CUBA: PRESIDENT RAUL CASTRO CONFRONTS INTERNAL OPPOSITION AND U.S. IN DEATH OF POLITICAL PRISONER.
By Daniel Vazquez
The government of Raul Castro is again pitting itself against the internal opposition and the US, blaming them for the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo on Feb. 23 in Havana. Tamayo died after an 85-day hunger strike to demand that the Cuban government recognize him as a prisoner of conscience and to denounce the mistreatment he said he suffered in prison.
The death of the poor 42-year-old black bricklayer and plumber sounded another alarm to the international community regarding human rights violations in Cuban prisons, gave more visibility to various opposition groups demanding the release of some 200 political prisoners, and again showed Castro's intransigence despite the island's increasing economic deterioration.
The Zapata case
Zapata was detained in 2003 and sentenced to three years in prison for disorderly conduct and contempt. Despite his opposition activities and participation in hunger strikes, he was not among the group of 75 dissidents arrested that spring and given harsh sentences on charges of conspiring with the US against Cuba.
Opposition historian Manuel Cuesta Morua said Zapata's role was downplayed by the government simply because he was black, and it did not give him the same importance as the white and professional dissidents detained at the same time.
Later Zapata was tried in jail and his sentence increased to 32 years for aggressive conduct in the maximum-security prisons where he was held. Among his demands was that he not have to wear the regulation prison uniform and that he be treated as a prisoner of conscience, a category recognized by Amnesty International (AI).
Zapata was among those opposing an exchange of political prisoners for the five Cubans imprisoned in the US on espionage charges, whom Havana considers "anti-terrorism fighters."
Zapata began his hunger strike on Dec. 3, 2009, at the provincial prison in Holguin in eastern Cuba, to complain, among other things, about the beatings by his jailers. He was later taken to another prison in the neighboring province of Camaguey and on Feb. 17 was transferred to a Havana hospital, where he died.
"There are no tortured prisoners, there have been no tortured prisoners, there was no execution. That happens at the base at Guantanamo," said Raul Castro the day after Zapata died, referring to prisoners at the US military base at the easternmost tip of the island. Zapata "is a victim of the confrontation that we have with the US."
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