15 years after the death of Zapata Tamayo, the clamor of justice for Cuban political prisoners remains intact

On February 23, 2010, the death of the Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo, after a prolonged hunger strike in prison, the complaint for prison conditions on the island raised worldwide. The same cause that defends today, 15 years later, hundreds of human rights activists and recognized international organizations.

The opponent, born in Santiago de Cuba in 1967, had been imprisoned in 2003 during the so -called «black spring», the repressive wave in which the communist regime arrested a total of 75 independent journalists and promoters of the Varela project.

On May 18, 2004, the mason and plumber member of the Republican alternative movement was sentenced to three years of deprivation of liberty, but once imprisoned they punished their political activism with another 36 years of condemnation for the positions of disobedience, contempt.

The hunger strike that would catalyze the campaign for the release of the prisoners of the Group of the 75, began on December 3, 2009 in the provincial jail of Holguín. At that time, Zapata Tamayo was demanding that they allowed them to wear a white uniform that distinguished them from common prisoners with common inmate, and improve prison conditions in the country.

His cause brothers of the 75 group have repeatedly denounced that the prison authorities committed abuse against him during those long days when he was vulnerable by extreme fasting. Also that they denied water intermittently for 18 days, which caused a renal failure.

In search of making it falter in his determination not to ingest food, he was transferred to Prison Kilo 8, from Camagüey; From there, to the combined jail of the East, in Havana, and finally to the hospital where he died, after 86 days on hunger strike.

«They already murdered Orlando Zapata Tamayo, they already ended with him, at three in the afternoon today. This has been a premeditated murder,» his mother Queen Luisa Tamayo denounced firmly, at hours of his death.

The death of the political prisoner monopolized headlines in the international press, which took note of the cruelty of the regime against his political opponents and the helplessness of the criminal population on the island.

As the center for a free Cuba, the release of the prisoners of the group of 75 «is attributed to the hunger strike of Orlando Zapata Tamayo and the international impact that it generated in the difficult situation of the political prisoners in Cuba «.