to do it with paper and ink, because I hope to go to you one day when our country is free without the Castro dictatorship. Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]."* This type of mistreatment went on for years. Orlando Zapata Tamayo was pushed into undergoing hunger strikes as a last measure to try to save his own life, and dignity as a human being. Hunger strike and death On either December 2 or 3, 2009, Zapata began a hunger strike as a protest against the Cuban government for having denied him the choice of wearing white dissident clothes instead of the designated prisoner uniform, as well as denouncing the living conditions of other prisoners. As part of his claim, Zapata was asking for conditions comparable to those that Fidel Castro had while incarcerated after his 1953 attack against the Moncada Barracks. For their part, the Cuban government stated he refused food because authorities wouldn't put a TV set, a stove and a phone in his cell. During the hunger strike Zapata refused to eat any food other than his mother's, who visited him every three months. According to the U.S.-based opposition group Cuban Democratic Directorate, prison authorities then denied Zapata water, which led to his deteriorated health and ultimately kidney failure. Zapata persisted in the hunger strike and was admitted to the Camagüey Hospital at an unspecified date, where he was given fluids intravenously against his will. On February 16, 2010, his condition worsened and he was transferred to Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital in Havana, where he ultimately died on February 23, 2010, at approximately 3:30 pm EST. It was the first time that an opponent of the Cuban government died during a hunger strike since the 1972 death of Pedro Luis Boitel. On March 16, 2010, an open letter condemning the Cuban government for the unjust incarceration of Orlando Zapata Tamayo and asking for the release of other political prisoners was posted in an internet blog. In less than a week the letter had obtained over 30,000 signatures. Among the signatories are prominent intellectuals from both the left and right of the political spectrum. Reactions to death The death of dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo leads to clampdown in Cuba.