Havana, Feb 25, 2010 (EFE via COMTEX) --
The remains of Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo were laid
to rest early Thursday in his home town amid a "genuine state of siege,"
a leading dissident said.
Banes, in the eastern province of Holguin, has been "occupied since
Tuesday," the day Zapata died after a nearly three-month hunger strike,
Elizardo Sanchez told Efe.
At least 50 government opponents were detained or confined to their
homes to prevent their attending the funeral, according to Sanchez,
chairman of the unofficial Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National
Reconciliation.
Banes, he said, "was like a town in the Philippines seized by the
Japanese army."
Dissidents and the deceased's family say Gen. Raul Castro's government
withheld Zapata's body until Wednesday and then demanded that he be
buried that afternoon.
After the dead dissident's mother, Reina Tamayo, asked to be allowed to
hold a wake and delay the burial, authorities said interment could take
place at 7:00 a.m. Thursday, Sanchez told Efe.
"They wanted to bury him before Banes woke up," the commission chairman
said.
Prominent blogger Yoani Sanchez told Efe that she was briefly detained
Wednesday while walking to the home of another dissident to sign a book
of condolences for Zapata's family.
Cuba's state media monopoly continues to ignore Zapata's death, even
though Raul Castro issued a public statement Wednesday "lamenting" the
prisoner's demise.
In a brief communique, Gen. Castro said Zapata's death was the result -
in some unspecified way - of Cuba's troubled relationship with the
United States and insisted that the only place in Cuba where torture
occurs is the detention center for terror suspects at the U.S. Navy base
in Guantanamo Bay.
"There are no torture victims, there have been no torture victims, there
have been no executions. That happens at the base in Guantanamo," Castro
said as he and visiting Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
were touring the port of Mariel, near Havana.
Zapata's mother and leading dissidents say the prisoner's health was
poor prior to beginning the hunger strike due to beatings and
mistreatment behind bars.
The 42-year-old Zapata was one of 75 government opponents rounded up and
jailed in Spring 2003 on charges of conspiring with the United States to
undermine the Cuban Revolution. While some of those dissidents have
since been freed on medical grounds, more than 50 remain behind bars on
the communist-ruled island.
Officials added years to Zapata's original sentence because of his
repeated protests over prison conditions.
He stopped eating in December with the aim of pressuring authorities to
acknowledge his designation by Amnesty International as a prisoner of
conscience.
Last week, officials at the penitentiary in the eastern city of
Camagüey grew alarmed about Zapata's condition and transferred him to a
prison hospital in Havana, from where he was later taken to the military
clinic where he died. EFE
am/dr
(25 February 2010)
http://www.individual.com/story.php?story=115318161
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