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Statement from UNEAC and the AHS: To
the intellectuals and artists of the world
WHILE the Book Fair was taking place from one end of
our country to the other and hundreds of Cuban
doctors were saving lives in Haiti, a new campaign
against Cuba was being cooked up. A common criminal
with a proven history of violence, who had become a
“political prisoner,” announced that he was
undertaking a hunger strike for the installation of
a telephone, stove and television in his cell.
Incited by unscrupulous individuals and despite
everything that was done to prolong his life,
Orlando Zapata Tamayo died and has now been
converted into a regrettable symbol of the anti-Cuba
machinery. On March 11, the European Parliament
passed a resolution “energetically condemning the
avoidable and cruel death of the dissident political
prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo,” and in an offensive
act of intervention in our internal affairs, “urged
European institutions to unconditionally support and
unreservedly encourage the start of a peaceful
process of political transition toward a multi-party
democracy in Cuba.”
A
petition titled “Orlando Zapata Tamayo: I accuse the
Cuban government,” is currently circulating to
collect signatures against Cuba. The petition claims
that this inmate was “unjustly imprisoned and
brutally tortured,” and that he died “denouncing
these crimes and his country’s lack of rights and
democracy.” At the same time, it shamelessly lies
about our government’s alleged practice of
“physically eliminating its critics and peaceful
opponents.” On March 15, a Spanish newspaper
displayed the face of Zapata Tamayo, when this man
had died and was in his coffin, and announced that
certain intellectuals had adhered to the petition,
adding their signatures to those of old and new
professionals in the internal and external
counterrevolution.
We
Cuban writers and artists are fully aware of how the
corporate media and hegemonic interests link up with
international reactionary forces on any pretext
whatsoever to damage our image. We are aware of the
merciless and ghoulish distortion of our realities
and the daily fabrication of lies about Cuba. We
also know the price that is paid by those people who
have tried to express themselves within culture with
their own nuances.
Never in the history of the Revolution has a
prisoner been tortured. Not one single person has
disappeared. There has not been one single
extrajudicial execution. We have founded our own
form of democracy, imperfect, yes, but far more
participatory and legitimate than the one they want
to impose on us. Those who have orchestrated this
campaign do not have the moral authority to teach us
lessons in human rights.
It
is essential to halt this latest aggression against
a blockaded and pitilessly harassed country. To that
end, we appeal to the conscience of all
intellectuals and artists who do not harbor spurious
interests with respect to the future of a Revolution
that has been, is, and will be a model of humanism
and solidarity.
Secretariat of UNEAC (Union of Cuban Writers and
Artists)
National Leadership, Hermanos Saíz Association
16-03-2010
Translated by Granma International |
