"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word
and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong
progress towards it. - Mohandas Gandhi
Mohandas Gandhi
The United Nations has designated October 2nd as International Day of Non-Violence. This date was chosen to reflect on this profound idea since Mohandas Gandhi was born in India on October 2, 1869. According to the United Nations, Gandhi was the "leader of the Indian independence movement and a pioneer of the philosophy and strategy of non-violence."
On September 11, 1906 in South Africa, dissatisfied with the term passive resistance to describe nonviolence he convened a contest that resulted in a new word "Satyagraha" derived from Sanskrit that Gandhi described as follows: "Truth
(Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and
therefore serves as a synonym for force."
Monday, October 2nd is the day to share the message of nonviolence
through education and awareness. It is a powerful idea that recognizes
the dignity and power inherent in each individual, while at the same
time recognizing that harnessing force through disciplined, strategic
and non-violent action magnifies the power of the individual and when
working in concert with others can become an unstoppable force for
positive change. The life and example of Congressman John Lewis, who passed away in 2020, is an example of this.
Critics often cite that both Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
were assassinated, and that this demonstrates the failure of their
nonviolent philosophy, but they fail to look at what they accomplished
in the wider societies they inhabited, and their respective legacies
decades later. Both changed their respective countries. Gandhi achieved
Indian independence, and King ended official segregation, empowered
African Americans with their full voting rights, and achieved much more.
"I say nonviolent struggle is armed struggle. And we have to take back
that term from those advocates of violence who seek to justify with
pretty words that kind of combat. Only with this type of struggle one
fights with psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons and
political weapons. And that this is ultimately more powerful against
oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence."
This idea has extended to many places, and cultures around the world, but it is co-existing
in conflict with ideologies like Marxism-Leninism that are based in
class struggle, revenge redefined as justice, and violence exalted as a superior tool of struggle. Both Gandhi and King saw the latter approach as extremely counterproductive.
The exercise of violence always has a destructive effect on human
relationships even when, as sometimes happens, it accomplishes some
short-term goal. The exercise of nonviolence, or Satyagraha, always
brings people closer. This explains why Gandhi, after fifty years of
experimentation in every walk of life, could declare that he “knew of no
single case in which it had failed.” Where it seemed to fail he
concluded that he or the other satyagrahis had in some way failed to
live up to its steep challenge.Taking the long view, he was
able to declare that “There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence.
The end of violence is surest defeat.”
Below are several videos that introduce nonviolence and how it works. Please share them with others.
The secret to effective nonviolent resistance | Jamila Raqib
The 20th Annual Mahatma Gandhi Lecture on Nonviolence
Groundbreaking New Study: The Role of External Support in Nonviolent Campaigns (ICNC Webinar)
Czech dissident, play write, author, and former president Václav Havel who carried out a nonviolent revolution in his homeland offered a reflection on hope in his book , Disturbing the Peace, that complements Satyagraha.
“Hope, in
this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are
going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously
headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something
because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The
more unpromising the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper
that hope is. Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the
conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that
something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
Diaz-Canel spouts disinformation at the UN General Assembly on Sept 19th.
Miguel Diaz-Canel began his address to the UN General Assembly on September 19, 2023 by quoting Che Guevara in a speech he gave in “this very room almost 60 years ago” referencing the “exploited and the humiliated” of the South. He left out the Argentine guerilla’s more honest appraisal of what the Cuban Revolution was doing on December 11, 1964.
"We must say here something that is a well-known truth and that we have always asserted before the whole world: Executions? Yes, we have executed people; we are executing people and shall continue to execute people as long as it is necessary."
Diaz-Canel rejected Cuba being a State Sponsor of terrorism claiming there were no grounds to the charge. Ignoring the 1966 Tricontinental gathering in Havana bringing terrorists, and guerrillas from around the world to engage in systematic violent attacks against Western democracies over several decades.
Che Guevara at the UN General Assembly on Dec 11, 1964.
Or that Cuba was placed on the list in 1982 because Havana was using a narcotics ring to funnel both arms and cash to the Colombian M19 terrorist group then battling to overthrow Colombia’s democracy.
M-19 members stormed Colombia’s Palace of Justice in November 1985. Eleven of Colombia’s 25 Supreme Court justices were among the hostages killed. Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s current president, was an M-19 member in the 1980s.
