Address by Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo, Christian Liberation Movement delegate at Christian Democratic Organization of America (ODCA) Congress in Mexico City on August 23, 2013
Mr. President of ODCA, presidential candidates, Cuban brothers, dear friends all,
Thank you ODCA for the invitation and courageous support that has signified the cause of truth and rights for Cuba. Thank you for the recent recognition of the entire Cuban delegation, many in my country have given their lives for the cause of liberty as Mr. Ocejo reminded us is the cause of happiness.
"These are times of dangers and hopes for Cuba. The lack of freedom and rights maintains the people immersed in great disadvantages. The government complicates the situation because it refuses a democratic opening while Cubans want real change and transparency, fraud is imposed" warned my father, remembering that:
These people do not want to move from savage communism to savage capitalism, nor want Russian style or Chinese style changes, the people of Cuba want to participate in building our future and to be happy.
Two months ago, after 54 years, before the evident failure, the government has accused people of not having "honesty, [...] decency, [...] shame, [...] decorum, [...] honor and [...] sensitivity" and has threatened to take coercive measures. But have not referred to the torture or the forced repatriation of Cuban migrants in a concentration camp in the Bahamas. Neither have they spoken about outbreaks of dengue and cholera, as they also did not do before with polyneuritis, or serious statistics on the spread of HIV in Cuba, or the rate of suicide and domestic crimes, or medical malpractice cases, or the use of abortion as birth control, or the many other expressions of the "culture of death" on the Island.
Nor have yet announced merchant ships smuggling ammunition and fully operational arms, violating the national security of a fraternal country like Panama, violating several UN resolutions on the dictatorship of North Korea, and putting innocent lives at risk
The Cuban government is not legitimate, as the Venezuelan government is not and will not be because presidents of the world shake hands with the impostors in power, it will be much less because they spearhead regional organizations like the CELAC, as is the case of the Cuban dictator, to the shame of Latin America. Legitimacy is delivered by the people at the polls, in free elections, in an atmosphere of respect and safety. We all know that's not what happened in April in Venezuela and we all know that has not occurred in Cuba for more than 60 years.
That is why I believe our challenge as the Christian Democratic family resides in looking at the people before power, the human being who lives and suffers from power when it is not at the service of society. But that fragments and sickens society to perpetuate itself. What we are seeing in some of the countries of our America at the turn of a decade find themselves divided on populism, whose greatest concordance is the obstinacy with which they cling to power. They also agree on their embracing Cuba's dictators.
The humanist values of defending life, truth, sustainable and inclusive economic freedom, equality, the environment, and fraternity join us here today. The budgets that we defend do not respond to ideological fundamentalism, but they are a radical proposal that need firm parties; requires strong and free spirits that do not form a complex before power or before fashion or before a trend or before apparent majorities. Other forces and languages inconsistent with democracy have shown no qualms in showing they are allies. I understand that our option involves taking the side of the poor of the Earth, which in our region are many and they are also those who cannot even say that they are poor, because a government has hijacked all their rights.
I believe in the Christian humanist project as a real and effective alternative to the so-called crisis of disorientation that our societies seem to suffer. The world is confused with epithets that others have put on us, these negative nuances that fill the term conservative, or counterpose us to so called progressive forces. It does not seem to me that we have to define ourselves from codes which other interests have imposed, the message embodied in the Christian humanist option is new and renovating in a world that has displaced human beings from the center of its priorities. In the words of my father: "neither the state nor the market, can be above the rights, the will and freedoms of persons."
Please do not abandon, let us not abandon those in America and beyond, from positions of danger fighting for the same concepts that bring us here today. Not without suffering, I am witness what a tyrant can do when they feel that those who oppose them have been abandoned, when they feel that their opponent is alone. My father, like Caldera, like Adenauer, thought: "Rights have no political color, or race, or culture. Nor dictatorships have political color. They are not right or left, they are only dictatorships "and recalled that" Cubans have not chosen the path of peace as a tactic, but because it is inseparable from the goal of our people. Experience tells us that violence begets violence and, when political changes are made in this way, you arrive at new forms of oppression and injustice," as painfully illustrated by the hundreds of people killed this week in Syria and Egypt.
