"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Showing posts with label Reina Luisa Tamayo Danger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reina Luisa Tamayo Danger. Show all posts
I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile. - Pope Gregory VII
From Cuba into Exile in Miami
Reina Luisa Tamayo suffered death threats, beatings, and the murder of her son Orlando Zapata Tamayo. She was then vilified and smeared along with her family by the dictatorship in Cuba's propaganda apparatus both in and outside of the island.
Her well-grounded fears of the Castro regime were so powerful that she even refused to leave Orlando Zapata Tamayo preferring to have him exhumed and cremated. Leaving Cuba without her son's remains and with no one left to guard his tomb she believed that they would desecrate his remains and disappear him.
Safe from the ruthless regime in Cuba but now exiled from her homeland along with the ashes of Orlando Zapata Tamayo. Bittersweet is defined as pleasure alloyed with pain. In this case it is the pain of a murdered son and exile from your homeland mitigated by arrival in a free country where Reina Luisa Tamayo no longer need fear harassment from a cruel dictatorship. It is more bitter than sweet, but the price of liberty and human dignity is often steep.
Welcome to Miami and let us all hope that one day soon Reina along with many other Cubans are able to return to a free and democratic homeland where Orlando Zapata Tamayo and not Che Guevara will be the subject of study in Cuban high school students textbooks. Let us hope that when that day arrives that Orlando Zapata Tamayo's ashes may finally rest in Cuban soil.
Cuba authorities urged to stop harassing dead activist’s family
22 February 2011
Amnesty International has urged Cuban authorities to end the harassment of relatives of a human rights activist who died during a hunger strike last year.
Reina Luisa Tamayo, whose son Orlando Zapata Tamayo died at a Havana prison in February 2010, told Amnesty International she was arrested by state security agents who threatened to stop her and other mourners from commemorating the anniversary of Orlando’s death in church, on 23 February.
“The fact that the Cuban authorities have so far failed to initiate an investigation into Orlando’s death is outrageous and preventing his family from properly celebrating his life is a scandal,” said Javier Zuñiga, Special Advisor at Amnesty International.
Tamayo, 72, her husband and another activist, Daniel Mesa, were forcefully detained on Friday 18 February by more than a dozen local security agents as they were walking around their village in Banes, north-west Cuba. Tamayo and her husband were released 12 hours later and Mesa, two days later.
Tamayo said the agents had threatened to prevent her leaving her home and go to the cemetery where her son is buried, in breach of her human rights.
“The recent releases of activists in Cuba, who shouldn’t have been put in prison in the first place, will only be meaningful if, once all activists are released, they are able to carry out their legitimate work defending human rights without fear of reprisals,” said Javier Zuñiga.
“The harassment suffered by people like Orlando Tamayo’s relatives clearly goes to show that things still have not changed in Cuba and the authorities need to do much more to ensure human rights are a reality for all.”
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was arrested in March 2003 and sentenced to three years in prison in May 2004 for “disrespect”, “public disorder” and “resistance”.
He was subsequently tried several times on further charges of “disobedience” and “disorder in a penal establishment” - the last time in May 2009 - and was serving a 36 year-sentence at the time of his death in prison.
Reina Tamayo said she intends to live in exile in the USA along with a number of her relatives and has been granted all relevant documents by the US authorities.
The Cuban government has yet to issue the necessary permits.
Friday, February 18, five days short of marking one year since Orlando Zapata Tamayo died on February 23, 2010 after seven years of psychological and physical torture at the hands of agents of the dictatorship in Cuba, his mother Reina Luisa Tamayo was physically assaulted and detained by the same regime that murdered her son because, according to the police for "lack of respect" for them.
Reina Luisa Tamayo Danger
The words of the song below originally released in 1982 sadly seem especially relevant today in Cuba. A hymn for Cuba's prisoners of conscience. A song for Orlando and Reina.
