"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)
Showing posts with label Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Show all posts
"Whoever
destroys a single life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed the
whole world, and whoever saves a single life is considered by Scripture
to have saved the whole world." - Mishnah (1135-1204)
Harold was a member of the Christian Liberation Movement and a youth leader. Harold understood that those who engaged in repression were also not free stating: "Those who removeand crushfreedomare the realslaves."
Harold Cepero nació el 29 de enero 1980. Hoy cumple 45 años. Asesinado por el régimen de Fidel y Raúl Castro, junto a Oswaldo Payá, el 22 de julio de 2012.
"Nos sigue la comunista" ( así llamaba él a la Gestapo cubana) le dijo a Ángel Carromero momentos antes del crimen. (1) pic.twitter.com/xGYVXNVoQ5
Today
would have been his 45th birthday, but due to the actions of the Castro regime's
secret police his life was ended 13 years ago at the age of 32.
Clare Short, a former Labor member of parliament addressing the topic of forgiveness and justice raises two important points that underline reconciliation within an ongoing injustice and repression:
"Is anger about
injustice one of the forces that drives historical progress and
important social reform? Is
there an important difference between the bitterness,hatred and quest
for vengeance that
can be so damaging to those who have been hurt or wronged, and the anger
that thirsts
after justice?" ... "I also agree that the quest for vengeance is also
wrong because it so often inflicts harm on people who share an identity
with the original perpetrator but have no guilt,and it means the evil of
the original harm is
recreated in the actions of the person who has been wronged. But all
this said, there is
such a thing as just anger and those who are subject to continuing
oppression can get
strength from that anger in order to join with others to liberate
themselves. And so I wish to
conclude by celebrating forgiveness and reconciliation but also by reminding us that
reconciliation can not be the answer when there is a continuing wrong or continuing
oppression."
In the Cuban context, Antonio "Tony" Ramón Díaz Sánchez, a former prisoner of conscience and secretary general of the Christian Liberation Movement, rejects hatred while at the same time forgiving past injustices
but refuses to forgive those that are ongoing or that will
be carried out in the future.
"Because what I do not forgiveis that theyear has started with thesamerepression thatended last year. What I cannot forgiveis that inmy country,those who govern, do notrecognize the need to changetodemocracyand allowthe people to decidein free andpluralistic elections. I can not and do not want to forgive that right now, at this instant, there are political prisoners inCubaandthatthe existing lawsguarantee their imprisonment or perhaps the firing squad for others. I do notforgivethat young people arelivingwithout life projects, whilea group in powerlive asbillionaires.Nor do Iforgivethe complicity of manyinterests thatseek capitalnowinCubawithout wanting to find outtodaywhat is happeningthere. I do notforgiveout ofhate. No, no but becauseforgiving a present and a future ofinjustice andtotalitarianismfor yourcountry, is notmercybutcomplicity with the evil of others."
The perils of speaking truth to power in Cuba were and still are understood by Tony Díaz Sánchez. Long years in prison and forced exile were the price he paid.
Harold also understood the dangers of advocating for freedom in Cuba under the Castro dictatorship. In 2012, shortly before his death he
explained the cost of resistance.
"Christians and non-Christians who
have the courage and the freedom to consider the peaceful political
option for their lives, know they are exposing themselves to slightly
less than absolute solitude, to work exclusion, to persecution, to
prison or death."
This courageous young man is remembered and the demand for justice continues. The petition
demanding an international investigation into the circumstances of
Harold and Oswaldo's killing on July 22, 2012 has crossed 16,500 signatures.
Defending memory by pursuing truth
and maintaining the call for justice is an ever present opportunity for
the other to repent and embrace justice and actual forgiveness. The
antithesis of this is "forgiving and forgetting" while injustices are
ongoing and new ones being compounded not only harms the victims but
also condemns the perpetrator to continue committing evil acts and is
described as a "false reconciliation."
In the spirit of defending truth and memory, this video of a 2002 interview with Harold Cepero provided by the Christian Liberation Movement on their Youtube channel is being shared.
Rosa María Payá, Cuba Decide and Julie Trebault, Int'l PEN at the UNHRC
Today, in the in Geneva, Switzerland Rosa María Payá Acevedo addressed the UN Human Rights Council and called for the expulsion of Cuba from the UN Human Rights Council. Below is the text followed by the video provided by CubaDecide of her presentation.