The Castro dictatorship, with decades of experience in terrorism, torture and genocide around the world, is expert in war, terrorism and the use of extrajudicial killings, and executions as methods of control to stay in power. Conservative estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll against Cubans run from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000. In the beginning executions were televised in Cuba to terrorize the populace.
Lorenzo Enrique Copello, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla and Jorge Luis Martínez
Executions and Extrajudicial killings were common practice beginning in 1959, and continue to the present day. Well documented episodes such as the July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo'' tugboat massacre that claimed the lives of 37 of men, women and children and the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down that murdered four human rights defenders are known because of survivors.
Fifteen years after the "13 de Marzo" tugboat incident on July 13, 2009 human rights defender Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement, reflected on what had happened that day:
“Behind the Christ of Havana, about seven miles from the coast, "volunteers" of the Communist regime committed one of the most heinous crimes in the history of our city and of Cuba.
In the morning, a group of seventy people in all, fled on a tugboat, led by the ship's own crew; none was kidnapped, or there against their will. They came out of the mouth of the Bay of Havana.
They were pursued by other similar ships. When the runaway ship and its occupants stopped to surrender, the ships that had been chasing them started ramming to sink it. Meanwhile, on the deck, women with children in their arms begging for mercy, but the answer of their captors was to project high pressure water cannons against them.”
The Wasp spy network infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue; and provided information that led to the extrajudicial killings of Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales on February 24, 1996 when Cuban MiGs searched for three civilian planes in international airspace. They fired two air to air missiles destroying two of the civilian planes, while the third fled north.
Like the murders of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, these two events were investigated and reports on the merits released in 1996, and 1999 respectively finding Cuban government agents responsible for these killings.
In 2006 when Fidel Castro became sick and turned power over to his brother Raul, a new and disturbing pattern emerged. In the past well known activists would be jailed for 20 to 30 years, but under Raul Castro they were killed.
On October 7, 2006, independent journalist and librarian Hector Riverón Gonzalez, 48, was found dead near a taxi at the taxi stand in the City of Las Tunas. His body was found dead under a tree, with his shoes clean and dry although it had rained all night, and handcuff marks. The journalist had been threatenedseveral times by State Security.
Manuel Acosta Larena, an activist in the Democracy Movement, died under suspicious circumstances while in detention on June 24, 2007 and appears to have been a victim of police brutality.
"Orlando Zapata Tamayo, died this afternoon, February 23, 2010, after suffering many indignities, racist slights, beatings and abuse by prison guards and State Security.
Zapata was killed slowly over many days and many months in every prison in which he was confined. Zapata was imprisoned for denouncing human rights violations and for daring to speak openly of the Varela Project in Havana's Central Park.
He was not a terrorist, or conspirator, or used violence. Initially he was sentenced to three years in prison, but after successive provocations and maneuvers staged by his executioners, he was sentenced to more than thirty years in prison."
On January 31, 2011 Mercedes Talavera López died after being run over by
a car in the city of Cárdenas in Matanzas. This was followed by the
death of human rights defender Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia on May 8, 2011
just three days after a brutal beating by regime agents.
The suspicious deaths of Laura Pollan on October 14, 2011 by what an independent doctor described as "purposeful medical neglect", and of prisoner of conscience Wilman Villar Mendoza on January 20, 2012 while on hunger strike are examples that demand a thorough investigation.
Hansel Ernesto Hernández shot in the back by police in 2020.
On June 24, 2020 in Guanabacoa, Cuba 27 year old unarmed black Cuban, Hansel Ernesto Hernández Galiano was shot in the back and killed by the police. The official version claims that he was stealing pieces and accessories from a bus stop when he was spotted by two Revolutionary National Police (PNR in Spanish). Upon seeing the police Hansel ran away and the officers pursued him nearly two kilometers. PNR claimed that during the pursuit Hansel threw rocks at the officers. Police fired two warning shots and a third in his back killing him. Hansel's body was quickly cremated.
Cuban dissident Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros
Cuban dissident Yosvany Arostegui Armenteros died on August 7, 2020 in Cuba while in police custody following a 40 day hunger strike. He had been jailed on false charges in the Kilo 8 prison of Camagüey. His body was quickly cremated by the dictatorship.