Most of Cuba's peaceful opposition agrees to defend the road map of The Peoples Path, we expect you solidarity with the demands of this proposal. In this framework thousands of Cuban citizens ask for your support in our demand for a plebiscite of the legal initiative of the Varela Project. We do not seek another caudillo to replace a dictator; we have a proactive and inclusive solution waiting for your solidarity. We need your help to stop the violent repression of the state security of the Cuban government against members of the Cuban democratic movement, to be able to keep fighting for real change. The recognition of the entire truth is essential to the reconciliation process of the transition to democracy that we seek. We need your endorsement of the need for an independent investigation to clarify the circumstances of the attack on my father and Harold Cepero, to help remove the sense of impunity that the Cuban government has and with which it continues to repress with increasing violence.
The essential transformation is taking place in the minds and hearts of Cubans. It's time to begin the process of reconciliation that we all want, because what we want is to live in harmony and freedom. Long ago the people stopped trusting the regime and despite the repression and apathy fewer and fewer Cubans are being dominated by fear.
On December 5, 2011 my father reminded them in a message to this organization that "there have already been many conjectures, postulates and intellectual exercises. There have already been many. Now for you should be the time of solidarity with Cuba, with our demands:
We want all rights. These are the changes we want! Now Cubans are going to demand real change, now let's fight for free elections,” through a plebiscite!
I think that the authoritarian phenomena that have been generated in our region demonstrate that what you do for the freedom of the Cuban people will be a commitment for the good of all America.
God help us all
Many Thanks
Text translated from: http://freecubafoundation.blogspot.com/2013/08/rosa-maria-paya-se-dirige-los.html
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| Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo addresses ODCA Congress |
Mr. President of ODCA, presidential candidates, Cuban brothers, dear friends all,
Thank you ODCA for the invitation and courageous support that has signified the cause of truth and rights for Cuba. Thank you for the recent recognition of the entire Cuban delegation, many in my country have given their lives for the cause of liberty as Mr. Ocejo reminded us is the cause of happiness.
"These are times of dangers and hopes for Cuba. The lack of freedom and rights maintains the people immersed in great disadvantages. The government complicates the situation because it refuses a democratic opening while Cubans want real change and transparency, fraud is imposed" warned my father, remembering that:
"There remain mechanisms of repression and surveillance of citizens, total dependence and obedience of the courts of the group in power and their ordinances, cruelty in prisons, systems of control, concepts and practices of exclusion and marking or targeting, the fence of laws which are anti-rights and undemocratic are maintained over the citizen, despotism, the lack of democratic instruments for citizens to decide and finally the power group itself still stands above its own laws and with all the privileges stated above.
Moreover poverty grows and deepens the differences, under the simulacrum of economic opening. Also the cult of personality and the concretion of dynastic succession are affirmed with the denial of Cuban’s civil and political rights. These factors are components of the totalitarian regime that has caused and continues to cause severe damage to the people, an anthropological damage. The antagonistic contradictions between the regime and the freedom and rights of citizens remain. What has changed then? Or what is changing in Cuba: the people."
These people do not want to move from savage communism to savage capitalism, nor want Russian style or Chinese style changes, the people of Cuba want to participate in building our future and to be happy.
Two months ago, after 54 years, before the evident failure, the government has accused people of not having "honesty, [...] decency, [...] shame, [...] decorum, [...] honor and [...] sensitivity" and has threatened to take coercive measures. But have not referred to the torture or the forced repatriation of Cuban migrants in a concentration camp in the Bahamas. Neither have they spoken about outbreaks of dengue and cholera, as they also did not do before with polyneuritis, or serious statistics on the spread of HIV in Cuba, or the rate of suicide and domestic crimes, or medical malpractice cases, or the use of abortion as birth control, or the many other expressions of the "culture of death" on the Island.
