How political prisoners die

Cuban Orlando Zapato Tamayo did not come from a family of intellectuals or rich people whose hostility to the Cuban revolution is inherited. He was a worker. But he loved freedom and hated those who turned his homeland into one big socialist concentration camp. This love of freedom and hatred of the communist dictatorship led him to the dissident movement.

Orlando was not a prominent figure in this movement, he was not a leader, but his honest dissident activities were enough for the political police to arrest him in the spring of 2003. He was then among those dissidents who, on March 11, went on a hunger strike in Havana demanding the release of all Cuban political prisoners. On March 20, at about 6 a.m., police and state security officers burst into the apartment of the hunger strikers. Former political prisoners Rene Gomez Manzano and Felix Bonnet were taken to their homes in police cars. Four others - Marta Beatriz Roque, Nelson Aguiar, Nelson Molineta and Orlando Zapato Tamayo - were taken to the State Security Directorate at Villa Marista (analogous to the Moscow Lubyanka).

This was Cuba's Black Spring. Over the course of several days in March, 75 of the most active dissidents – journalists, scientists, workers, doctors, and engineers – were arrested on the island. Two weeks later the trials began. Orlando was tried together with the leader of the Assembly for Civil Society, Marta Beatriz Roque, the journalist and translator Adolfo Fernandez Sainz, the labor leader Nelson Molinet, the chairman of the Orthodox Party of Cuba, Nelson Alberto Aguiar, and the member of the November 30 Movement, Mikhail Barzaga Lugo. The accusation against them was based on the testimony of state security agent Aleida Godinez, who was embedded in the dissident environment. As evidence of the crimes, surveillance videos of dissidents were presented to the court, which show them entering or leaving the American mission building in Havana, as well as entering the house of Marta Beatriz Roque. All defendants were defended by lawyer Amelia Rodriguez Cala. She insisted on the innocence of the defendants and demanded their complete acquittal.

For his solidarity with political prisoners and steadfastness during the trial, Orlando Zapata Tamayo received 36 years in prison.

On March 1 of this year, a member of the Executive Committee of the Christian Liberation Movement of Cuba, 47-year-old political prisoner Efren Fernandez Fernandez, a member of the Executive Committee of the Christian Liberation Movement of Cuba, who is serving a 12-year prison sentence, managed to transmit his notes on the fate of Orlando Zapato Tamayo by telephone from the Havana prison of Guanaja.

Fernandez was brought to the maximum security prison in Guanaja in May 2004. He still remembers stories told by criminals about how jailers beat Orlando. Every day, Fernandez could see Orlando's cell window from his cell window. It was only 30 meters from where Fernandez remains to this day. They then got used to talking to each other, despite the screams and noise. Sometimes they even managed to exchange notes, which they passed through criminal prisoners if there were no guards nearby. Zapata wrote to him: “When I was brought to this prison in 2003, I was placed in bunker No. 6, where First Lieutenant Emilio Gilarte Ramirez and Sergeant Leonel Torres Regni beat me terribly, leaving huge bruises.”

This was just the beginning of a long history of bullying in Orlando. Many times, Fernandez saw guards take him out, handcuffed and shirtless, throw him to the floor and drag him by his feet the entire 200 meters along the cement floor toward the military zone. This inhuman path also passed through a gravel basketball court, after which the skin turned into rags.

In late 2003, Fernandez says, during a general inspection, prison guards tied up Orlando, threw him to the floor and First Lieutenant Quintana began kicking him in the head. Immediately after this, a crowd of guards began to beat Orlando with particular hatred and sadism. At the same time, several guards handcuffed him again and brought him before the prison commander, Lieutenant Colonel Wilfredo Velazquez Dominguez. The lieutenant colonel hit him in the face with his fist, causing blood to flow. After this, the guards continued to beat Orlando with batons.

Our brother was the victim of repeated attacks and beatings in Guanajay prison, Fernandez says. The beatings were so widespread that even the woman, Captain Delia, slapped him. He was also beaten by Officer Felito, Sergeants Alejandro, Orestes, Pileta and Reinier and many others.

