By IANS/EFE,
Toledo (Spain) : The Spanish government has said that it “deeply deplores” the death of Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo and regrets that the human rights situation on the communist-ruled island has led to “this very terrible outcome”.
Zapata, 42, died Tuesday at a Havana hospital after an 85-day hunger strike.
This fact “truly demonstrates that there is a deficit in (Havana’s) human rights policy,” third Deputy Prime Minister Manuel Chaves said Wednesday during a press conference here.
Chaves said that the Spanish government “has always been concerned about the human rights situation” and he recalled that Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s administration expressed “its great concern” about Zapata’s health in talks with Cuban officials last week.
Spain’s main opposition Popular Party (PP) demanded that Madrid suspend its dialogue with Havana after Zapata’s death.
The PP’s Jorge Moragas also asked the socialist government to withdraw its plan to convince the European Union to ease the bloc’s policy toward the Havana regime.
Moragas, in remarks to EFE, said that the Spanish administration should interrupt its relationship with Raul Castro’s government in view of the persecution that the latter continues to use against opponents.
The Spanish foreign ministry took an interest in Zapata’s case within the framework of the dialogue meeting held Feb 18 in Madrid to discuss human rights and the situation of Cuban political prisoners, ministry sources said Wednesday.
They said the Spanish delegation, led by ministry Director-General Alfonso Lucini, expressed to the Cubans their “concern” about the news regarding Zapata’s worsening health situation and about the health of other jailed dissidents.
The dialogue on human rights between Spain and Cuba was agreed to in April 2007 during the visit that Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos made to Havana, a trip that opened up a new phase in the bilateral relationship.
Zapata was one of 75 government opponents rounded up and jailed in Spring 2003 on charges of conspiring with the US to undermine the Cuban Revolution. While some of those dissidents have since been freed on medical grounds, more than 50 remain behind bars on the communist-ruled island.
Officials added years to Zapata’s original sentence because of his repeated protests over prison conditions.
He began the hunger strike in December after authorities denied him permission to wear white – the colour of Cuba’s dissidents – instead of the standard prison uniform.
Though dissidents put the number of political detainees at 201, Zapata was one of a much smaller number designated by Amnesty International as prisoners of conscience.
This is the first time that an opponent of the Castro regime has died during a hunger strike since Pedro Luis Boitel, the student leader who fought the governments of both Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro, died in prison in 1972.