6x6 from wall to wall Shutters on the windows, no light at all Damp on the floor you got damp in the bed They're trying to get you crazy - get you out of your head And they feed you scraps and they feed you lies To lower your defences, no compromise Nothing you can do, the day can be long Your mind is working overtime, your body's not too strong
Hold on, hold on Hold on, hold on Hold on, hold on They put you in a box so you can't get heard Let your spirit stay unbroken, may you not be deterred
Hold on, you have gambled with your own life And you face the night alone While the builders of the cages Sleep with bullets, bars and stone They do not see the road to freedom That you build with flesh and bone
They take you out and the light burns your eyes To the talking room - it's no surprise Loaded questions from clean white coats Their eyes are all as hidden as their Hippocratic Oath They tell you how to behave, behave as their guest You want to resist them, you do your best They take you to your limits, they take you beyond For all that they are doing there's no way to respond
Hold on, hold on They put you in a box so you can't get heard Let your spirit stay unbroken, may you not be deterred
Hold on, you have gambled with your own life And you face the night alone While the builders of the cages Sleep with bullets, bars and stone They do not see your road to freedom That you build with flesh and bone
Though you may disappear, you're not forgotten here And I will say to you, I will do what I can do You may disappear, you're not forgotten here And I will say to you, I will do what I can do And I will do what I can do And I will do what I can do
"Truth is generally the best vindication against slander" - Abraham Lincoln
Professor Salim Lamrani in his November 23 article “Cuba, the Corporate Media and the Suicide of Orlando Zapata Tamayo” in The Huffington Post libels not only the late Orlando Zapata Tamayo but 75 Cuban prisoners of conscience as criminals while challenging the integrity of Amnesty International (AI). In his attack on AI and these Cubans he fails to mention that the imprisoned activists were locked up allegedly for “publishing articles or giving interviews to US-funded media, communicating with international human rights organizations and having contact with entities or individuals viewed to be hostile.”1International standards, outlined in The Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, provide guide posts as to what is a legitimate charge and what is illegitimate. The charges made against the 75 Cubans by the Cuban dictatorship, and repeated by Lamrani, fall far short. Other human rights organizations found that Cuba's state security laws violate these principles, illegitimately restricting fundamental rights and unjustly imprisoning Cubans.2
The claim that the “corporate media” disproportionately covers human rights violations in Cuba beyond an attempted distraction from the actual situation on the island also happens to be untrue. For example when Cuban agents massacred 37 men, women and children aboard the “13 de Marzo” tugboat on July 13, 1994 there was little media coverage compared to the coverage generated over the massacre in Chiapas on December 22, 1997 in which 45 men, women and children were massacred by Mexican agents. 3,4 The March 29, 1997 extrajudicial execution of Danish student Joachim Løvschall by a Cuban soldier in Havana was not covered by the “corporate media” despite it being an international incident.5 Unlike Professor Lamrani’s article there is no effort to judge which tragedy is more worthy of news coverage but simply to assert that the professor’s charge is without basis.6 A simple Google search would demonstrate that China, Iran, and the United States garner much more critical coverage in the area of human rights. Finally, other Cubans have died on hunger strikes in Cuba, although their deaths have been documented by international human rights organizations the “corporate media” has not reported on them. This is further evidence that the Lamrani's claim is without substance.
Setting the record straight on Cuban hunger strikers
The media got it wrong from the beginning when it made and repeated the claim that the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo was the first such incident since Pedro Luis Boitel who died on May 25, 1972.7,8 There are a number of factors left out of the reporting on Zapata’s murder. For example, since 1959 the International Red Cross has only been able to obtain access to examine Cuban prisons once over a small window of time in 1989 out of a half century of the Castro regime in power. The numbers of deaths on hunger strike are not publicly accounted for or documented by Cuban prisons.9,10 Amnesty International has not been able to visit Cuba since 1990.11 As in the case of Orlando Zapata Tamayo the world knows about Pedro Luis Boitel because his mother, Clara Abrahante Boitel, fought to save her son and make known the atrocities committed against him regardless of the threats visited upon her.12 However in addition to Pedro Luis Boitel and Orlando Zapata Tamayo the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has documented additional Cuban political prisoners who have died on hunger strike both before and after Pedro Luis Boitel not reported by the “corporate media”:
Roberto López Chávez, 25 years old, died on December 11, 1966 in Isla de Pinos prison on hunger strike without medical assistance.13 Armando Valladares, in his prison memoir, Against All Hope described the circumstances surrounding his death: “When Roberto López Chávez, went on a hunger strike to protest the abuses in the prison, the guards withheld water from him until he became delirious, twisting on the floor and begging for something to drink. The guards then urinated in his mouth. He died the next day.”14, 15
