Vol. 74/No. 18      May 10, 2010

BY MICHAEL PARENTI
AND ALICIA JRAPKO  
For more than half a century Western political leaders and their corporate media have waged a disinformation war against socialist Cuba. Nor is there any sign that they are easing up. A recent example is the case of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, an inmate who died in a Cuban prison in February 2010 after an 82-day hunger strike.

Zapata’s death sparked an outcry from Western capitalist media and official sources, including of course the United States. Almost without exception, in literally thousands of reports, the corporate media portrayed him as a “political prisoner” and a “political dissident”—without offering any supporting specifics. In March 2010 the European Union voted to condemn Cuba for his demise.

Since 2004, Amnesty International has treated Zapata Tamayo as one of Cuba’s 75 “prisoners of conscience,” without offering evidence to buttress this assertion. Like the Western media, Amnesty failed to specify what were the political activities that had led to Zapata’s imprisonment.

An Amnesty International article (24 February 2010) stated that in May 2004 Zapata Tamayo was sentenced to three years in prison for “public disorder” and “resistance.” According to some reports he launched his hunger strike not only to protest his conditions of detention but to demand a personal kitchen in his cell, a television set, and a cell phone, amenities that were not likely to materialize.

Zapata was subsequently tried several times on charges of assaulting guards and “disorder in a penal establishment.” The offenses began to add up. At the time of his fast he was facing a total sentence of 36 years. Again Amnesty made no mention of any political activities.

Cuban doctors attempted to keep Zapata alive with intravenous feedings and other stratagems. One psychologist testified that she tried to convince him to cease the hunger strike and try to register his grievances by other means. Zapata’s mother remarked that her son had the best Cuban doctors at his bedside and she thanked them for their assistance. Later she would change her story and claim that he was a “dissident” who had been mistreated.

According to the Cuban writer Enrique Ubieta Gómez, Zapata was a common criminal who was convicted of “unlawful break-in” (1993), “assault” (2000), “fraud” (2000), and “public disorder” (2002). One of his serious transgressions occurred in 2000 when he attacked someone named Leonardo Simón with a machete, fracturing his skull and inflicting other injuries.

Ubieta Gómez concluded that Zapata had been involved in a wide range of criminal doings, none of which were remotely political. He was in jail for breaching the peace, “public damage,” resistance to authority, two charges of fraud, “public exhibitionism,” repeated charges of felonious assault, and being illegally armed.

Despite this extensive rap sheet Zapata was paroled in March 2003, 11 days before the arrests of the 75 so-called “prisoners of conscience.” Later that same month he was charged with another crime and imprisoned for parole violation.

To repeat: while his 2003 arrest happened to come within days of the imprisonment of the 75, Zapata was never part of that group. The Cuban government never accused him of conspiring with—or accepting funds and materials from—a foreign power, charges that were leveled against the 75.

Since 2003, at least 20 of the 75 have been released due to health problems, shrinking the number still incarcerated to 55—a level of humanitarian leniency not likely to be emulated in the U.S. criminal justice system. Apparently this news has yet to reach the U.S. media.  
 
Term ‘dissidents’ misrepresents issue
The Cuban government argues that to describe the 75 (or 55) as being “prisoners of conscience” or “political dissidents” is to misrepresent the issue. They were never tried for holding dissenting views but for unlawfully collaborating with a hostile foreign power, receiving funds and materials from the U.S. interests section, with the intent to subvert the existing political system in Cuba.

Many countries have such laws, including the U.S.A. As Arnold August points out, the U.S. Penal Code, under Chapter 115 entitled “Treason, Sedition, and Subversive Activities,” Section 2381 stipulates that any U.S. citizen who “adheres to” or gives “aid and comfort … within the United States or elsewhere” to a country that U.S. authorities consider to be an enemy “is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000.” So too, Cuba has legislation directed at those who are funded by hostile foreign powers.

In comparison to the media’s tidal outcry on behalf of Cubans imprisoned in Cuba, consider the coverage accorded the five Cubans imprisoned in the United States. During almost 12 years of incarceration, the Cuban Five have been largely ignored by the corporate media and consequently remain mostly unknown to the U.S. public.

The Five possessed no weapons and committed no act of terror, sabotage, or espionage. Gerardo Hernández, Fernando González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, and René González came to the United States during the 1990s to infiltrate and monitor the terrorist activities of private right-wing groups of Cuban exiles.

In 1998 after receiving evidence of impending terrorist activities planned against Cuba, the FBI went into action. But instead of arresting the right-wing Cubans who were planning the attacks from U.S. soil, the feds apprehended the five Cubans who were working at uncovering such plots.

The five were tried in a federal court in Miami, home to over half a million Cuban exiles. Miami is a community with a long history of hostility toward the Cuban government—a record that a federal appellate court in the United States later described as a “perfect storm” of prejudice, designed to make a fair trial impossible.

The Cuban Five were kept in solitary confinement for 17 months, denied their right to bail and the right to a change of venue. After the longest trial in the history of the United States, they were sentenced by a jury in Miami to four life sentences plus 77 years collectively.

If U.S. rulers really are interested in fighting oppression and injustice, they might start closer to home. Thus far President Barack Obama has shown no interest in the case. (Why does this not surprise us?) But other more genuine souls at home and abroad continue to press for justice.  
 
 
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