Please sign the petition to save Orlando Zapata Tamayo's life.
Reina Luisa Tamayo
Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo's mother is steeling herself for the worst, "waiting for the blow" that will come if he succumbs to the hunger strike he started some 80 days ago.
"I think we're going to lose Orlando Zapata," Reina Luisa Tamayo told Radio Martí this morning. "I think we are going to lose him."
Tamayo has been a tireless advocate for son since he was imprisoned almost seven years ago, none more than so since Dec. 3 when he went on hunger strike after he was transferred to a maximum security prison. His demands are simple: Respect for his human rights and recognition by the Castro dictatorship that he, like dozens of other Cuban prisoners, is a prisoner of conscience.
Tamayo has tried to instill herself and her son's struggle into the conscience of the international community, imploring governments and non-governmental groups to intercede with the Castro dictatorship on behalf of her son, in order to save her son.
Despite the grim prognosis for Zapata — Tamayo told Radio Martí that he is in a coma and on a respirator because his body is too weak to breathe on its own — his mother has not failed.
His name is ringing out across Cuba and around the world — although not as loudly as those advocating for him would want — and if he dies, you can be assured that like Pedro Luis Boitel, Miguel Valdes Tamayo and thousands of others who have died because of their time in the Castro gulag, Orlando Zapata Tamayo will never be forgotten.
That may not provide Sra. Tamayo much comfort, nor should it.
But she — and the dictatorship that has tormented both son and mother — can rest assured that his death, if it comes because of his protest, will not be in vain.
UPDATED, 2 p.m. EST — For the latest information from Havana, watch this.
Human rights ctivist Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva: "If Orlando Zapata Tamayo is not dead, he is very near death."
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