`They lack any vestige of decency'
BY CARLOS ALBERTO MONTANER
www.firmaspress.com
`Today, Feb. 25, we're burying him,'' shouted Reina, the distraught
mother, in an interview with a European TV network.
She was like a wounded beast. ``It was premeditated murder,'' she
charged as she wept. She is a black, humble woman, like her son, a
simple mason who wanted to be free. Reina wanted to carry her son in her
arms to the cemetery, accompanied by a few distraught friends, all of
them opposition democrats.
She couldn't. The political police refused. Always the political police,
intimidating, punishing, browbeating society so it may obey in silence.
They're like the dogs that herd the sheep.
Poor mothers! Some weeks ago, a mother like Reina -- though older and
white -- died in Cuba, Gloria Amaya. Three of her sons went to prison.
One of them, Ariel Sigler Amaya, is being killed for being a rebel, same
as happened to Orlando Zapata Tamayo. He entered prison weighing 90
kilos. Today, he weighs 50 and needs a wheelchair. He doesn't have long
to live, his brother tells me.
Doña Gloria, a fragile, small elderly woman, had two ribs broken by the
political police, who kicked her in the chest. She had protested because
they were mistreating her son, a political prisoner, and was almost
killed for her efforts. From the floor, twisting in agony, she continued
to beg for her son's release. Yet Raúl Castro says that no one is
tortured in Cuba. Liar!
Zapata Tamayo's death has three serious internal consequences for the
dictatorship of the brothers Castro. For the opposition democrats in
that country, that sacrifice reinforces the commitment to fight. Perhaps
it's a feature of our culture: Loyalty to those who gave up their lives
is never betrayed.
But Zapata Tamayo's blood has another internal effect. It shames the
communists. It demoralizes and weakens them. It places them on the side
of the murderers. Some years ago, when the political police exterminated
by drowning 32 persons who were trying to flee aboard a boat called the
13 de Marzo, most of them women and children, many militants quit the
Party, filled with repugnance. That was too much.
Outside Cuba, this new crime galvanizes the exiles in support of a just
cause. The day Orlando died, the news most widely diseminated by Twitter
was that. A wave of anger and solidarity surged through a dispersed
community that numbers close to three million, descendants included.
Newspapers 'round the world gave front-page treatment to the grim news
coming from Havana. Many television stations began their newscasts by
reporting what had happened in words filled with consternation. The
image of the dictatorship crashed loudly to the ground and that noise,
of course, had a deep political repercussion.
It is expected that Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos will
end his absurd campaign to demolish the European Union's common stance
toward the Cuban dictatorship. No greater stubbornness has ever been
seen in the defense of a dishonorable cause than Moratinos' effort to
benefit the Castros' tyranny.
The Cuban apparatus of defamation is preparing its counterattack, of
course. One of its minor pawns began by saying that those who condemned
this horrendous death wept crocodile tears. Others will say that Zapata
Tamayo was a common criminal or a terrorist in the service of the CIA.
They lack any vestige of decency. They'll say anything. But the
unassailable truth is something else, as his mother, Reina, shouted
through tears -- Orlando was murdered with premeditation because he
asked for freedom for himself and his people. His example will weigh for
a long time on the history of Cuba.
`They lack any vestige of decency' - Other Views - MiamiHerald.com (2
March 2010)
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/02/1507492/they-lack-any-vestige-of-decency.html
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