Cuba Dissident dies

international | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Wednesday February 24, 2010 13:31 by Sean - None

Cuba Dissident dies on hunger strike in Cuban jail

Cuba Dissident dies on hunger strike in Cuban jail. Amnesty prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo 'unrecognisable' after 85-day fast over beatings
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C A Cuban political prisoner died yesterday after an 85-day hunger strike over alleged beatings and degrading jail conditions.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo, 42, one of Amnesty International's "prisoners of conscience", was so emaciated he was almost unrecognisable when he died at a prison hospital in Havana.

Jailed in 2003 during a political crackdown, he is the first dissident to starve himself to death in almost four decades.

"They have assassinated Orlando Zapata Tamayo. The death of my son has been a premediated murder," his mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, told the Miami-based El Nuevo Herald in a telephone interview. "They managed to do what they wanted. They ended the life of a fighter for human rights."

There was no immediate response from the Castro government. Authorities have depicted political prisoners as US-funded mercenaries who plotted "counter-revolutionary" acts against the communist regime.

He stopped eating solid foods on December 3 to protest against what he said were repeated beatings by guards and other abuses at Kilo 7 prison in the eastern province of Camagüey. His back was "tattooed with blows" from beatings, according to his mother.

Two weeks ago she reported he was "skin and bones, his stomach is just a hole" and that bedsores covered his legs. He was so gaunt nurses were unable to get intravenous lines for fluids into his arms and used veins on his neck instead.
Relatives were transporting Zapata's remains to his hometown in Holguin province, said Vladimiro Roca, a leading dissident.

Once one of the lesser known political prisoners, earlier this month his case reportedly triggered street protests – a rarity in the tightly-controlled island – which led to dozens being detained.

The last activist to starve himself to death was the student leader and poet, Pedro Luis Boitel, who died in prison in 1972.