My name is Rosa María Payá, our citizen initiative Cuba Decide defends the right of the Cuban people to live in democracy, a right that is denied by the constitution imposed by the leaders in my country.
Mr. President, Cuba should be expelled from this Council for its serious and systematic violations of human rights.
In April 2022, Russia was expelled from this Council. Today we officially call for the same to be done with Cuba, under article 8 of United Nations Resolution 60/251. The Cuban government is an ally of Russia in its war of aggression against Ukraine and facilitates the sending of young Cubans to the Russian army.
The Cuban government uses state terrorism against its citizens, using the following methods:
The government extrajudicially executes its opponents: The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ruled that the Cuban State is responsible for the murder of my father Oswaldo Payá, Cuban democratic leader, and Harold Cepero.
The government represses, imprisons and tortures those who think differently: There are more than 1000 people in prison in Cuba for expressing their opinion publicly. Among them Jose Daniel Ferrer, opposition leader systematically tortured and in danger of death.
The government violates fundamental human rights and prevents Cubans from prospering with the fruit of their labor, forcing the people into a deep humanitarian crisis.
Despite the hunger and repression imposed, hundreds of thousands of Cubans come out peacefully demanding a change of system to democracy.
We urge this Council to listen to the voices of our people and to demand that Cuban leaders submit to the sovereign will of the citizens. To this end, we urge the international community to demand that all electoral guarantees be respected in Cuba, including freedom of expression, association and access to information, the end of repression and the freedom of all political prisoners, with the objective of changing the system in a binding plebiscite and beginning the transition to democracy.
Mr. President, member states, it is time to stand with the Cuban people and expel Cuba from this Council.
"Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak." - Mohandas K. Gandhi
"We are ruthless and ask no quarter from you. When our turn comes we shall not disguise our terrorism." - Karl Marx, Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, vol. vi pp 503-5 (The final issue of Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 18 May 1849)
“In politics you cannot follow nonviolence. You cannot follow
honesty. Every moment you have to give a lie. Every moment you have
to take a bullet in hand and kill someone.” - Gopal Godse, co-conspirator in Gandhi's assassination, Time Magazine, February 2000.
Seventy six years ago Mohandas Gandhi was shot three times in the chest
and killed by Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godseat 5:17pm. Godse was part of a team of assassins that had tried 10 days earlier to bomb and kill Gandhi.
Body of Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi lies in state at Birla House in New Delhi.
Gandhi despite his successful struggle for independence and the establishment of the largest democracy on the
planet was felled, after repeated assassination attempts, gunned down
as he went to worship.
The assassins murdered the independence leader because they did not
believe that India could survive with Gandhi promoting Satyagraha and a Muslim state next door.
Gopal Godse, a co-conspirator and brother of the assassinNathuram Godse, argued as late as February 2000 in a Time magazine interview that:
“In politics you cannot follow nonviolence. You cannot follow
honesty. Every moment you have to give a lie. Every moment you have
to take a bullet in hand and kill someone.”
Communists view nationalists as a threat to their revolutionary project, and nationalists often have a critical view of Marxist-Leninists, but they both agreed in their hostility to Mohandas Gandhi.
The
nationalists were open and transparent about their evil intent, but the
communists had more guile, and their reasons for rejecting him more
complex.
Although
Gandhi regarded the union and independence of the Indian peoples as
his goal, his reactionary-Utopian social theory and the reformist
methods of struggle connected with it caused his activity to fail in
facilitating overthrow of the colonial yoke [...] The social essence of
the Gandhi doctrine and its fundamentally reactionary role in the
history of India's national liberation
movement has hardly been treated in Marxist literature. Yet this
doctrine still retards the development of class awareness among the
Indian masses.
What was this social essence of Gandhian
thought that so troubled the Marxist-Leninists in the Soviet Union?
First, the reformist methods of struggle referred to in the above quote
was nonviolent resistance and secondly his social theory rejected class
struggle as another manifestation of destructive violence. On September 11, 1906 a new word came into existence that would give a better understanding of Gandhi's social theory and method of struggle which he described as:
'Satyagraha.'
Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and
therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian
movement 'Satyagraha,' that is to say, the Force which is born of
Truth and Love or non-violence, and gave up the use of the phrase
'passive resistance,' in connection with it, so much so that even in
English writing we often avoided it and used instead the word
'Satyagraha' itself or some other equivalent English phrase.
The
Marxist-Leninists embrace revolutionary violence and a movement led by
a small vanguard of intellectuals and professional revolutionaries that
carry out the changes "necessary" by whatever means necessary and
reject nonviolence as naive. They follow the doctrine of Vladimir
Lenin as
presented in his 1902 revolutionary tract "What is to be done."
Over a century has passed since both sets of ideas have been set out and applied around the world. An analysis done by Maria J. Stephen and Erica Chenoweth
systematically explores the strategic effectiveness of both violent and
nonviolent campaigns using data on 323 campaigns carried out between
1900 and 2006.[1] Their findings demonstrate that major non-violent
campaigns were successful 53% of the time versus only 26% for major
violent campaigns and terrorist campaigns had a dismal 7% success rate.
Today,
India with all its flaws is the world's largest democracy with a
growing economy that presents new competitive challenges to the
developed world and Communism has amassed a body count of 100
million dead and counting. It would appear that Gandhi's criticisms of
the communists were prescient:
"The
socialists and communists say, they can do nothing to bring about
economic equality today. They will just carry on propaganda in its favor
and to that end they believe in generating and accentuating hatred.
They say, when they get control over the State, they will enforce
equality. Under my plan the State will be there to carry out the will of
the people, not to dictate to them or force them to do its will." - Mohandas Gandhi
"It
is my firm conviction that if the State suppressed capitalism by
violence, it will be caught in the coils of violence itself, and will
fail to develop non-violence at any time. The State represents violence
in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as
the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to
which it owes its very existence." - Mohandas Gandhi
It is Satyagraha that is relevant today
in 2022 and offers an alternative to the conflagrations suffered in the
20th century and the wars that plague the world now. Gandhi's
Satyagraha is a call to principled non-violence but even pragmatists and
realists looking over the historical record cannot fail to be
influenced by the fact that non-violent civic resistance works and offers a better chance of a better life for more people.
The author in Geneva, Switzerland paying his respects to Bapu.
His example has inspired me to commit to nonviolent strategic resistance as a method of struggle, and others have also embraced his legacy, and that of one of his disciples, Martin Luther King Jr., to observe their death anniversaries of January 30, 1948 and April 4, 1968 as a Season of Nonviolence, a time for right action.
There are many disciples of Gandhi and King that have continued their good works around the world.
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, a non-violent icon born in Havana, Cuba on February 29, 1952 who's compatriots lovingly called him "Bapu" is one of them.
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas spent his entire adult life defending the human rights of the Cuban people. He founded the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) in 1988 and used nonviolent means to demand that human rights be respected in Cuba. He mobilized tens of thousands of Cubans through the Varela Project on the need for a democratic transition. However, he did not only focus on the human rights
violations of the Castro regime and consistently defended human rights
in stark contrast to the current government in Oswaldo's homeland.
Two instances separated by a decade involving the United States and Iran
demonstrate this courageous consistency in speaking truth to power.
On January 12, 2002, the Cuban Communist Party's daily newspaper Granma offered the official position of the dictatorship on the prison camp in Guantanamo:
"We will not create any obstacles to the development of the [U.S.
military] operation, though the transfer of foreign prisoners of war by
the U.S. government to the base—located on a space in our territory
upon which we have been deprived of any jurisdiction—was not part of
the agreement that the base was founded upon."
The first Cuban
on the island to criticize and denounce the United States for housing Afghan
prisoners in Cuba and demanding they be treated with dignity was Cuban opposition leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas on December 17, 2002:
"It's
obviously a matter of shame that our land is being used for that
purpose, having foreign prisoners brought to Cuba. Even if they are
terrorists, they deserve respect. Their human rights should be respected."
Ten years later, on January 11, 2012, Oswaldo Payá was criticizing the honoring of the Iranian despot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, denouncing both his antisemitism and brutal human rights record:
"Tyrant lizard on the hill. Currently, Ahmadinejad speaks at the University of Havana. It is an insult to the students and an outrage to the sacred remains of Father Varela, and against the virtue and homeland of the Cubans."