On July 12, 2021 Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, (age 36) was shot in the back by second lieutenant Yoennis Pelegrín Hernández in the town of La Güinera on the outskirts of Havana. The same officer injured at least five other demonstrators in addition to killing Diubis on day two of nationwide protests in Cuba. The total number killed in the 11J protests remains unknown. Video emerged over Twitter on July 15th of the aftermath of Diubis being shot in the back.
Christian Díaz, age 24, disappeared after joining the 11J protests. Relatives on July 12 reported him missing to the PNR in Cárdenas. Police told his father that Christian was jailed in Matanzas. On Aug. 5, officials informed his family he’d drowned in the sea and was buried in a mass grave. His family is convinced he was beaten to death.
Cuban political prisoner Pablo Moya Delá died on August 26, 2021 at the Clinical Surgical Hospital in Santiago de Cuba. He was jailed on October 23, 2020 for protesting socioeconomic conditions and overall repression. Beaten, mistreated for months, weakened following a hunger strike and released on probation, after destroying his health, earlier in August 2021 near death.
The Cuban military dictatorship's well documented record of killing fleeing Cuban refugees, and this includes the October 28, 2022 purposeful ramming and sinking of a boat carrying Cuban refugees by the Cuban border patrol that killed eight, including a two year old girl, continues to the present day.
The failure to hold Cuban officials strictly accountable raises the possibility of more mass killings in the future. This is why we need to call on the members of the UN General Assembly to expel Cuba from the UN Human Rights Council, and why we have called on the Biden Administration to apply Magnitsky Sanctions against Miguel Diaz-Canel for giving the order of combat on July 11, 2021 generating violence and killing of Cubans.
Morality police in Iran beat Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, to death for not complying
with Tehran's hijab regulations. Mahsa was arrested on September 13, 2022 badly beaten, left in a coma, and she died one year ago today on September 16th.
Mahsa Amini was beaten to death by morality police in Iran.
Mass protests erupted in Iran, the Iranian regime periodically shutdown the internet and carried out massacres, and executions against demonstrators over the past year. The world has not forgotten, and new songs are being sung by artists in remembrance of Mahsa Amini.
The last time this happened in Iran was in 2019, and the Mullahs killed 1,500 people,
and I had not heard about it when it happened. The images of nonviolent
protests slow to a trickle but
some continue to emerge, along with reports of the price paid by
protesters for their courageous dissent. Their censorship was successful
that time, but let us do our part to prevent them from getting away
with it again.
Please share the messages, videos, and hashtags of this Iranian freedom movement that is also calling out democracies for falling short in their solidarity.
No, Secretary Blinken! Unfortunately, the US government didn’t take appropriate actions against the killer of Mahsa Jina Amini: It is heartbreaking that right on the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s murder at the hands of the morality police, America has given a gift to the gender… https://t.co/oYuZGoCMGh
Listening to these Iranian activists take to task the Biden
Administration for enabling the Iranian oppressors gives me a sense of deja vu.
Dear friends of freedom reading this blog entry, please amplify these Iranian voices, let your elected representatives know that you are
watching, and that this is unacceptable.
Over 100 cities around the world are rising up for Iran tomorrow.
This has been going on for far too long in Iran, and the terror tactics have been copied elsewhere with Iranian help.
My interview with @globalnews on the eve of the 1 year mark of the death of #MahsaAmini at the hands of morality police under the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. I encourage people of non-Iranian decent to also join our global rallies https://t.co/gv3bKtyhti
Neda Agha-Soltan and Génesis Carmona shot in the head.
Note to Western policy makers: the regime's in Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela are not your friends.
Cuba and Iran have regime's with different ideological formations. Cuba
has a communist dictatorship run by the Castros since 1959 and Iran has a
Islamist regime run by the mullahs since 1979. However they have two things in common:
a profound anti-Americanism that portrays the U.S. as the great Satan,
and a fossilized revolutionary tradition that systematically denies
human rights to their respective peoples.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani meets with General Raul Castro (2016)
Robin Wright referred to Cuba and Iran
as "melancholy twins" in The New Yorker in 2015. They are both state sponsors of terrorism, and Iran has been linked to a mass killing of Jewish people in Argentina.
Venezuela is an off shoot of the Cuban revolution and shares both its anti-Americanism and warm relations with Tehran.
But beyond their similarities they also have a shared strategic outlook that is hostile to Western democracies.
