By syndicated columnist Miguel Perez:
A Cuban political prisoner starved himself to death last week to protest against the human rights violations of the Castro communist dictatorship, but don't expect the kind of world outrage and condemnation that would have followed if this tragedy had occurred anywhere else.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo, 42 — recognized by Amnesty International as a "prisoner of conscience" — was a black man. But don't count on African-American leaders to condemn the Cuban apartheid. Don't count on black world leaders, either, not even Nelson Mandela. After all, from their perspective, challenging the world's anti-American despots is simply not politically correct.
When it comes to Cuba and the atrocities of the Castro brothers, many world leaders are willing to overlook all kinds of cruelty. Propelled by unscrupulous business interests or simply an envy-triggered need to defy the United States, these so-called "progressives" are willing to accept — for the Cuban people — human and civil rights violations they never would tolerate on their own soil.
Their hypocrisy is repulsive.Zapata went on a hunger strike Dec. 3 to protest against the beatings and other abuses committed by his guards in Cuba's Kilo 7 gulag, where prisoners languish for years for the mere crime of opposing the government.
Arrested in 2003 as part of a government crackdown that sent 75 prominent dissidents to prison, Zapata was charged with "disobedience" and initially sentenced to three years in prison. Yet Feb. 23, when he died after refusing solid food for weeks, he was facing some 30 more years behind bars. That's because his sentence had been extended for more acts of "disobedience" — such as refusing to wear prison garb — while he was incarcerated.
When Cuban dissidents are detained, there is really no way of telling how long the government will keep them behind bars. Sentences are really indefinite. And that's because these Cuban martyrs usually continue their daring activism once they are behind bars.
Having no other way to protest, they constantly are going on hunger strikes and refusing to wear the uniforms of common prisoners, thus earning the respect of those who follow their Gandhi-like courage to defy the government.Under its single-party communist system, the Cuban government doesn't tolerate political opposition. Despite all the evidence gathered by international human rights organizations, the government actually claims it has no political prisoners, because dissidents are considered either common criminals or paid agents of the U.S. government.
In Zapata's case, both of those arguments were made in Cuba's government-controlled news media last week. According to Granma, the Communist Party's daily newspaper, "forces of the counterrevolution" are making a martyr out of Zapata when he was actually a common criminal.
Yet seeing as it is obvious that the Cuban government could have prevented Zapata's death, perhaps the common criminals are those running the Cuban government.
When Raul took over the reins of Cuban power from his brother Fidel, there was widespread speculation that the younger Castro would be much more pragmatic and willing to ease the repressive grip his brother has had on the island for 50 years.
Yet despite U.S. overtures, according to Human Rights Watch, Raul has turned out to be as good a tyrant as his brother, proving what skeptics always predicted: The Castro brothers will resist any change that would undermine their totalitarian authority.
Under Raul, according to Human Rights Watch, "dissidents who try to express their views are often beaten, arbitrarily arrested, and subjected to public acts of repudiation."
Yet their sacrifices are shamefully ignored by apolitical tourists, unscrupulous business tycoons, Hollywood celebrities and U.S. legislators who visit Havana wearing horse blinders and refuse to see the plight of the Cuban people.Zapata was already in a Cuban prison, considered among the world's worst, when a delegation of mostly Congressional Black Caucus members went to Havana last year, made no effort to meet with imprisoned dissidents and embraced government officials who have blood on their hands. The release of dissidents like Zapata was not something they felt should be a precondition for the United States to re-establish diplomatic relations with the world's oldest dictatorship.
Zapata already was languishing in prison when Colombian pop singer Juanes and a few other useful fools went to Havana last summer to perform in a concert that gave legitimacy to a murderous regime. Zapata's health already was deteriorating as the Obama administration kept making unreciprocated overtures to the Castro tyrants in recent weeks.
Amazingly, Zapata died on the same day that legislation to ease the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba was being proposed in Congress. The bill would end the ban on U.S. travel to the island and make it easier for the Castro regime to buy food from the United States. But it would do nothing to stop Castro's henchmen from continuing to trample over the Cuban people.
When word of Zapata's death began to spread throughout the island last week, the government cranked up its repression machine to squelch possible protests immediately. Authorities reportedly began a new round of dissident detentions, which is standard operating procedure for the most repressive regime in the Western Hemisphere. And when Zapata was buried, access to his hometown of Banes, in Cuba's eastern Holguin province, was limited to prevent a huge funeral.
Nevertheless, five other dissidents, including four currently in prison, reportedly have begun new hunger strikes in a new effort to pressure the regime to release political prisoners.
In the meantime, in Washington, instead of seeking similarly courageous methods to pressure the Cuban regime to act a little more humanely, political observers are worried that Zapata's death represents a setback to U.S.-Cuba relations! Some of them actually look at it from the Cuban perspective, asking whether now it will be possible for Cuba to pressure the United States to lift the embargo. It's nauseating!
The Cuban government allows a dissident to die in a peaceful protest and submits hundreds of others to beatings, humiliation and unjust incarceration, yet there are people still looking for ways to appease the Castro regime.Count them: The Cuban government; U.S. legislators who, when they go on their Havana junkets, keep embracing Cuban tyrants; the performers who go there and ignore the plight of the dissidents; the tourists who stay in apartheid resorts so they don't have to see the suffering of the Cuban people; the world leaders who befriend the Castro brothers only to defy the United States; the members of the Obama administration who keep making unreciprocated overtures to a regime that deserves only condemnation — in my book, they are all responsible for Zapata's death.
© 2009 Creators Syndicate.
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