her two daughters who are now left fatherless.

 

The World Movement for Democracy Secretariat condemns the death of Wilman Villar Mendoza at the hands of the Cuban government and its harassment of Cuban citizens for exercising their fundamental right to free expression and assembly. In addition, the World Movement urges its participants and other fellow democrats to contact their local Cuban Embassy and condemn the death of Wilman Villar Mendoza. He is now the second political prisoner on a hunger strike to die at the hands of the Cuban authorities in the last two years. Orlando Zapata Tamayo was the first, who died in February 2010.