The lateFidel Castro visited Iran
on May 10, 2001, four months before the September 11, 2001 attacks,
where he was quoted by the Agence France Presse at the University of
Tehran stating that "Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with
each other, can bring America to its knees." ... "The U.S. regime is
very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up."
Eleven years later on January 12, 2012 in Havana, Cuba the controversial president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared "Our
positions, versions, interpretations are alike, very close. We have
been good friends, we are and will be, and we will be together forever."
Iran's Ahmadinejad with Communist Fidel Castro and Klansman David Duke
At
a time when there is a fear of Iran seeking out asymmetric means to
achieve maximum damage against United States interests, their decades long alliance
with Cuba cannot and must not be ignored.
Even closer to home, the
relationship between the Iranian regime and white supremacists such as David Duke and anti-Semites such as Louis Farrakhan should also be closely examined.
Martin Luther King Jr. was right: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Therefore:
I
stand in solidarity with Iranians standing up for their freedom. They
are facing off against the terrorist regime in Tehran that is
indiscriminately murdering protesters.
I pledge to continue to amplify their voices and will use the following hashtags.
On Saturday,
September 12, 1998, the FBI dismantled the largest
Cuban spy ring ever discovered in the United States. Ten Cubans were
charged with spying for the Cuban regime. Cuba’s government has spent 25 years
airbrushing and distorting what they did.
According to the Defense Human Resources Activity at the U.S. Department of Defense, the
ten members of the WASP network captured were: "GERARDO HERNANDEZ, 31
(alias Manuel Viramontes), the spymaster; FERNANDO GONZALEZ, 33 (alias
Ruben Campa), and RAMON LABANINO, 30 (alias Luis Medina), Cuban
intelligence officers. The remaining seven were mid-level or junior
agents who reported to the three senior agents.
Included were ANTONIO GUERRERO, 39, who observed aircraft landings at
the Boca Chica Naval Air Station from his job as a sheet-metal worker
there; ALEJANDRO ALONSO, 39, a boat pilot; and RENE GONZALEZ,
42, a
skilled aircraft pilot and the only Cuban national among these seven.
Both joined the exile group Movimiento Democracia to report on its
activities -all non-violent- against the Castro regime. Also, two
married couples, Americans, worked in the spy network: NILO and LINDA HERNANDEZ, 44 and 41 respectively, and JOSEPH and AMARYLIS SANTOS, both 39."
Cuban spy Juan Pablo Roque escaped.
JUAN PABLO ROQUE, an eleventh spy also charged
and linked to the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, had fled
to Cuba one day before Cuban MiGs launched missiles destroying two
Brothers to the Rescue planes, and killing four pilots. Three others, identified as John Does, were also charged.
Five
defendants -Alejandro Alonso, Nilo and Linda Hernandez,
Joseph and Amarylis Santos- accepted plea bargains and cooperated
with prosecutors. These five Cuban spies provided information about the
other five. These five eventually went on trial, where it was revealed
that the Cuban spy ring was engaged in both espionage and
terrorism.
Hernandez guilty of murder conspiracy in 2/24/96 shoot down.
The Wasp Network gathered personal information on American military personnel, "compiling the names, home addresses, and medical files of the top officers of the United States Southern Command as well as hundreds of officers stationed at Boca Chica Naval Station in Key West."
The spies had received orders from Havana to burn down an airport hangar; sabotage planes; and to terrorize a CIA operative identified as Jesus Cruza Flor, with warnings that he was "nearing execution,'' and then to send a mail bomb to murder him at his Bal Harbour residence.
Cuban spies targeted military personnel at the Boca Chica Naval Station.
On June 8,
2001, the five Wasp defendants who had not entered into plea bargains
were found guilty on all counts. In December 2001, three of the spies
were sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy to commit espionage.
Gerardo Hernandez and Ramon Labanino, both Cuban nationals, and Antonio
Guerrero, a U.S. citizen, were sentenced to life in prison. Fernando
Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, both Cuban nationals, were sentenced to 19
and 10 years in prison, respectively, for conspiracy and operating as unregistered
agents of a foreign power.
