By Ingrid Bachmann
The Cuban authorities refused to allow Guillermo Fariñas to travel to France, where he received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in absentia, BBC reports.
From February to July, Fariñas spent more than four total months on hunger strike to call for the release of Cuban political prisoners. He told the AP that “this prize for me represents first and foremost a reason to increase my commitment to keep up the fight so that we will one day have true democracy in Cuba.”
The Sakharov Prize, organized by the European Union and named for Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, has been awarded to Cuban dissidents on two previous occasions, Al Jazeera explains.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