One very dark night in 2006, at Tako-Tako Prison, they put Orlando in the punishment cell for shouting slogans and going on a hunger strike due to poor treatment, terrible conditions and disrespect for the rights of prisoners. Prison officials subjected him to a form of torture known as the "chair." After Orlando was beaten, his hands were handcuffed behind his back, his legs were also handcuffed, and then a third pair of handcuffs were connected to the previous two. They left him on the floor in such an unbearable position for several days. However, he did not give up and continued to shout: “Down with Fidel!”, “Down with dictatorship,” “Long live human rights!”

Hordes of mosquitoes, beetles and rats made this torture so painful that ordinary criminal prisoners Ramon Acosta Moreno, Michel Jauregui Perez, Enrique Gonzalez Silva, Michel Rodriguez Roldan and Jesus, who lived next to the punishment cell, asked the prison soldiers to stop the abuse. Major Orlando, the prison inspector, promised them that he would convey their request to officers at the provincial level, since, he noted, the order to punish Orlando Zapata came from higher authorities.

Time passed, but the major did not return. Then the criminal prisoners began to scream and make noise, banging plastic containers on the floor. They tried to force the guards to return. Prisoners threatened to join Orlando Zapata's hunger strike. Only after this did the guards remove Orlando’s handcuffs, but that same night, when everyone was already asleep, they and their dogs burst into the cell and beat him with a whole squad.

However, Fernandez says, the Cuban government was unable to silence human rights activist Orlando Zapata Tamaya, who never wavered in his peaceful fight for freedom in Cuba. It was not possible to break him.

“Why was my son given such a long sentence - 36 years? – says the mother of political prisoner Reina L. Tamayo. – After all, he didn’t kill anyone, didn’t rob anyone? Why was he constantly beaten in prison, why was he bullied? After the beatings, he was hospitalized several times, but more often than not he was denied any medical care. He suffered from constant headaches from a concussion suffered as a result of beatings in prison. And more than once he went on hunger strike in protest against the abuse of himself and other political prisoners.”

In November 2009, Orlando Zapato Tamayo went on an indefinite hunger strike. He demanded that the rights of prisoners - both political and criminals - be respected. He demanded that Cuban authorities treat prisoners as human beings. He demanded the release of all political prisoners in Cuba.

Neither the prison authorities nor the Cuban communist authorities paid any attention to his demands. His condition rapidly deteriorated. He did not receive any medical care. He was eventually transferred to a prison hospital in the province of Camagüey, and from there to a civil hospital in Havana. But it was already too late. On February 23, 2010, on the 85th day of his hunger strike, Orlando died.

“He didn’t kill anyone, didn’t rob anyone. He went through many prisons in this country just for being a human rights activist. He only wanted Cuban citizens to have basic human rights... My son died in the fight for democracy, for the freedom of the people of Cuba,” says the mother of a political prisoner.

He was 42 years old. He defended human rights in the inhumane conditions of a Cuban prison. In his solitary confinement, he fought against the communist dictatorship, while in the rest of the world people frolicked at sports Olympics, took families on vacation to Varadero, or received Cuban officials as dear guests. The desperate voices of Cuban political prisoners barely reach the ears of the well-fed and otherwise compromising West.

“I feel pain, I can hardly bear this grief,” says Reina L. Tamayo. “God forbid that any mother see her son dead... And I conjure humanity to demand the release of other political prisoners before they are forced to take my son into account.”

Will anyone hear her?

PS After the death of Orlando Zapato Tamayo, 48-year-old Cuban Guillermo Fariñas took over the baton of the hunger strike. He demands the release of 26 seriously ill political prisoners. Today, May 14, is the 79th day of the hunger strike. If Fariñas dies, one of the leaders of the Cuban opposition, Felix Bonnet Caracos, intends to take up the baton of the hunger strike.