The five who pleaded
guilty to one count of acting as unregistered agents of a foreign power
and cooperated received lesser sentences: Alejandro Alonso, Nilo and
Linda Hernandez were sentenced to seven years in prison; Joseph Santos
was sentenced to four years, and Amarylis Santos was
sentenced to three and a half years. Gerardo Hernandez, the head of the network, was convicted of murder conspiracy and espionage and condemned to a double life sentence.
President Obama commuted Hernandez's double life sentences on December 17, 2014, as part of the concessions made in the effort to normalize relations between Cuba and the United States. Once back in Cuba, Hernandez was promoted to Deputy National Coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) in April 2020, tasked with monitoring neighborhood committees to spy on all Cubans on the island. He was also appointed to the Castro dictatorship's Council of State, the 31-member body that oversees day-to-day life on the island, on December 17, 2020. Gerardo Hernández visited Moscow on May 31, 2023, and laid a wreath on a monument to Fidel Castro.
Cuban spy convicted in 2000 of murder conspiracy in the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, Gerardo Hernández, is visiting Russia. On 5/31/23 he placed a wreath at a monument erected by Putin to Fidel Castro in Moscow. Mr. Obama commuted his life sentence in 2014. #WeRememberpic.twitter.com/llSlABVT0X
— Center for a Free Cuba (@cubacenter) May 31, 2023
On May 17, 2012 the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere in the U.S. Congress's Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing on "Cuba’s Global Network of Terrorism, Intelligence, and Warfare." Among the experts who spoke at the hearing was Mr. Christopher Simmons, founding editor of Cuba Confidential, an online blog and source for news on Cuban espionage worldwide. He is an international authority on the Cuban Intelligence Service and retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency with over 23 years of experience as a counterintelligence officer, and played an important role in the capture of Ana Belen Montes.
Simmons ended his presentation outlining and summarizing the high profile act of state terrorism that killed four Cuban Americans in an operation conducted on orders from highest levels of the Castro regime.
"Last, but not least, of the highlighted issues, I'd like to address Operation Scorpion which was addressed earlier as a shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue. While this mission on February 24, 1996 predates the other information I discussed, it is important because this act of terrorism involves highest levels of the Castro regime. On February 24, 1996, Cuban MiGs shot down two U.S. search and rescue aircraft in international waters. Code named Operation Scorpion, it was led by General Eduardo Delgado Rodriguez, the current head of Cuban intelligence. It was personally approved by Fidel Castro and supported by Raul Castro, the current President of Cuba. Four Americans were murdered in this act of terrorism."
In order to achieve true
reconciliation and peace, the regime in Havana would have to recognize
its past crimes, repent, and stop sponsoring and engaging in terrorism.
Its continuing repressive actions in Venezuela, and Nicaragua; its ongoing support for the war in Ukraine, and its murder of non-violent dissidents in Cuba demonstrate that the Cuban dictatorship presently is not interested in reforming its behavior, or in true reconciliation, but rather in
continuing its international outlaw status that is on a par with North Korea.
She has remained a powerful force in Cuba over the past 64 years, despite efforts to impose atheism.
Jesús Mustafá Felipe at Solemn Mass for Our Lady of Charity
35 years ago on September 8, 1988, the Feast Day for Cuba's Our Lady Charity, a handful of Cubans, lay Catholics, consisting
of Oswaldo Payá, Ramón Antúnez, Dagoberto Capote, Santiago Cárdenas and
Fernando Arvelo, inspired by their faith, the strength of their ideals
and love for their country, founded the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), to work for the recovery of popular sovereignty and national reconciliation in Cuba.
"Liberation
is our purpose, liberation carried out by the people, who will not be a
spectator of the moment in which their destiny is decided. We do not call all against each other, but all for a new Cuba. We reject violence, offense, lies and destruction as means of struggle. We do not believe that the end justifies the means. Our goal is to achieve freedom, justice and this is achieved only moved by love. Freedom is true only if it emanates from love. "
Since then, many Cubans joined the Christian Liberation Movement and given their best for their homeland. Some are no longer physically here, and some of them were murdered by the dictatorship.
“When our first child was going to be born, we have three children, we
said that our children cannot live in a country without liberty and we
are not going to another country to seek freedom. Therefore we have to
fight for our children to live free here in Cuba and everyone else's
children and their parents too.”
Priests were taken at gun point and forced out of Cuba in 1961
This is not what was promised by the revolutionaries when they took power in Cuba. Fidel Castro on January 11, 1959 went on Face the Nation and promised free, multiparty elections within 18 months. Richard Bate of CBS News pressed the Cuban dictator.
