At least four prisoners who were arrested as part of a mass roundup of dissidents in 2003 along with the dead dissident, Orlando Zapata Tamayo — who stopped eating solid foods on Dec. 3 to protest his detention and died on Feb. 23 — have begun their own hunger strikes, according to human rights activists. A fifth hunger striker, an outspoken psychologist and independent journalist, has joined them, according to activists on the island.
Freedom House, an organization that ranks countries on their level of freedom and considers Cuba “not free,” called Mr. Zapata the first prisoner in Cuba to die by starving himself since Pedro Luis Boitel, a student leader and poet, did so in 1972.
The death of Mr. Zapata, who was not widely known in Cuba but was labeled a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International, has forced Cuban authorities to engage in damage control.
Cuba’s critics place responsibility for Mr. Zapata’s death on the Castro government, with his mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, accusing government officials of murder. Mr. Zapata, 42, had been denied water during his hunger strike for an extended period while being held at a maximum security prison in the eastern province of Camagüey, causing kidney failure, Cuban human rights officials have said. He later developed pneumonia at a Camagüey hospital before being sent to a prison hospital in Havana, where he died, activists say.
“The only way he would die is if the order was to let him die,” said one former political prisoner, Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, adding that the authorities had forced nutrients on him during his own hunger strike and that they could have done the same for Mr. Zapata. “In my 22 years, I had to do more than a dozen hunger strikes. The only form of protest you had was a hunger strike.”
President Raúl Castro said Wednesday that he regretted the death but that it was the United States government, not Cuba, that bore responsibility. Mr. Zapata was arrested in 2003 with 75 others whom Cuba considered mercenaries working for Washington.
Mr. Zapata was initially charged with “disrespect,” “public disorder” and “resistance,” but he later received decades of additional jail time for what the authorities described as disruptive behavior behind bars.
“We took him to Cuba’s best hospitals, and he died; we very much regret it,” Mr. Castro said during a joint appearance with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, according to The Associated Press.
Castro added that the only torture being carried out in Cuba was that performed by the American military at the base in Guantánamo Bay, where detainees have conducted hunger strikes as well. “The day the United States decides to live in peace with us, all these problems will end,” Mr. Castro said.
Granma, the state newspaper, did not mention Mr. Zapata’s death, but it featured an article on Friday that deplored prison conditions in the United States.
Mr. Zapata’s declining health was widely known as his hunger strike extended into its 11th week, and American officials said they raised the issue with their Cuban counterparts at previously scheduled talks over immigration held in Havana on Feb. 19, just four days before he died.
Hunger strikes, which are not uncommon in Cuban prisons, typically prompt reprisals by the authorities, said Human Rights Watch, citing the case of Yordis García Fournier, who stopped eating for more than a month in 2008 and was placed in solitary confinement and prevented from receiving family visits.
“Left with no other remedy for abuses, political prisoners routinely undertake hunger strikes and other drastic measures to call attention to their treatment,” the organization said in a report released late last year that criticized Raúl Castro as being as aggressive toward political prisoners as his predecessor and brother, Fidel Castro.
Other recent hunger strikers include Alexander Santos Hernánez, a longtime activist, who went on a 23-day hunger strike in 2006 to put pressure on prison officials to grant him medical attention; and two detained journalists, Victor Rolando Arroyo Carmona and Juan Adolfo Fernández Sainez, who have stopped eating to protest prison conditions.
In 2009, after a long imprisonment, Jorge Luis García Pérez, who is known as Antúnez, began a hunger strike in his home to call for an end to abuses against political prisoners. While serving his 17-year sentence, he had founded a political prisoner group named after Pedro Luis Boitel, who undertook his fatal hunger strike while behind bars for criticizing the Castro government.
The most frequent Cuban hunger striker may be Guillermo Fariñas, who stopped eating for several months in 2006 to press for unrestricted access to the Internet. At the time, it was reported that he had carried out 20 hunger strikes since 1995.
Mr. da Silva was criticized back home in Brazil for not speaking out against Cuba’s treatment of Mr. Zapata during his talks with the island’s leadership, including a face-to-face meeting with Fidel Castro.
Mr. da Silva expressed sorrow for Mr. Zapata’s death but also criticized his use of a hunger strike, noting that he once started one, but suspended it, while he was imprisoned as trade-union leader decades ago. “I am against hunger strikes,” he said.
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