"Mahmoud, why do you deny the Holocaust? Would you repeat it? Never again against any people."
The hatred and violence promoted by communists and ultra-nationalists only end in death and destruction, but time has also demonstrated the constructive power of love and nonviolence. On this Martyr's Day lets us remember Gandhi, King, and Payá and their constructive nonviolent legacies that decade later continue to have positive results.
Over the next 64 days this site will be highlighting some of them.
Totalitarian regimes have a track record of effectively using tourism, athletic events, and academic exchanges to present their regimes in a manner that legitimizes them
and covers up their hostile objectives.
An excellent accounting of these practices and their impacts on
national and international politics is found in Paul Hollander's book Political Pilgrims that should be required reading for anyone traveling to Cuba, China, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela, or Vietnam.
There is much to address, and it will be broken up into a series of blog entries.
These blog entries will review a number of the claims Mr. Offenburger makes in chronological order, and provide documented sources to test them.
They will also highlight some of the errors made by the United States in dealing with the Cuban revolution (1953 - 1959) and the Communist dictatorship (1959 - present).
Mr. Offenburger begins his blog entry with the claim that "religious and church life in Cuba is thriving, and has been since the 1990s." He then goes on to cite as a source for this claim Reverend Raúl Suárez.
This blog entry will explore who is Reverend Raúl Suárez and his claims about Fidel Castro "fixing" the error of banning religion.
Reverend Raúl Suárez was expelled in 1986 from the Baptist Convention in Cuba for "apostasy and heresy" for his unconditional support for the regime. He had created within the Baptist Church an Association of Churches with that political purpose. Suárez, far from complying, robbed the Baptist Convention of the Temple, the house and its bank account of 25,000 pesos, and with the support of the Government - which did not pursue the accusation of theft presented by the Baptist Convention - he registered the new convention."
Cuba grants the Department of Attention to Religious
Affairs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Departamento de
Atención a los Asuntos Religiosos del Comité Central del Partido Comunista)
a prominent role in overseeing religious institutions. Not
surprisingly, religious leaders who support the government face fewer impediments
to their activities than do believers who find themselves at odds with
the ruling party.
At the 1991 Communist Party Fourth Congress, the party
decided that religious belief would no longer pose an obstacleto membership.84
In the wake of this decision, some religious figures are now members of
the Communist Party or even political leaders themselves, such as Pablo
Odén Marichal, the president of the Cuban Council of Churches (Consejo
Cubano de Iglesias), who is a deputy in Cuba's National Assembly. Baptist
Minister Raúl Suárez Ramos, with the Cuban Council of Churches, also
is a deputy in Cuba's National Assembly, and heads the Martin Luther King
Memorial Center, a nongovernmental group with close ties to the government.85
Suárez Ramos earned government acclaim in 1990 when he lauded the revolution
as "a blessing for our poor people" and criticized U.S. policy toward Cuba
as an "economic, political, radio, and television aggression."86
Both deputies often travel internationally and participate in conferences
on religion in Cuba. But the party treats distinctly those who do not share
its political views. The current head of the party's religious affairs
office, Caridad Diego, criticized an American Catholic priest who had worked
in the Villa Clara area for supporting "counterrevolutionary groups."87
The priest, Patrick Sullivan, had posted copies of the Universal Declaration
on Human Rights in his church and had urged his parishioners to defend
those rights. In April 1998, facing increasing government pressure, Sullivan
chose to leave Cuba. Although Cuba and the Vatican had agreed that the
pope would visit Cuba in 1989, the Catholic church's failure to condemn
the U.S. embargo at that time apparently contributed to the several-year
delay in finalizing the visit.88 When the pope
did travel to Cuba in early 1998, the Cuban government trumpeted his criticisms
of the U.S. embargo.
Let us briefly review the steps taken by the Castro regime to crush religion in Cuba, and those measures that remain in place.
In September 1961, the Castro regime at gunpoint collected 131 priests,
brothers and a bishop, placing them on board the Spanish ship Covadonga
and deported them from Cuba. Many of the remaining priests were sent to forced labor camps. Over 300 priests, brothers, and nuns were expelled from Cuba in 1961 alone.