Carmelo Cuadra Hernández, died in La Cabaña prison in April of 1969 on hunger strike, after suffering mistreatment and torture over eight and a half months, without receiving medical care and was the third political prisoner that has died on a hunger strike.16, 17
Olegario Charlot Pileta, died in the famous "Escaleras" (staircase) of the Boniato prison, in of January 1973 during a hunger strike, without medical assistance and is described in documents as a “black youth.”18, 19
Enrique García Cuevas died on a hunger strike, without receiving medical care, in cell No. 4 of the new Provincial Jail of Santa Clara, on June 24, 1973.20
Two of the four outlined above died on hunger strikes after Pedro Luis Boitel and there are partial estimates that place the number identified to have died while on hunger strike at twelve including both Boitel and Zapata. Since the death of Pedro Luis Boitel there are partial lists identifying six political prisoners dead on hunger strikes between May 25, 1972 and February 23, 2010.21 This does not mean that there is a conspiracy afoot but demonstrates that human error the product of deadlines combined with staff and budget cutbacks in newspapers is impacting the quality of journalism.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a Prisoner of Conscience
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was recognized as an Amnesty International (AI) prisoner of conscience on January 29, 2004 a designation given only to nonviolent activists after careful examination.22 The claim that Orlando Zapata Tamayo was a violent criminal in prison for a violent crime is a lie manufactured by the Cuban regime and repeated by Lamrani.23 Furthermore the claim that “AI has never mentioned the alleged political activities that landed Zapata in prison” is untrue.24On January 29, 2004 Amnesty International outlined Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s past arrests:
“He has been arrested several times in the past. For example he was temporarily detained on 3 July 2002 and 28 October 2002. In November 2002 after taking part in a workshop on human rights in the central Havana park, José Martí, he and eight other government opponents were reportedly arrested and later released. He was also arrested on 6 December 2002 along with Oscar Elías Biscet3, but was released on 8 March 2003. Most recently, he was arrested on the morning of 20 March 2003 whilst taking part in a hunger strike at the Fundación Jesús Yánez Pelletier, Jesús Yánez Pelletier Foundation, in Havana, to demand the release of Oscar Biscet and other political prisoners.”25
Orlando Zapata Tamayo appeared photographed in the Cuban government’s own publication Los Disidentes, in photos prior to his 2003 arrest and was then recognized by Cuban officials as a dissident. The Spanish newspaper El Mundo carried a photo the day after the Cuban regime announced the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo with prominent Cuban dissidents.26 Even in death Orlando continues to be a victim of regime attacks libeling his good name repeated by Lamrani and others.
The aim of Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s hunger strike
No one disputes that Orlando Zapata Tamayo died on a hunger strike. However, the Cuban regime claims that Orlando Zapata Tamayo had demanded: “a television, a personal kitchen, and a cell phone to call his family in order to end his hunger strike and regime sympathizers without citing the source repeat the claim.”27, 28 Cuban political prisoner Abel Lopez Perez transferred to the same prison in Camaguey as Orlando Zapata Tamayo on December 3, 2009 and briefly saw him and heard from other prisoners “that a few days before being taken away, Zapata stood up and shouted, ‘People, don’t let yourselves be lied to.Don’t believe anything that they tell you.I’m not demanding a kitchen or any of the things they took away from me.I’m demanding an improvement of treatment for all prisoners, and so you all know, I am going to die for it.’”29
When weighing the claims of the Cuban regime and a former Cuban political prisoner one should look at Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s background. This is a man who was arrested while on a hunger strike protesting the imprisonment of other prisoners of conscience who had been arrested with him in a sit-in in December of 2002 just days after he himself was released from prison in March of 2003. This fact, along with the rest of Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s trajectory as an activist would give more weight to Abel Lopez’s version of events.
Basis for the claim that Orlando Zapata Tamayo was murdered
Both Abel Lopez Perez and Reina Luisa Tamayo charge that Cuban prison officials denied Orlando Zapata Tamayo water in an effort to break him. Reina Luisa Tamayo in an interview with Yoani Sanchez, hours after her son’s death denounced that officials had denied him water.30 Abel Lopez corroborates the charge describing what went on: “Before Zapata was checked into the hospital, he was regularly taking some vitamins.He was in a weak state of health.A military chief known as ‘Gordo’, who was the one responsible for ordering all of Zapata’s things to be taken out of the cell and to stop giving him water, also took his bottle of vitamins and poured all the pills down a drain.He told him, ‘Those who are in protest here don’t drink vitamins.I think those are pills sent to you by the Yankees so you can continue your hunger strike.’Those were the exact words said to him, I verified them.His vitamins were taken away, as were any other medications.And they stopped giving him water for a while.”31 This type of practice was also documented in the 1966 death of Roberto López Chávez.32, 33 Denying water to a man on a water only hunger strike is cruel treatment that contributed to his death.
