Cuba, the Corporate Media and the Suicide of Orlando Zapata Tamayo

[flamingdem]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/salim-lamrani/cuba-the-corporate-media-_b_786418.html

On February 23, 2010, Cuban inmate Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after 83 days on hunger strike. He was 42. This is the first such incident since inmate Pedro Luis Boitel died in 1972 under similar conditions. The corporate media put the tragic incident on the front page and emphasized the plight of Cuban prisoners. <1>

Zapata's dramatic exit sparked a justifiable global uproar. The Cuban prisoner's case undeniably fosters sympathy and a sense of solidarity with this person who expressed his despair and malaise in prison carrying out his hunger strike to the ultimate consequence. The heartfelt emotion aroused by his case is quite respectable. In contrast, the manipulation of Tamayo's death and of the grief of his family and friends by the corporate media for political purposes violates the basic principles of journalistic ethics.

Zapata, political prisoner or common convict?

Since 2004, Amnesty International (AI) has considered him among Cuba's 55 "prisoner of conscience." In addition, it has noted that Zapata's hunger strike was launched not only to protest his conditions of detention, but also to demand the impossible: a television, a personal kitchen and a cell phone to call his family. <2> Although not the Devil incarnate, Zapata was not a model prisoner. According to Cuban authorities, he was guilty of several acts of violence during his incarceration, especially against the guards, leading to his conviction being increased from 25 years to 36. <3>

Curiously, AI has never mentioned the alleged political activities that landed Zapata in prison. The reason is relatively simple: Zapata never carried out any anti-government activities prior to incarceration. Instead, the organization recognizes that he was convicted in May 2004 and sentenced to three years imprisonment for "contempt, public disorder and resistance." <4> This sentence is relatively minor compared to the sentences, ranging up to 28 years, that were handed down to the 75 opposition figures convicted in March 2003 of "having received funds or materials from the U.S. government to carry out activities that the authorities consider subversive and damaging to Cuba," as recognized by AI, which is a serious crime in Cuba and any country in the world. Here, AI cannot escape an obvious contradiction: on the one hand these people qualify as "prisoners of conscience" and on the other it admits they committed the serious crime of accepting "money or materials from the U.S. government." MORE>>>

[BolivarianHero]

1. What a joke...

If rightists in Cuba are accepting foreign money to derail Cuba's political process and undermine the state, they should be locked away for treason, as they would be in any capitalist country as well.