Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Killing the future?: The Suspicious Death of Oswaldo Paya

The death of Oswaldo Paya has all the signs of a State Security operation

Burial of Oswaldo Paya today in Cuba


Oswaldo Paya's family has reported that he and the other three passengers in the car were forced off the road deliberately and that this led to the deaths of the two Cuban passengers riding in the vehicle. There is a long track record that demonstrates that the regime practices this type of tactic with individuals it does not want around.

Since Raul Castro took over from his brother in 2006 a lethal shift in tactics has been observed. As recently as 2003 Fidel Castro had presided over sending innocent men to 25 and 28 year prison sentences for organizing a petition drive while threatening to have them executed before a firing squad. Seventy Five new prisoners of conscience gave birth to a new formidable opponent in March of 2003, the Ladies in White.

It appears that the lessons drawn by Raul Castro and first learned by Cuban State Security when being formed and trained by the brutal and effective East German Stasi is that instead of long term prison sentences continuous harassment, short term prison sentences, "accidents" organized to liquidate dissidents and the occasional brutal killing to strike fear into the populace.  Its not to say that Fidel Castro back in the 1960s and as recently as 1994 and 1996 respectively did not organize intelligence operations to kill innocent Cubans.  The July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo"tugboat massacre and the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down are but two examples of the regime's brutality with a body count stretches back 53 years.

Further evidence that the "car accident" was a premeditated act arranged for Oswaldo Paya was that this was not the first time; the regime had also tried with another vehicle 20 days earlier while he was in Havana. In addition we know that an attempt was made against Ladies in White leader Laura Pollan and captured on the video below at 7 minutes and 27 seconds.



It is not only Cubans that are targeted. A U.S. diplomat Robin Meyers was subjected to cars being used against her as weapons by state security agents on the eve and day of the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown February 23-24, 1996 The Miami Herald reported on it on November 24, 1996 after she had been expelled from the country by the Cuban regime:
On Friday, Feb. 23, she was driving home from the U.S. interests section when a white Soviet-built Lada nearly sideswiped her car. She wrote off the near-miss to faulty brakes. Then it happened again. And again. She doubled back to the mission and had a U.S. security agent escort her home.
The next day, she left for work, comfortably sandwiched between two U.S. escort cars. But another Lada, stuffed with her now-familiar baby sitters, tried to break into the chain of cars. She fled through an intersection on a changing light. The Lada tried to follow but was too late, and was slammed by an oncoming car.
As mentioned earlier the East German Stasi trained the Cuban State Security service known as "G2" and one of its standard tactics was arranging car accidents. Not only in East Germany but in West Germany as well as was the case with Lutz Eigendorf an East German soccer player who defected to the West on March 20, 1979 and died in a mysterious car accident on March 5, 1983. Wolfgang Welsch a critic of the East German regime was subjected to three attempts on his life the second being a "car accident." These strange car accidents also took place in other countries of the East Bloc for instance on December 1, 1984 two police men investigating the murder of a solidarity priest in Poland died in a car crash.  A car accident was set up to kill another Solidarity priest, Jerzy Popiełuszko on October 13, 1984, but he escaped it, only to later be kidnapped beaten, tortured and killed by three state security officers on October 19, 1984. His body was dumped in a reservoir and recovered on October 30, 1984.

The deaths of Laura Pollan by a mysterious illness and what amounted to purposeful medical neglect in October of 2011 and now the suspicious death of Oswaldo Paya should tell opinion makers around the world the Castro brothers maybe killing Cuba's future in order to hang on to power today. Remaining silent before these crimes and possible crimes is to be complicit. A transparent international investigation is needed into the circumstances that led to the deaths of Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero.

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