Silent Vigil for Justice on Brothers to the Rescue Shootdown Anniversary for victims in Cuba and Venezuela

"Nonviolence is not an instrument of convenience, but a way of living in which one has to believe." - Mario Manuel de la Peña , murdered on February 24, 1996
 
"God's time is perfect but if we don't go out into the streets, the time of Maduro will be ETERNAL" - Génesis Carmona ( written on the poster she carried the day she was shot in the head by a Maduro government agent.), murdered on February 18, 2014
 

Silent Vigil at FIU on February 24, 2014

 Today the families and friends of Armando, Carlos, Mario and Pablo, the four men blown out of the sky while engaged in a search and rescue for rafters in the Florida Straits by air-to-air missile launched by a Cuban MiG, gathered as they have for the past 18 years in a silent vigil to mark the time when each plane was shot down: 3:21pm and 3:27pm on February 24, 1996.

As the years have passed the vigil has come to have added meaning, in 2010 on February 23 after years of torture and humiliation, prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo, denied water on and off for 18 days died while on a hunger strike. The next day when the vigil was held prayers were included for this brave human rights defenders.

Venezuelan woman: "I'm tired of being 'at least alive'"

Now, after two weeks of Venezuelan students shot in the head, run over, and tortured for nonviolently standing up and protesting for democracy in Venezuela they were also in our thoughts today. Génesis, Bassil, Roberto, José Ernesto and the other eight victims we know about and the many more that we don't know about are in our thoughts and prayers. Large numbers of Venezuelan youths have been disappeared since February 12, 2014.

Free Cubans and Venezuelans are joined together in resistance to the Castro and Maduro monstrosity that is emerging rapidly into existence and is known as Cubazuela. Venezuela is being merged into the Cuban totalitarian state where freedom is non-existent and all is fear, humiliation, shame, and terror.

Jorge Planas over Facebook has described the situation with chilling candor:

In Venezuela, the murderous regime, attacks churches and priests, murders women, students and men, more than 500 tortured, there are disappeared, and who appear, do so without life. This is not a myth as Dalmacio del Negro would say, this is the struggle of good against evil. I appreciate all your support and sharing this with others. 

It is is this reality that has led Venezuelan youths into the streets and 22 year old beauty queen Génesis Carmona to hold up a poster that said "God's time is perfect but if we don't go out into the streets, the time of Maduro will be ETERNAL" and for her sister at her funeral to say that she will continue. 

Last photo of Génesis Carmona (On the right)

 This is not a suicidal impulse born of grief but the lesser of two evils. As the wife of a Cuban pastor, Yoaxis Marcheco, in the island put it:"Better to risk your life then to live dying everyday as Cubans living inside Cuba do. Please show your solidarity with the peoples of Venezuela and Cuba in their struggle for freedom.

Flier distributed at FIU today for the Vigil