Cuban prison hunger striker Orlando Zapata Tamayo dies

Cuban prison hunger striker Orlando Zapata Tamayo dies

Mr Zapata (second left) was arrested in 2003 with more than 70 others

Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo has died in hospital
after 85 days on hunger strike.

Mr Zapata, 42, had been transferred to a Havana hospital from a smaller
clinic in the central province of Camaguey after his condition worsened
on Monday.

Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience after his
arrest in March 2003 in a crackdown on opposition groups.

He had been refusing food in protest at jail conditions.

Mr Zapata, whose family announced last week that he was seriously ill,
died on Tuesday in Havana's Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital.

His death marks the first time in nearly 40 years a Cuban activist
starved himself to death to protest against government abuses.

The last political prisoner to die on hunger strike in Cuba was Pedro
Luis Boitel, a poet and student leader, in 1972.

'Better future'

Mr Zapata's mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, told the Miami newspaper El
Nuevo Herald by telephone that her son had been "murdered" by Cuba's
authorities.

"They managed to do what they wanted," she said. "They ended the life of
a fighter for human rights.''

Laura Pollan, a dissident from the group known as Ladies in White, told
the BBC: "He wasn't a murderer. He wasn't a thief. He wasn't a rapist.
He was simply a young man who wanted a better future for Cuba."

Mr Zapata was among a group of some 75 dissidents jailed by the
authorities in 2003. He was initially sentenced to three years in
prison, but this was increased to 25 years in subsequent trials.

Cuba's illegal but tolerated Human Rights Commission says there are
about 200 political prisoners still held in Cuba, about one-third less
than when Raul Castro took over as president from his brother Fidel.

But if anything harassment of dissidents has increased over the past
year, the group says.

Cuba designates prisoners of conscience as mercenaries sympathetic to
the United States.

BBC News - Cuban prison hunger striker Orlando Zapata Tamayo dies (24
February 2010)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8533350.stm