Nor have yet announced merchant ships smuggling ammunition and fully operational arms, violating the national security of a fraternal country like Panama, violating several UN resolutions on the dictatorship of North Korea, and putting innocent lives at risk
The Cuban government is not legitimate, as the Venezuelan government is not and will not be because presidents of the world shake hands with the impostors in power, it will be much less because they spearhead regional organizations like the CELAC, as is the case of the Cuban dictator, to the shame of Latin America. Legitimacy is delivered by the people at the polls, in free elections, in an atmosphere of respect and safety. We all know that's not what happened in April in Venezuela and we all know that has not occurred in Cuba for more than 60 years.
That is why I believe our challenge as the Christian Democratic family resides in looking at the people before power, the human being who lives and suffers from power when it is not at the service of society. But that fragments and sickens society to perpetuate itself. What we are seeing in some of the countries of our America at the turn of a decade find themselves divided on populism, whose greatest concordance is the obstinacy with which they cling to power. They also agree on their embracing Cuba's dictators.
The humanist values of defending life, truth, sustainable and inclusive economic freedom, equality, the environment, and fraternity join us here today. The budgets that we defend do not respond to ideological fundamentalism, but they are a radical proposal that need firm parties; requires strong and free spirits that do not form a complex before power or before fashion or before a trend or before apparent majorities. Other forces and languages inconsistent with democracy have shown no qualms in showing they are allies. I understand that our option involves taking the side of the poor of the Earth, which in our region are many and they are also those who cannot even say that they are poor, because a government has hijacked all their rights.
I believe in the Christian humanist project as a real and effective alternative to the so-called crisis of disorientation that our societies seem to suffer. The world is confused with epithets that others have put on us, these negative nuances that fill the term conservative, or counterpose us to so called progressive forces. It does not seem to me that we have to define ourselves from codes which other interests have imposed, the message embodied in the Christian humanist option is new and renovating in a world that has displaced human beings from the center of its priorities. In the words of my father: "neither the state nor the market, can be above the rights, the will and freedoms of persons."
Please do not abandon, let us not abandon those in America and beyond, from positions of danger fighting for the same concepts that bring us here today. Not without suffering, I am witness what a tyrant can do when they feel that those who oppose them have been abandoned, when they feel that their opponent is alone. My father, like Caldera, like Adenauer, thought: "Rights have no political color, or race, or culture. Nor dictatorships have political color. They are not right or left, they are only dictatorships "and recalled that" Cubans have not chosen the path of peace as a tactic, but because it is inseparable from the goal of our people. Experience tells us that violence begets violence and, when political changes are made in this way, you arrive at new forms of oppression and injustice," as painfully illustrated by the hundreds of people killed this week in Syria and Egypt.
Most of Cuba's peaceful opposition agrees to defend the road map of The Peoples Path, we expect you solidarity with the demands of this proposal. In this framework thousands of Cuban citizens ask for your support in our demand for a plebiscite of the legal initiative of the Varela Project. We do not seek another caudillo to replace a dictator; we have a proactive and inclusive solution waiting for your solidarity. We need your help to stop the violent repression of the state security of the Cuban government against members of the Cuban democratic movement, to be able to keep fighting for real change. The recognition of the entire truth is essential to the reconciliation process of the transition to democracy that we seek. We need your endorsement of the need for an independent investigation to clarify the circumstances of the attack on my father and Harold Cepero, to help remove the sense of impunity that the Cuban government has and with which it continues to repress with increasing violence.
The essential transformation is taking place in the minds and hearts of Cubans. It's time to begin the process of reconciliation that we all want, because what we want is to live in harmony and freedom. Long ago the people stopped trusting the regime and despite the repression and apathy fewer and fewer Cubans are being dominated by fear.
On December 5, 2011 my father reminded them in a message to this organization that "there have already been many conjectures, postulates and intellectual exercises. There have already been many. Now for you should be the time of solidarity with Cuba, with our demands:
We want all rights. These are the changes we want! Now Cubans are going to demand real change, now let's fight for free elections,” through a plebiscite!
I think that the authoritarian phenomena that have been generated in our region demonstrate that what you do for the freedom of the Cuban people will be a commitment for the good of all America.
God help us all
Many Thanks
Text translated from: http://freecubafoundation.blogspot.com/2013/08/rosa-maria-paya-se-dirige-los.html
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