Article By: Carlos Batista
Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:14
Police arrested dissidents across Cuba on Wednesday to prevent protests,
following the death by self starvation of Orlando Zapata that has drawn
international condemnation.
Zapata, an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience in jail since
2003, diedon Tuesday after an 85-day hunger strike protesting prison
conditions. He was 42.
Cuban President Raul Castro said in a statement that he "regrets"
Zapata's death, but said there was no repression in the only single
party Communist regime in the Americas.
"There are no tortured people, there were no tortured people, there was
no execution," Castro (78) told reporters. "That is what happens at (the
US naval base in) Guantanamo."
Another version
Zapata's mother had a different version.
"My son was tortured the whole time he was in prison," Reina Luisa
Tamayo charged in a video posted on the blog Generacion Y. The site is
run by award-winning independent journalist Yoani Sanchez, in defiance
of Havana's tightly controlled state media.
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 some 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 from going to the wake," Sanchez said.
A crowd of around 100 activists met at the home of Laura Pollan — head
of group of mothers and wives of political prisoners known as the Women
in White — for what they said was a "symbolic funeral" for Zapata.
International condemnation
Zapata was set to be buried early on Thursday in his hometown of Banes,
830 kilometers east of Havana.
Dissidents were also rounded up in the eastern provinces of Santiago de
Cuba, Guantanamo, Las Tunas and Camaguey, and in the central city of
Placetas, Sanchez said.
Zapata's death drew international condemnation.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Washington was "deeply
distressed" by Zapata's death.
The death "highlights the injustice of Cuba's holding more than 200
political prisoners who should now be released without delay," Clinton's
spokesperson Philip Crowley said in a statement.
Even visiting Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has
known the Castro brothers since the 1970s, said at the risk of offending
his hosts that he "deeply lamented" Zapata's death.
Lula met with Fidel and Raul Castro for more than two hours, a Brazilian
official told AFP, without saying what they discussed.
Some 50 political dissidents had urged Lula in an open letter to ask
Raul Castro to release jailed activists.
In Brussels, European Union commission spokesman John Clancy told AFP
that Cuba should "improve" its human rights "by releasing
unconditionally all political prisoners."
Cuba claims it has no political prisoners; according to officials,
regime opponents are "mercenaries" in the pay of Washington or
right-wing Cuban exiles.
Zapata, who was initially given a three-year prison term, saw his
sentence grow to 36 years as additional charges of "disobedience" and
"disorder in a penal establishment" were added.
Sanchez said it was the first time since 1972 that a Cuban opposition
figure died while on a hunger strike.
Zapata's death is "bad news for the human rights movement and for the
government as well," he said.
Amnesty International said 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."
Hector Palacios, one of 75 political prisoners convicted in 2003 and who
met Zapata in prison, told AFP that activists "are outraged."
"I'm crushed," said Palacios, who was released for health reasons.
Zapata "had no alternative but to opt for the hunger strike. The
authorities took no pity on him, they just let him die."
iafrica.com | news | world news Cuba crackdown hardens (25 February 2010)
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