Weekly Report - 26 January 2012 (WR-12-04)

Wilman Villar Mendoza became the second Cuban in two years to die in a hunger strike this week. The death comes days before a special conference of the Partido Comunista Cubano (PCC) on 28 and 29 January, which will discuss political reform. President Raúl Castro has downplayed the need for any radical political changes to run alongside his economic reforms, however, and his government fulminated against foreign criticism, led by the US and Spain, of human rights in Cuba and the need to expedite a democratic opening. Villar’s death also comes shortly after a large prisoner release on 23 December, which was meant as a gesture ahead of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the island in March [WR-12-01].

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