Finally, the campaign to equate engaging in a hunger strike with suicide is at best mistaken. Nonviolence expert, Michael Nagler in an Introduction to Nonviolence filmed at the University of California at Berkeley in the fall of 2006 offered the following analysis on hunger strikes within a nonviolent context in the video above starting at 46 minutes and 38 seconds:34, 35
"This is not a case of suicide. You are not killing yourself. You are risking death. What you are doing is putting your life into the hands of another person." ... "You are not killing yourself but you are saying to the person that your behavior is so unacceptable that if you continue it its going to kill me. It is an extreme case of taking on the suffering that is in a situation." ...This is different from a threat because what you are saying to the person is "I am going to exhibit to you mirror back to you the ultimate consequences of what you are doing." ... "This is an act of truth. You are killing us - you are killing our people and I'm going to show you that you are doing it to awaken your conscience."...Thats why you have to be carrying on a conversation on a nonverbal level.36
Orlando Zapata Tamayo had been beaten and tortured on more than one occasion by prison guards and state security along with other prisoners. His body was scarred and his health in decline. For example AI reported that, on "October 20, 2003 [Orlando Zapata] was dragged along the floor of Combinado del Este Prison by prison officials after requesting medical attention, leaving his back full of lacerations."37 The case of Ariel Sigler Amaya, another Cuban prisoner of conscience, is instructive. He had to threaten a hunger strike, although already emaciated and crippled, to obtain medical treatment to save his life.38 The hunger strike was not an act of suicide but rather a tactic of self defense within the arsenal of nonviolent options.
Amnesty International and 75 Cuban Prisoners of Conscience
Lamrani’s attack on AI and 75 Cuban prisoners of conscience point to an Amnesty International 2008 report and its observation that: “because [some of the 75] received funds and/or materials from the United States government in order to engage in activities the authorities perceived as subversive and damaging to Cuba” that this is a contradiction describing it as a “serious crime.”39 But they fail to reproduce the quote in its entirety leaving out that “activities included publishing articles or giving interviews to US-funded media, communicating with international human rights organizations and having contact with entities or individuals viewed to be hostile.”40
There are international standards that indicate what a legitimate claim of treason is and what is illegitimate and the charges made against the 75 fall far short. At a 1995 international conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, a set of principles that provide guidance regarding permissible justifications for restricting rights known today as the Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information was drafted. These principles invoke legitimate reasons to invoke national security interests which are: "protecting a country's existence or its territorial integrity against the use or threat of force, or its capacity to respond to the threat or use of force, whether from an external source, such as a military threat, or an internal source, such as incitement to violent overthrow of the government."41
The Johannesburg Principles also outline illegitimate justifications for invoking national security interests which are: "protecting the government from embarrassment or exposure of wrongdoing, or to entrench a particular ideology, or to conceal information about the functioning of its public institutions, or to suppress industrial action."42
Finally the Johannesburg Principles specify that certain types of expression should always be protected, including criticizing or insulting the government and its symbols; advocating nonviolent change of the government or policies of the government; and communicating human rights information to the outside world.43 Human Rights Watch in their 1999 report Cuba's Repressive Machinery and in their 2009 report New Castro, Same Cuba find that Cuba's state security laws violate these principles, illegitimately restricting fundamental rights both in the phrasing of the laws themselves and in their application against nonviolent dissidents.44, 45
The Cuban government's attack on foreign funding by either government or non-governmental funding of domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) is not unique the Russians and Venezuelans are passing or trying to pass laws to cut off outside funding streams to civil society.46 While in the Cuban case dissenting from the official government line means in most cases losing your job and in some cases also being kicked out of your home it is easy to see that the policy is to only permit the existence of pro-government voices. Another example, similar to Cuba, is Burma where the opposition faces brutal repression and the cutting off of domestic resources and thus needs to look for support from abroad.47
Regimes, like the ones in Cuba and Burma, are desperate to suffocate all voices of dissent by demonizing, imprisoning, exiling, or killing them. Amnesty International's identification of prisoners of conscience is an important indicator of the presence or absence of basic freedoms in a country. The Johannesburg Principles exposes regimes, that hide behind the national security facade to impose a climate of fear, for what they are brutal dictatorships that systematically violate the human rights of their own citizens.
