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Cuban Dissident Orlando Zapata Dies After 85 Days on Hunger Strike
 TimesOnline UK
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February 24, 2010
| | Orlando Zapata in 2003. His death by hunger strike was the first of a Cuban opposition figure in almost 40 years. (AFP/Adalberto Roque) | |
The Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata died in hospital yesterday, 85 days after he went on a hunger strike.
A spokesman for Havana's Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital, where the 42-year-old political prisoner was transferred from a smaller clinic near his prison in the eastern province of Camaguey earier this week, said Zapata died at 1:00 pm (1800 GMT).
"Indignant" dissidents blamed the Government for the death of Mr Zapata, who was jailed in 2003 and deemed a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. He had been on a hunger strike to protest prison conditions that he blamed for his deteriorating health.
Oswaldo Paya, the leader of the Christian Liberation Movement dissident group, said the movement was “not seeking martyrs." He said that Mr Zapata had died "defending the freedom, rights and dignity of all Cubans".
In Camaguey, authorities had placed the dissident in a provincial hospital before he was transferred by ambulance to Hermanos Ameijeiras, one of the biggest in the capital and outfitted with more care and surgical options.
Hours before Mr Zapata's death, the banned Cuban Committee for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) had said his condition was "very serious".
Early this month, Cuban police harassed, beat and briefly jailed some 35 dissidents marching in Camaguey protesting the "cruel and inhuman treatment" of Mr Zapata, according to CCDHRN.
The group's director, Elizardo Sanchez, said it was the first time in nearly 40 years that a Cuban opposition figure has died while on a hunger strike.
Mr Zapata's demise is "bad news for the human rights movement and for the government as well," Mr Sanchez said.
In Miami, a Cuban exile group quoted Mr Zapata’s mother as saying authorities essentially killed her son in Havana.
"They have done him in. My son's death was a premeditated murder," Reina Tamayo said in a statement released by the Cuban Democratic Directorate.
Hector Palacios, one of 75 political prisoners convicted in 2003 and who had met Mr Zapata in prison, told the AFP news agency that "people are indignant," and that a national mourning and fasting period was being considered.
"I'm crushed," said Mr Palacios, who has been released for health reasons. He added that Mr Zapata "had no alternative but to decide on the hunger strike. The authorities took no pity on him, they just let him die."
Mr Zapata was convicted in 2003 for political activities anathema to the only one-party communist regime in the Americas. He received a similar sentence to the other 75 dissidents, but while jailed his sentence was boosted to 25 years in subsequent trials.
The Cuban Government denies holding any political prisoners, instead calling those imprisoned "mercenaries" in the pay of US opponents of the regime. Dissident sources however put the number of political prisoners at 200 in a country of more than 11 million. |
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