If not Now, When ?

Another day, another crime in the Cuban Prison

Cuban dissident to be interred in Miami:

The ashes of Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died following an 85-day hunger strike, arrived in Miami Thursday in a shoe-size box held by his mother. His final resting place will be in exile — among veterans killed during a failed invasion 50 years ago in a battle against the same dictatorship.

It is the first time a Cuban not associated with the Bay of Pigs invasion will share space at a mausoleum reserved for heroes of the 1961 fight against the Castro regime — a symbolic unity between the "old" and "new" Cubans in the call for change on the communist-ruled island.

“It’s an honor for us to have the ashes of this man buried with us,’’ said Felix Rodriguez, president of the Association of Veterans of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. “We consider this man a hero and a patriot for standing up to Cuba’s communist government and fighting for a free Cuba.”

“I thank the people of the United States, their government and all of those who have fought to make possible that today our family can be in a free country,” Tamayo said. “This mother, this family, will continue the fight to made the Castro brothers disappear. They murdered Zapata depriving him of water for 18 days.”
She immediately shouted slogans in favor of Cuba’s freedom and repeated “Zapata lives” amid a strict police cordon. People waved Cuban flags and banners with Zapata’s photograph.  The Miami Herald

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Reina Luisa Tamayo scheduled to arrive in Miami this afternoon

J

une 9 - Family members of late political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died in a hunger strike last year, were taken to the Havana airport and kept away from the press as they prepared on Thursday to emigrate to the United States.
His mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, said by telephone the 13 people, including herself and husband Jose Ortiz, were to take a mid-afternoon flight to Miami where members of the Cuban exile community awaited them.
"This whole process has been very hard, but we have endured it," she told Reuters.
"It satisfies me that I have in my possession the ashes of my son and that I could see everything from the exhumation until they delivered his warm ashes," she said. Tamayo insisted she would not

 leave without the remains of her son. Zapata was 42 when he died in February 2008 after an 85-day hunger strike. His body was exhumed in the eastern city of Banes on Tuesday, brought with the family to Havana and cremated in the Cuban capital.
The process has been directed by the Cuban government, which is happy for the dissident family to go elsewhere.
Zapata was serving a long jail sentence for crimes such as disobedience and contempt when he launched his hunger strike for improved prison conditions.
The Cuban government said he was nothing more than a common criminal, but his death brought criticism of Cuba's human rights situation from the United States and Europe and contributed to Cuba's decision a few months later to release its political prisoners.
"We were very repressed by the government. The opposition is oppressed," Tamayo said.
In Miami, the International Rescue Committee said the family would be settled in four apartments, assisted with essentials such as clothes and food and provided English classes and job placement help. The group gives aid to victims of humanitarian crises and helps resettle refugees worldwide.
Tamayo said she would carry on her son's opposition to the Cuban government. Reuters