[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 23 (Tuesday, February 23, 2010)]
[House]
[Page H664]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ORLANDO ZAPATA TAMAYO

  (Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida asked and was given permission to 
address the House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. I rise today to inform my 
colleagues that a great Cuban hero, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who is a 
prisoner of conscience in the gulag of the Castro brothers, is in 
critical condition and near death.
  Forty-two years old, Orlando Zapata has been active in the Cuban pro-
democracy movement for many years. Already a political prisoner in 
2003, he was released by Castro for 14 days before being imprisoned 
once again and sentenced to 25 years in the gulag, in March 2003.
  A colleague and partner in the struggle for freedom of Dr. Oscar 
Elias Biscet, Orlando Zapata personifies the best of mankind. And the 
fact that he is near death at this moment in the Castros' gulag points 
to the profoundly criminal nature of that grotesque totalitarian 
criminal regime. His condition and fate are the Castro brothers' doing. 
If he dies, his blood will be on Castro's hands.

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