Cuban Dissident’s Death Should Renew Front Against Castro

Michael Orion Powell /

Cuban President Fidel Castro (L) and his brother Raul, chat on December 23, 2003 in Havana, during a meeting of the Cuban Parliament. Raul Castro succeeded his brother Fidel Castro as the president of Cuba on February 24, 2008, in a historic power shift expected to keep Havana firmly on its communist path, officials said.

As noted before at the Foundry, the free expression that we take for granted in the United States is unknown to those living under the Castro regime. In a chilling reminder of the cold authoritarian repression that still exists only 90 miles from the American mainland, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a Cuban political prisoner, died Tuesday. His death came after he had initiated an 80-day hunger strike aimed at improving his conditions.

Raul Castro made a rare motion of “lamenting” over the death of Zapata. In a depressingly predictable move, however, Castro managed to somehow lay the death of Zapata at the feet of the United States, inferring that tortures and executions only occur in Cuba at the Guantanamo Bay military base, which is of course controlled by the U.S. (more…)