CARLOS BATISTA
February 26, 2010
HAVANA: Police have arrested dissidents across Cuba to prevent protests
following the death by self-starvation of Orlando Zapata, which has
drawn international condemnation. Mr Zapata, an Amnesty International
prisoner of conscience in jail since 2003, died on Tuesday after an
85-day hunger strike protesting prison conditions. He was 42.
The Cuban President, Raul Castro, 78, made the rare gesture of
expressing regret at the death of Mr Zapata, but said there was no
repression in Cuba.
''There are no tortured people, there were no tortured people, there was
no execution,'' Mr Castro told reporters. ''That is what happens at [the
US naval base in] Guantanamo.''
Mr Zapata's mother had a different version of events.
''My son was tortured the whole time he was in prison,'' Reina Luisa
Tamayo said in a video posted on the blog Generacion Y.
The site is run by independent journalist Yoani Sanchez, in defiance of
Havana's tightly controlled state media.
Ms Tamayo implored ''the international community to demand the release
of the rest of [Cuba's political] prisoners … so that what happened to
my boy does not happen again.''
Fearing protests, police detained about 30 dissidents on Tuesday and
Wednesday according to Elizardo Sanchez, spokesman for the outlawed
Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.
''Some also have been held in their houses without a judicial warrant,
to prevent people going to the wake,'' he said.
A crowd of about 100 activists met at the home of Laura Pollan - head of
a group of mothers and wives of political prisoners known as the Women
in White - for what they said was a ''symbolic funeral'' for Mr Zapata.
Mr Zapata was to be buried early on Thursday in his home town of Banes,
830 kilometres east of Havana.
Dissidents were rounded up in the eastern provinces of Santiago de Cuba,
Guantanamo, Las Tunas and Camaguey, and in the central city of Placetas,
Mr Sanchez said.
Mr Zapata's death drew international condemnation.
The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said Washington was ''deeply
distressed'' by Mr Zapata's death.
The death ''highlights the injustice of Cuba's holding more than 200
political prisoners who should now be released without delay'', Mrs
Clinton's spokesman Philip Crowley said in a statement. Even the
visiting Brazilian President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has known
the Castro brothers since the 1970s, said he deeply regretted Mr
Zapata's death.
In Brussels, European Union commission spokesman John Clancy said Cuba
should ''improve'' its human rights ''by releasing unconditionally all
political prisoners''.
Mr Zapata's initial three-year prison term grew to 36 years as
additional charges of ''disobedience'' and ''disorder in a penal
establishment'' were added. Mr Sanchez said it was the first time since
1972 that a Cuban opposition figure died while on a hunger strike. His
death is ''bad news for the human rights movement and for the government
as well'' Mr Sanchez said.
Amnesty International said Mr Zapata ''felt he had no other avenue
available to him but to starve himself in protest is a terrible
indictment of the continuing repression of political dissidents in Cuba''.
Orlando Zapata | Cuba arrests | dissident fury | starvation death (26
February 2010)
http://www.smh.com.au/world/cuba-arrests-curb-dissident-fury-over-starvation-death-20100225-p61d.html
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