Louis Rubino Jr. wants his MTV, or any TV channels he can get in the supermax unit of the Maine State Prison in Warren.

Rubino, 27, of Lewiston and seven other prisoners in the special-management unit have been on a hunger strike since Sunday, an official said.

They want televisions and radios, which are not permitted in the unit that houses inmates who are at high risk of escape, or harm to themselves or others.

None of the striking prisoners has needed medical intervention, said Denise Lord, associate commissioner at the Department of Corrections. They have been monitored and evaluated by prison medical workers, she said. That includes checking vital signs.

Rubino has refused to eat since Sunday and to drink since Monday.

He was sentenced in Androscoggin County Superior Court in 2006 to four years in prison for unlawful trafficking and possession of an illegal drug. He was making methamphetamine in his second-floor apartment, where an explosion shot flames out his window.

In a letter to a Sun Journal reporter Friday, Rubino wrote his objections to the prison’s policy, which allows the supermax inmates to have pen and paper, books and magazines in their cells.

But unlike the rest of the prison population, no TV or radio.

“We feel this is completely unfair,” Rubino wrote.

He wrote that he and seven other prisoners pledged not to drink or eat until given the option of buying TVs or radios, he wrote. “This is not a game. We are willing to take this to the bitter end.”

He said he and the other protesters are locked down 23 hours a day for five days a week. The other two days, they are locked down 24 hours each day.

“Now think about it. The economy is not good. Medical bills will be up there,” he wrote.

Lord said the prison has seen hunger strikes before, but they are rare occurrences.

“If we have one or two hunger strikes a year, that’s a lot,” she said.

Since construction of the Maine State Prison in Warren in 2002, including the special management unit, radios and televisions have been prohibited from that unit, she said.

Inmates may have their own radios and televisions in their cells in the prison’s general population.