There is a big chasm between an individual advocating the violent overthrow of a government and using the force of arms to lash out against representatives of those in power and individuals exercising their fundamental human rights to achieve nonviolent change. The first is a political prisoner and the second is a prisoner of conscience.48
The Campaign to Destroy Reina Luisa Tamayo
The murder of Orlando Zapata Tamayo calls for justice. However, right now Reina Luisa Tamayo, the mother of Orlando Zapata Tamayo faces a campaign to destroy her both physically and psychologically carried out by a ruthless dictatorship with an international reach. The regime cannot forgive that the main reason that the world knows about the torture all too common in Cuban prisons that led to Orlando Zapata to go on hunger strike and the continued mistreatment that contributed to his death is because of his mother Reina Luisa Tamayo Danger. Regime officials have physically assaulted and terrorized her when she has tried to visit Orlando Zapata’s grave and attend Mass.49, 50 Her remaining children and grandchildren are harassed and mistreated.
At the same time because of the outcry over Orlando Zapata’s death and brutal attacks on the Ladies in White a large number of prisoners of conscience, along with their families, have been sent into exile but there are a group of prisoners of conscience who have rejected exile in Europe declaring that they wish to live free in Cuba. They are still in prison despite an agreement reached with the Ladies in White by the regime through mediation with the Cuban Catholic Church that said they would be free by November 7, 2010.51
Professor Salim Lamrani please do not allow ideology to blind you to the great injustices being committed in Cuba and speak up for Reina Luisa Tamayo and these prisoners of conscience seeking to remain in the island.
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 6TH REPORT ON THE SITUATION OFPOLITICAL PRISONERS IN CUBA: CHAPTER III: AN ANALYSIS OF CERTAIN INDIVIDUAL CASES SUBMITTED TO THE IACHR 14 December 1979 http://www.cidh.org/countryrep/cuba79eng/chap.3.htm
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 6TH REPORT ON THE SITUATION OFPOLITICAL PRISONERS IN CUBA: CHAPTER III: AN ANALYSIS OF CERTAIN INDIVIDUAL CASES SUBMITTED TO THE IACHR 14 December 1979 http://www.cidh.org/countryrep/cuba79eng/chap.3.htm
Valladares, Armando Against All Hope: The Prison Memoirs of Armando Valladares (1st edition KnopfApril 12, 1986) quote taken from (1st Edition Encounter Books April 1, 2001) pg. 379
Glazov, Jamie United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror WND Books, 2009 Pg 48
Ubieta Gómez, Enrique “For whom is death a useful tool?” International Granma Digital March 1, 2010 http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2010/marzo/lun1/death.html(Official publication of the Cuban regime)
Valladares, Armando Against All Hope: The Prison Memoirs of Armando Valladares (1st edition KnopfApril 12, 1986) quote taken from (1st Edition Encounter Books April 1, 2001) pg. 379
Glazov, Jamie United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror WND Books, 2009 Pg 48
Nagler, Michael PACS 164A: Introduction to Nonviolence - Fall 2006. Second Lecture. An introduction to the science of nonviolence, mainly as seen through the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7AoNZhWKlk
Nagler, Michael PACS 164A: Introduction to Nonviolence - Fall 2006. Second Lecture. An introduction to the science of nonviolence, mainly as seen through the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7AoNZhWKlk
Article XIX THE JOHANNESBURG PRINCIPLES ON NATIONAL SECURITY, FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND ACCESS TO INFORMATION International Standards SeriesARTICLE 19, London ISBN 1 870798 89 9 November 1996 http://www.article19.org/pdfs/standards/joburgprinciples.pdf
Article XIX, op. cit.
Article XIX, op. cit.
Human Rights Watch CUBA'S REPRESSIVE MACHINERY Human Rights Forty Years After the Revolution June 1999 Human Rights Watch.Printed in the USA.Library of Congress#: 99-63561 http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/cuba/index.htm#TopOfPage
Human Rights Watch New Castro, Same Cuba: Political Prisoners in the Post-Fidel Era November 18, 2009 HRWhttp://www.hrw.org/en/node/86554
“When Ideology is placed above objective information, truth and ethics are the first victims.” - Salim Lamrani, Lecturer, Paris Sorbonne Paris IV University
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” -Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister, Nazi Germany
There is a campaign underway by the Cuban dictatorship, its agents of influence and sympathizers to cover up its brutal treatment and murder of Orlando Zapata Tamayo while creating a false biography of this human rights defender to diminish his moral stature. The main reason that the world knows about the torture all too common in Cuban prisons that led to Orlando Zapata to go on hunger strike and the continued mistreatment that contributed to his death is because of his mother Reina Luisa Tamayo Danger. She is now the target of a campaign of defamation, character assassination abroad and physical violence perpetrated against her by agents of the Cuban regime. Meanwhile the press has apparently lost interest in the story leaving Reina to the mercy of Cuban state security.
