I don't know why this is important to me, but it is.

Two Cuban political prisoners:

Cuban dissidents Juan Ramón Rivera Despaine and Orlando Zapata Tamayo are cut from the same cloth. Together, they co-founded in 2002 the Alternative Republican Party, and behind the bars of the Castro gulag, they have kept up the fight, despite the grave threats to their lives.

Zapata has been on hunger strike since Dec. 3, demanding his captors respect his human rights. He is lying in a Camagüey hospital, dying from the effects of his protest, and as his mother reminded us last week, most in the world don't give a damn.

That will never be the case here, which is why he again is being honored here as a Political Prisoner of the Week....

Rivera last year was sentenced to 2 years in a labor camp on a charge of "assault," after police arrested him in June for selling a few tomatoes from his home.

Free Gao Zhisheng:

Christian human rights Attorney Gao Zhisheng was seized by a dozen police officers and last seen in public on February 4, 2009. Gao has been repeatedly kidnapped, arrested, imprisoned and tortured by Chinese authorities for defending the persecuted. He has been an unyielding and iconic advocate for justice in the Chinese courts and was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008.

On January 21, 2010, the Chinese government publicly acknowledged Gao Zhisheng to be in their custody, for the first time since his abduction more than 365 days ago.

Brave man.