Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata dies after 85 days on hunger strike
The Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata died in hospital yesterday,
85 days after he went on a hunger strike.
A spokesman for Havana's Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital, where the
42-year-old political prisoner was transferred from a smaller clinic
near his prison in the eastern province of Camaguey earier this week,
said Zapata died at 1:00 pm (1800 GMT).
"Indignant" dissidents blamed the Government for the death of Mr Zapata,
who was jailed in 2003 and deemed a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty
International. He had been on a hunger strike to protest prison
conditions that he blamed for his deteriorating health.
Oswaldo Paya, the leader of the Christian Liberation Movement dissident
group, said the movement was "not seeking martyrs." He said that Mr
Zapata had died "defending the freedom, rights and dignity of all Cubans".
In Camaguey, authorities had placed the dissident in a provincial
hospital before he was transferred by ambulance to Hermanos Ameijeiras,
one of the biggest in the capital and outfitted with more care and
surgical options.
Hours before Mr Zapata's death, the banned Cuban Committee for Human
Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) had said his condition was
"very serious".
Early this month, Cuban police harassed, beat and briefly jailed some 35
dissidents marching in Camaguey protesting the "cruel and inhuman
treatment" of Mr Zapata, according to CCDHRN.
The group's director, Elizardo Sanchez, said it was the first time in
nearly 40 years that a Cuban opposition figure has died while on a
hunger strike.
Mr Zapata's demise is "bad news for the human rights movement and for
the government as well," Mr Sanchez said.
In Miami, a Cuban exile group quoted Mr Zapata's mother as saying
authorities essentially killed her son in Havana.
"They have done him in. My son's death was a premeditated murder," Reina
Tamayo said in a statement released by the Cuban Democratic Directorate.
Hector Palacios, one of 75 political prisoners convicted in 2003 and who
had met Mr Zapata in prison, told the AFP news agency that "people are
indignant," and that a national mourning and fasting period was being
considered.
"I'm crushed," said Mr Palacios, who has been released for health
reasons. He added that Mr Zapata "had no alternative but to decide on
the hunger strike. The authorities took no pity on him, they just let
him die."
Mr Zapata was convicted in 2003 for political activities anathema to the
only one-party communist regime in the Americas. He received a similar
sentence to the other 75 dissidents, but while jailed his sentence was
boosted to 25 years in subsequent trials.
The Cuban Government denies holding any political prisoners, instead
calling those imprisoned "mercenaries" in the pay of US opponents of the
regime. Dissident sources however put the number of political prisoners
at 200 in a country of more than 11 million.
Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata dies after 85 days on hunger strike -
Times Online (24 February 2010)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7038864.ece
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