Sunday, May 10, 2015

Project Varela and the price of freedom

Freedom isn't free 

Oswaldo, Regis and Tony turn in petition signatures on May 10, 2002
 May 10 marked the thirteenth anniversary of when Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas along with Christian Liberation Movement activists Regis Iglesias Ramírez and Tony Díaz Sánchez walked together with others to turn in 11,020 signatures to the Assembly of Peoples Power in 2002 supporting the Varela Project.  The Varela Project is a citizen initiative demanding human rights reforms and a referendum in Cuba. The response by the Castro regime was to: violate its own norms ignoring the petition, set up its own petition drive making the constitution "unchangeable" using threats and intimidation to obtain signatures, crack down on the opposition ( sentencing 75 to long prison terms, among them Regis to 18 years in prison and Tony to 20 years in prison ), extrajudicially executing Oswaldo in what appears to have been a state security operation on July 22, 2012 that also claimed the life of youth leader, Harold Cepero.


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