"Since for the Communist there is no divine government, no absolute moral order, there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently almost anything—force, violence, murder, lying—is a justifiable means to the “millennial” end. This type of relativism was abhorrent to me." - Martin Luther King Jr. (1958)
Recovering facts from the memory hole
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was tortured from 2003 until his death on February 23, 2010 but following his death the Castro regime continued the campaign to obliterate his memory in death. The Cuban dictatorship and their agents of influence continue to employee these tactics today. What was done to Orlando should be a cautionary tale to all who want to give Raul Castro, and his dictatorship, the benefit of the doubt.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was moved around several
prisons, including Quivicán Prison, Guanajay Prison, and Combinado del
Este Prison in Havana. Amnesty International reported that on October 20, 2003 Orlando "was dragged along the floor of the Combinado del Este Prison by prison officials after he requested medical attention, leaving his back full of lacerations." Orlando managed to smuggle a letter out following a brutal beating that was published by Cubanet in April of 2004:
Orlando began his last hunger strike on December 3, 2009 refusing to wear the uniform of a common prisoner. His books and food had been confiscated when he was transferred as punishment to Kilo 8 prison in Camagüey.
Never for one moment were demands responded to by either his jailers or the political police. During the water only hunger strike in an effort to break his spirit officials denied him water for more than two weeks.
He was also taken to the Amalia Simoni Hospital and left exposed in a room with the air conditioning set very cold which caused him to contract pneumonia which worsened his already critical condition. Orlando Zapata Tamayo died 82 days later on February 23, 2010.
Orlando died after seven years of beatings, torture and lengthening prison terms for continuing his human rights activism while imprisoned. The dictatorship than began its systematic aim to obliterate and denigrate him.
Trivializing the aim of his hunger strike
The Castro regime's official media misrepresented what Orlando Zapata Tamayo had demanded claiming that he had died for: “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.”1,2
Cuban political prisoner Abel Lopez Perez on December 3, 2009 was transferred to the same prison in Camaguey where Orlando Zapata Tamayo. Abel 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.’”3
Fake News
It is a sad state of affairs that much of the international media in Cuba have not caught on to these practices and regurgitate the Castro regime's position without underlining the skepticism it merits. Instead some hedge their language rather than get at the facts of the matter.
Sources
Recovering facts from the memory hole
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was tortured from 2003 until his death on February 23, 2010 but following his death the Castro regime continued the campaign to obliterate his memory in death. The Cuban dictatorship and their agents of influence continue to employee these tactics today. What was done to Orlando should be a cautionary tale to all who want to give Raul Castro, and his dictatorship, the benefit of the doubt.
 |
| Orlando's mom, Reina Luisa Tamayo, holds up son's bloodied shirt |
"My dear brothers in the internal opposition in Cuba. I have many things to say to you, but I did not want to do it with paper and ink, because I hope to go to you one day when our country is free without the Castro dictatorship. Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]."*This type of mistreatment went on for years. Orlando Zapata Tamayo was pushed into undergoing hunger strikes as a last measure to try to save his own life, and dignity as a human being.
Orlando began his last hunger strike on December 3, 2009 refusing to wear the uniform of a common prisoner. His books and food had been confiscated when he was transferred as punishment to Kilo 8 prison in Camagüey.
Never for one moment were demands responded to by either his jailers or the political police. During the water only hunger strike in an effort to break his spirit officials denied him water for more than two weeks.
He was also taken to the Amalia Simoni Hospital and left exposed in a room with the air conditioning set very cold which caused him to contract pneumonia which worsened his already critical condition. Orlando Zapata Tamayo died 82 days later on February 23, 2010.
Orlando died after seven years of beatings, torture and lengthening prison terms for continuing his human rights activism while imprisoned. The dictatorship than began its systematic aim to obliterate and denigrate him.
 |
| Cuban human rights defender and martyr Orlando Zapata Tamayo |
The Castro regime's official media misrepresented what Orlando Zapata Tamayo had demanded claiming that he had died for: “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.”1,2
Cuban political prisoner Abel Lopez Perez on December 3, 2009 was transferred to the same prison in Camaguey where Orlando Zapata Tamayo. Abel 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.’”3
When
weighing the claims of the Castro regime, the official media, and agents of influence against 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 December 2002 sit-in 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 than the dictatorship's.
 |
| Orlando Zapata Tamayo photographed with prominent Cuban dissidents. |
Claimed that Orlando Zapata Tamayo was not a dissident despite having claimed so in the past
The Castro regime claimed that he was a common criminal and that he had never been a Cuban dissident. This necessitated ignoring that Orlando Zapata Tamayo had appeared photographed in the Cuban government’s own publication Los Disidentes, in photos prior to his 2003 arrest where he was recognized by 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. On 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 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.”4
 |
| Orlando Zapata Tamayo: Before and after |
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was murdered
Both
Abel Lopez Perez and Reina Luisa Tamayo (Orlando's mother) 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.5
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.”6
This type of practice was also documented in the 1966 death of Roberto López Chávez.7, 8 Denying water to a man on a water only hunger strike is cruel treatment that contributed to his death.
Libeling Orlando Zapata Tamayo outside of Cuba
Professor Salim Lamrani in his November 23, 2010 article “Cuba, the Corporate Media and the Suicide of Orlando Zapata Tamayo” in The Huffington Post
libeled 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 Amnesty 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.”9
International
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.10
Fake News
It is a sad state of affairs that much of the international media in Cuba have not caught on to these practices and regurgitate the Castro regime's position without underlining the skepticism it merits. Instead some hedge their language rather than get at the facts of the matter.
Sources
- Weissert, Will “Cuba TV Report Denies Gov't Let Hunger Striker Die” Associated Press March 1, 2010 http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=9983762
- Parenti, Michael Parenti and Jrapko, Alicia “Cuban Prisoners, Here and There” MRZINE 4/15/2010 http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/pj150410.html republished by the Cuban Foreign Ministry at http://embacu.cubaminrex.cu/Default.aspx?tabid=18180 on 4/19/2010
- Felipe Rojas, Luis “Abel Remembers the Last Days of Zapata in a Prison of Camaguey” Crossing the Barbed Wire November 24, 2010 http://cruzarlasalambradaseng.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/abel-remembers-the-last-days-of-zapata-in-a-prison-of-camaguey/
- Amnesty International “CUBA Newly declared prisoners of conscience” January 29, 2004 http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR25/002/2004/en/308bf23e-d648-11dd-ab95-a13b602c0642/amr250022004en.html
- Sanchez, Yoani “Orlando Zapata Tamayo's Mother Speaks After Her Son's Death” The Huffington Post February 24, 2010 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/orlando-zapata-tamayos-mo_b_475006.html
- Felipe Rojas, Luis “Abel Remembers the Last Days of Zapata in a Prison of Camaguey” Crossing the Barbed Wire November 24, 2010 http://cruzarlasalambradaseng.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/abel-remembers-the-last-days-of-zapata-in-a-prison-of-camaguey/
- Valladares, Armando Against All Hope: The Prison Memoirs of Armando Valladares (1st edition Knopf April 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
- Amnesty International “Cuba: Five years too many, new government must release jailed dissidents” Amnesty International March 18, 2008 http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/cuba-five-years-too-many-new-government-must-release-jailed-dissidents-2
- Human Rights Watch New Castro, Same Cuba: Political Prisoners in the Post-Fidel Era November 18, 2009 HRW http://www.hrw.org/en/node/86554
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