Sloppy reporting overlooked prior victims
The media got one important element of the story wrong from the beginning when it made the claim that the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo was the first such incident since Pedro Luis Boitel who died on May 25, 1972. First, since 1959 the International Red Cross has only been able to obtain access to examine Cuban prisons only once over a small window of time in 1989 out of over a half century of the current regime in power nor are the numbers of deaths on hunger strike accounted for by the Cuban regime. Amnesty International has not been able to visit Cuba since 1990.
Secondly, as in the case of Orlando Zapata Tamayo the world knows about Pedro Luis Boitel because his mother, Clara Abrahante Boitel, fought to save her son and make known the atrocities committed against Pedro Luis regardless of the threats visited upon her. However in addition to Pedro Luis Boitel and Orlando Zapata Tamayo the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has documented additional Cuban political prisoners who have died on hunger strike both before and after Pedro Luis Boitel:
Roberto López Chávez, 25 years old, died on December 11, 1966 in Isla de Pinos prison on hunger strike without medical assistance. Armando Valladares, in his prison memoir, Against All Hope described the circumstances surrounding his death: “When Roberto López Chávez, went on a hunger strike to protest the abuses in the prison, the guards withheld water from him until he became delirious, twisting on the floor and begging for something to drink. [...] He died the next day.”
Carmelo Cuadra Hernández, died in La Cabaña prison in April of 1969 on hunger strike, after suffering mistreatment and torture over eight and a half months, without receiving medical care and was the third political prisoner that has died on a hunger strike.
Olegario Charlot Pileta, died in the infamous "Escaleras" (staircase) of the Boniato prison, in of January 1973 during a hunger strike, without medical assistance and is described in documents as a “black youth.”
Enrique García Cuevasdied on a hunger strike, without receiving medical care, in cell No. 4 of the new Provincial Jail of Santa Clara, on June 24, 1973.
Two of the four outlined above died on hunger strikes after Pedro Luis Boitel and there are partial estimates that place the number identified to have died while on hunger strike at twelve including both Boitel and Zapata. Since Pedro Luis Boitel died there are partial lists of six political prisoners dead on hunger strikes between May 25, 1972 and February 23, 2010. This does not mean that there is a conspiracy afoot but human error product of deadlines combined with staff and budget cutbacks in newspapers.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo photographed with prominent leaders of the opposition in 2003
“He has been arrested several times in the past. For example he was temporarily detained on 3 July 2002 and 28 October 2002. In November 2002 after taking part in a workshop on human rights in the central Havana park, José Martí, he and eight other government opponents were reportedly arrested and later released. He was also arrested on 6 December 2002 along with Oscar Elías Biscet, but was released on 8 March 2003. Most recently, he was arrested on the morning of 20 March 2003 whilst taking part in a hunger strike at the Fundación Jesús Yánez Pelletier, Jesús Yánez Pelletier Foundation, in Havana, to demand the release of Oscar Biscet and other political prisoners.”
Orlando Zapata Tamayo appeared photographed in the Cuban government’s own publication Los Disidentes, in photos prior to his 2003 arrest and was then recognized by Cuban officials as a dissident. The Spanish publication El Mundo carried a photo the day after the Cuban regime announced the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo with prominent Cuban dissidents. Even in death Orlando continues to be a victim of regime attacks libeling his good name.
The aim of Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s hunger strike
No one disputes that Orlando Zapata Tamayo died on a hunger strike. However, the Cuban regime claims that Orlando Zapata Tamayo had demanded: “a television, a personal kitchen, and a cell phone to call his family in order to end his hunger strike and regime sympathizers without citing the source repeat the claim.” Cuban political prisoner Abel Lopez Perez transferred to the same prison in Camaguey as Orlando Zapata Tamayo on December 3, 2009 and briefly saw him and heard from other prisoners “that a few days before being taken away, Zapata stood up and shouted, ‘People, don’t let yourselves be lied to.Don’t believe anything that they tell you.I’m not demanding a kitchen or any of the things they took away from me.I’m demanding an improvement of treatment for all prisoners, and so you all know, I am going to die for it.’”
When weighing the claims of the Cuban regime and a former Cuban political prisoner one should look at Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s background. This is a man who was arrested while on a hunger strike protesting the imprisonment of other prisoners of conscience who had been arrested with him in a sit-in in December of 2002 just days after he himself was released from prison in March of 2003. This fact, along with the rest of Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s trajectory as an activist would give more weight to Abel Lopez’s version of events.