Richard Bate:
Dr. Castro you said that in 18 months or so there will be free
elections in Cuba. When this time comes will all political parties be
able to run candidates in these elections?
Fidel Castro: Yes, of course
Richard Bate: All political parties including the Directorio?
Fidel Castro:
Of course, if we don't give free to all the political parties to
organize we are not a democratic country. We have fought for the
democracy here, and for the free ... for the the freedom of our people. We don't want to stop and to put any difficulties to anybody. We believe in democracy.
Richard Bate: Why would it be necessary to wait 18 months before free elections to be held?
Fidel Castro:
Well, do you think it is good for the Cubans When all the people want
peace. When all the people is that the government repair the mistakes
and the barbarity of the before government. Don't you believe that our
country at least one year to work? Do you believe that between... in the
fight of the political parties is it possible to do anything? If we
give a free election tomorrow we win because we have almost all the
people ...
In Matthew 7:15-7:16 the
Gospel states "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's
clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their
fruits." From the very beginning, truth has often been a casualty of
the communist regime in Cuba.
Father Miguel Angel Loredo (1998)
Father Miguel Angel Loredo was a prisoner of conscience of the Castro
dictatorship because he refused to go along with the lies of the
regime. Father Loredo understood that one of the most formidable weapons
against injustice is objective truth, and here he explained why.
"I believe we should denounce the evils of both the right and the left.
I find selective denunciation, that has political roots repugnant. If
you believe in the integrity of the human being you must believe deeply
in objective denunciation. Without objectivity, there is no hope."
The concept of nonviolent civil resistance is introduced into the
history of Cuba. Take the truth as a weapon, placing it in practice in
the civic field, what Scripture proposed in the spiritual realm: "the
truth shall make you free". Hence its importance at that time and its
transcendence for the future of Cuba.
If the truth shall make you free then what does the lie offer? The Ochoa
case offers a dramatic answer. In June of 1989, General Arnaldo Ochoa
is arrested.
He had been declared a “Hero of the Revolution” by Fidel
Castro in 1984 but by 1989 was deemed too dangerous by Castro because
he feared that General Ochoa had been contaminated by the ideas of Glasnost and Perestroika while
visiting the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era.
He was also popular
within the ranks of the military due to his exploits in Africa. General Ochoa was accused of conspiracy and
treason. He was also tied to drug smuggling and corruption. Ochoa was approached by Fidel Castro with the offer that if he confessed to everything he had been accused of and did not mount a vigorous defense that he could go home into retirement.
Father José Conrado and Father Juan Lázaro Vélez preside over Mass for Matanzas victims.
During a special mass for the victims of the Matanzas oil fire in Miami on September 6, 2022, Father Conrado acknowledged that "although we are far
from the Homeland, those of us who left to find freedom, also feel and
suffer for Cuba, because the Homeland belongs to everyone" paraphrasing
José Martí, the apostle of Cuban independence. Father Conrado issued a
call in the name of Jesus and the Virgin "so that we Cubans break the
spell of evil that has taken over the island" and for this he called for
the unity of all Cubans, "those of the two shores”.
Today, the Christian Liberation Movement's national coordinator Eduardo Cardet issued a statement
underscoring their continued commitment to a free Cuba.
September 8, 1988- September 8, 2023. 35th anniversary of the founding of the MCL.
35 years of existence and hard work. We continue to promote and defend human rights and democracy. Convinced that the only true change that will bring us freedom and prosperity has to be created by the Cuban people, all united in a liberating effort and aware of the great sacrifice involved in fighting against a totalitarian regime clinging to power and privileges. After 35 years of facing so many adversities, we can celebrate that we are present, dedicated to a necessary and urgent fight. Our gratitude to the founders, honor and eternal glory to our martyrs and congratulations to all the brothers of the movement.
FREEDOM FOR CUBA!
FREEDOM FOR ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS AND PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE! HOMELAND, FREEDOM AND LIFE! LONG LIVE THE CHRISTIAN LIBERATION MOVEMENT!
Eduardo Cardet. MCL C.N.
Today is a also good day to remember Václav Havel's hopeful call: "May truth and love triumph over lies and hatred." May it be so.
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