Orlando Zapata - In Memoriam

Orlando Zapata, born 15 May 1967, was arrested on December 6, 2002 by the Cuban secret police on charges of lack of respect for authority [desacato], for which he was sentenced to three months in prison.

On March 20, 2003, 13 days after he was freed, he was arrested for participating in a fasting protest organized by the Cuban Assembly to Promote a Civil Society to draw attention to the plight of several other imprisoned civil rights activists. Orlando was again charged with desacato, also public disorder and ‘disobedience’, and sentenced to 36 years in prison.

Even the ‘progressive’ hypocrites who have hijacked Amnesty International felt compelled to recognize him as a prisoner of conscience. In December 2009, Orland began another hunger strike to protest being forced to wear the uniform of a common criminal instead of the white clothing allowed to dissidents, demanding no worse treatment than Fidel Castro received from the dictator Fulgencio Batista when imprisoned after leading a failed armed coup in 1953. After 86 days he died on 23 February 2010.

A young black man persecuted to death for failing to show respect for an oppressive oligarchy of old, white men. Heard anything about it from our ‘progressive’ media?

A monument to the IRA terrorists who entered the Darwin Awards Hall of Fame in 1981 stands in Havana, where it was unveiled by Fidel Castro and that bearded bloke who has made a ton of money by selling out the cause for which the Darwin laureates starved themselves to death. The pictured plaque quotes the following from a typically florid speech by Fidel Castro in 1981:

The obstinacy, intransigence, cruelty and callousness of the British government in the face of the international community over the Irish patriots on hunger strike to death recalls Torquemada and the barbarity of the Inquisition in the depths of the Middle Ages [Renaissance, actually, but what the hell]. Tyrants tremble before men willing to die for their ideas after 60 days of hunger strike. Next to this example, what were the three days of Christ on Calvary, for centuries the symbol of human sacrifice? It is time we put an end to this repugnant atrocity by denunciation and the pressure of the world community!

So, are we going to see a statue of Orlando Zapata on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, with a replica of the plaque on the IRA monument in Havana?

Yeah, right.