Basis for the claim that Orlando Zapata Tamayo was murdered
Both Abel Lopez Perez and Reina Luisa Tamayo charge that Cuban prison officials denied Orlando Zapata Tamayo water in an effort to break him. Reina Luisa Tamayo in an interview with Yoani Sanchez, hours after her son’s death denounced that officials had denied him water. Abel Lopez corroborates the charge describing what went on: “Before Zapata was checked into the hospital, he was regularly taking some vitamins.He was in a weak state of health.A military chief known as ‘Gordo’, who was the one responsible for ordering all of Zapata’s things to be taken out of the cell and to stop giving him water, also took his bottle of vitamins and poured all the pills down a drain.He told him, ‘Those who are in protest here don’t drink vitamins.I think those are pills sent to you by the Yankees so you can continue your hunger strike.’Those were the exact words said to him, I verified them.His vitamins were taken away, as were any other medications.And they stopped giving him water for a while.”This type of practice was also documented in the 1966 death of Roberto López Chávez.Denying water to a man on a water only hunger strike is cruel treatment and most likely contributed to his death.
Zapata's mother holds up Orlando's blood stained shirt a product of a beating by prison guards
Finally, the campaign to equate engaging in a hunger strike with suicide is at best mistaken. Nonviolence expert, Michael Nagler in an Introduction to Nonviolence filmed at the University of California at Berkeley in the fall of 2006 offered the following analysis on hunger strikes within a nonviolent context:
"This is not a case of suicide. You are not killing yourself. You are risking death. What you are doing is putting your life into the hands of another person." ... "You are not killing yourself but you are saying to the person that your behavior is so unacceptable that if you continue it its going to kill me. It is an extreme case of taking on the suffering that is in a situation." ...This is different from a threat because what you are saying to the person is "I am going to exhibit to you mirror back to you the ultimate consequences of what you are doing." ... "This is an act of truth. You are killing us - you are killing our people and I'm going to show you that you are doing it to awaken your conscience."...Thats why you have to be carrying on a conversation on a nonverbal level.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo had been beaten and tortured on more than one occasion by prison guards and state security along with other prisoners. His body was scarred and his health in decline. For example AI reported that, on "October 20, 2003 [Orlando Zapata] was dragged along the floor of Combinado del Este Prison by prison officials after requesting medical attention, leaving his back full of lacerations." The case of Ariel Sigler Amaya is instructive. He had to threaten a hunger strike, although already emaciated and crippled, to obtain medical treatment to save his life. The hunger strike was not an act of suicide but rather self defense within the arsenal of nonviolent weapons.
Ariel Sigler Amaya (Physical deterioration while not on hunger strike)
Attacking Amnesty International and 75 Cuban Prisoners of Conscience
Apologists of the dictatorship in their attack on AI and 75 Cuban prisoners of conscience point to an Amnesty International 2008 report and its observation that: “because [some of the 75] received funds and/or materials from the United States government in order to engage in activities the authorities perceived as subversive and damaging to Cuba” that this is a contradiction describing it as a “serious crime.” But they fail to reproduce the quote in its entirety leaving out that “activities included publishing articles or giving interviews to US-funded media, communicating with international human rights organizations and having contact with entities or individuals viewed to be hostile.”
There are international standards that indicate what a legitimate claim of treason is and what is illegitimate and the charges made against the 75 fall far short. At a 1995 international conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, a set of principles that provide guidance regarding permissible justifications for restricting rights known today as the Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information was drafted. These principles invoke legitimate reasons to invoke national security interests which are: "protecting a country's existence or its territorial integrity against the use or threat of force, or its capacity to respond to the threat or use of force, whether from an external source, such as a military threat, or an internal source, such as incitement to violent overthrow of the government."
The Johannesburg Principles also outline illegitimate justifications for invoking national security interests which are: "protecting the government from embarrassment or exposure of wrongdoing, or to entrench a particular ideology, or to conceal information about the functioning of its public institutions, or to suppress industrial action."
The Cuban government's attack on foreign funding by either government or non-governmental funding of domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) is not unique the Russians and Venezuelans are passing or trying to pass laws to cut off outside funding streams to civil society. While in the Cuban case dissenting from the official government line means in most cases losing your job and in some cases also being kicked out of your home it is easy to see that the policy is to only permit the existence of pro-government voices. Another example, similar to Cuba, is Burma where the opposition faces brutal repression and the cutting off of domestic resources and thus needs to look for support from abroad.
