Under the influence of stupidity

(La Paz, Bolivia)

Last week it was reported that political dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo had died in his Cuban prison cell after a hunger strike that had started nearly four months previously. The 42-year-old plumber and bricklayer was the first victim of this particularly personal form of protest in Cuba since 1972, and the near forty-year gap between the deaths only serves to emphasise the seriousness of his final decision.

Zapata was originally sentenced to three years in prison for what the Cuban government calls “disobedience” but was subsequently sentenced to another thirty-six years for various other “crimes”. The hunger strike was a protest against the constant torture at the hands of the prison guards – the torture must have been unbearable for Zapata to decide to starve himself to death.

In Bolivia this week another hunger strike took centre stage as Franklin Durán, the head of the transport drivers’ union, was reported to have gone on hunger strike in order to protest against the Bolivian government’s decision to punish drink-driving. In a country where nearly one hundred people died in alcohol-related traffic accidents in January alone, a new law was long overdue. President Evo Morales – himself no stranger to the hunger strike as a form of protest – proposed a law which would see drink-drivers punished with considerable fines and a lengthy driving ban. If the convicted driver worked for a public transport company then the company would also be fined.

It is staggering to think that within days of each other the news headlines could carry items about two similar protests based on such remarkably different reasons. The transport union chief has suffered no torture from Morales’ proposed law; nor has he been imprisoned on a whim or seen his life taken away from him and his family victimised. On the contrary, both he and his family should benefit from being able to drive, cycle or walk around their city with less to fear from drunken louts in charge of a ton of speeding metal.

It is to be hoped that Mister Durán, when he finishes his offensive and futile crusade and the sugar starts returning to his brain, sees sense and supports the government’s law. It is also to be hoped that he looks around himself and compares his own privileged position to that of a political prisoner in Cuba, or Guantánamo Bay, or Myanmar. Perhaps then he will understand that a hunger strike is not a decision to be taken so lightly.