Regimes, like the ones in Cuba and Burma, are desperate to suffocate all voices of dissent by demonizing, imprisoning, exiling, or killing them. Amnesty International's identification of prisoners of conscience is an important indicator of the presence or absence of basic freedoms in a country. The Johannesburg Principles exposes regimes, that hide behind the national security facade to impose a climate of fear, for what they are brutal dictatorships that systematically violate the human rights of their own citizens.
There is a big chasm between an individual advocating the violent overthrow of a government and using the force of arms to lash out against representatives of those in power and individuals exercising their fundamental human rights to achieve nonviolent change. The first is a political prisoner and the second is a prisoner of conscience.
The Campaign to Destroy Reina Luisa Tamayo
The murder of Orlando Zapata Tamayo calls for justice. However, right now Reina Luisa Tamayo, the mother of Orlando Zapata Tamayo faces a campaign to destroy her both physically and psychologically carried out by a ruthless dictatorship with an international reach. Regime officials have physically assaulted and terrorized her when she has tried to visit Zapata’s grave and attend Mass. Her remaining children and grandchildren are harassed and mistreated.
At the same time because of the outcry over Orlando Zapata’s death and brutal attacks on the Ladies in White a large number of prisoners of conscience, along with their families, have been sent into exile but there are a group of prisoners of conscience who have rejected exile in Europe declaring that they wish to live free in Cuba. They are still in prison despite an agreement reached with the Ladies in White by the regime through mediation with the Cuban Catholic Church that said they would be free by November 7, 2010.Please do not allow ideology to blind you to the great injustices being committed in Cuba and speak up for Reina Luisa Tamayo and these prisoners of conscience seeking to remain in the island.
"Still obtuse forces of the tyranny are thrown at a heroic mother who had to bury her son who was killed for defending a cause that was just."- The Declaration of Móstoles , September 5, 2010
"I’ve learned of the death of hunger striker Franklin Brito. It appears that Hugo Chavez now has his own Orlando Zapata" - Yoani Sanchez, August 31, 2010 on twitter
Seven months have passed since the world learned on that afternoon in late February that a man had died on a hunger strike defending human rights and dignity. The dictatorship in Cuba had counted on no one paying attention to the plight of a bricklayer and carpenter who had engaged in grassroots human rights activism, but he was not a leader of a movement, but a humble activist.
The regime's state security had not counted on Reina Luisa Tamayo who would speak out for her son and defend her son's life until the end. When the dictatorship tried to smear her late son's good name she continued and continues to this day demanding justice for him and setting the record straight as to who Orlando Zapata Tamayo was.
Seven months later Reina has a blog and a twitter account and is attending mass on Sunday's and visiting her son's grave despite state security operations designed to intimidate and on more than one occasion physically assault her, her family, and friends trying to join her in remembering Orlando Zapata Tamayo.
Now the dictatorship may have thought that after seven months people would start to forget their heinous crime, and they would be able to get away with crushing Reina Luisa Tamayo and the rest of Orlando Zapata Tamayo's family. They were wrong.
On September 12, 2010 around the world in Brussels, Madrid, Miami, Tampa, Los Angeles, Santiago, and elsewhere people of good will marched in solidarity with Reina Luisa Tamayo and in memory of Orlando Zapata Tamayo. Historic figures of the Cuban Revolution such as Huber Matos spoke out on her behalf in Madrid and Juan Juan Almeida, son of Juan Almeida, spoke up for her in Miami. Videos of the events were uploaded on to youtube and are available below:
Huber Matos in Madrid at Rally in Support of Reina Luisa Tamayo on September 12, 2010
Rally for Reina Luisa Tamayo in Madrid, Spain on September 12, 2010
Marc Masferrer of Uncommon Sense speaks at Rally for Reina Luisa Tamayo in Tampa on September 12, 2010.
Video from demonstrations for Reina Luisa Tamayo in Miami, FL followed by images from Los Angeles, Brussels, Tampa, and elsewhere on September 12, 2010
When Venezuelan patriot and human rights defender Franklin Brito died after a prolonged hunger strike and being kidnapped by Venezuelan security Orlando Zapata Tamayo's name was immediately given as a point of reference. Yoani Sanchez on her twitter account announced:"I’ve learned of the death of hunger striker Franklin Brito. It appears that Hugo Chavez now has his own Orlando Zapata."
Orlando Zapata Tamayo lives on wherever a man is willing to stand up and resist evil without engaging in evil through non-violent civic resistance. Orlando Zapata's path is the same path taken by Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. it is the path of righteousness. It is a path being taken today by Cuban dissident Vladimir Alejo Miranda who has been on hunger strike for more than 60 days demanding his right to work.
From Cuba into Exile in Miami
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