The communist dictatorship declared itself an atheist state in 1962, and openly hostile to religion. Christmas ended as a holiday in Cuba in 1969.
The collapse of the Eastern European communist block in 1989, and the
Soviet Union in 1992 led Havana to seek bankrolling from the West, and
necessitated a limited opening on the religous front in 1992. The
restoration of Christmas in 1997 was a concession granted to the Vatican
to obtain a state visit by Pope John Paul II, in which he called for
the World to open to Cuha, and for Cuba to open to the World..
Today, the Office of Religious Affairs (ORA), an arm of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, still oversees religious affairs in Cuba, and exists to monitor, hinder and restrict religious activities. They also continue to demolish churches with bulldozers and organize mobs to harass Christians in acts of repudiation coordinated with the Ministry of the Interior.
On April 9, 2015 on the eve of the Summit of the Americas in Panama, agents of the Castro regime carried out various acts of repudiation against Cuban and Venezuelan members of civil society that they deemed unacceptable due to their dissent or opposition with either Havana or Caracas.
In a meeting that recently took place at the Ministry of Culture, where the attitude of the Cuban delegation in Panama was recognized, you said that you had never been closer to God in those days. Why?
I said it for two reasons. Because when I am among people who do not have religious beliefs, I like to place the topic of faith in an attractive way, so that there is the highest level of understanding and empathy among everyone. On the other hand, in churches there is sometimes the opinion that a Christian's participation in politics is a mistake, some even say that it is a sin. That is not right. I am not interested in politics that has to do with political campaigns, fundraising, fights between politicians... The politics that interests me is that which starts from the etymology of the term, referring to the people, the polis, which is the organization of the people for the common good, in this case, the quality of life of the Cuban people. That is why I felt that presence of God in Panama, when I opposed in a fair fight against those who wanted to turn the “house of prayers into a den of thieves”, against those who want to bias the right of Cubans to choose their own system.
In 2015 the dictatorship ordered that five churches in the Abel Santa Maria neighbourhood of the city of Santiago de Cuba be demolished. According to Christianity Today the order was issued on November 27, 2015 and pastors and their families, living on Church grounds, were evicted.
Homeschooling, to avoid anti-Christian indoctrination taught in the schools, is prohibited in Cuba. Two Christian pastors were jailed for homeschooling their children, and an independent journalist was beaten
and jailed for covering their trial in April 2019. Pastor Ayda Expósito was released from prison nearly a year later on April 3, 2020, and her husband Pastor Ramón Rigal was released three months later on July 1, 2020. Independent journalist Roberto Quiñones Haces was released on September 4, 2020 in an emaciated state, compared to when he entered prison on September 11, 2019.
Unable to destroy religion, the Castro dictatorship now manipulates it, similar to Communist China. There is
an official Church, and the underground Church that continues to be persecuted. Reverend Raúl Suárez is part of the official church, that uses the name of Martin Luther King Jr. while celebrating violence against pro-democracy activists, remaining silent before the demolition of Churches on the island,.and denying ongoing religious persecution.
Mr. Offenburger should reach out to other religious figures on the island who bear witness for the persecuted Church.
Cuba is a totalitarian communist dictatorship that also successfully oversaw the dismantlement of democracies in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and continues to sponsor and support international terrorism through alliances with Iran, North Korea, and Syria.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) today made public its “Report on Admissibility and Merits No. 83/23 of Case 14,196” in which it held the State of Cuba responsible for the deaths of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero. This has been a 10 year struggle for truth and justice for the Payá and Cepero families.
Many questions remain unanswered that demand a thorough investigation. The Washington Post editorial published today with the title “The case of Oswaldo Payá’s death in Cuba is not closed” is right. There are too many questions that still need to be answered.
“Cuba has never lifted a finger to properly investigate Payá’s death. Payá’s wife, Ofelia Acevedo Maura, has repeatedly requested the autopsy report but never got one. Many unanswered questions remain about the deaths. One of the most important — not answered by the commission — is: Who were the Cuban agents in that car that rammed Payá? Who sent them?”
Over 10 years ago on March 16, 2013 UN Watch issued an appeal for an international inquiry into the deaths of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero that was addressed to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, and Ambassadors of all Member States. On March 22, 2013 the UN Secretary General's spokesman acknowledged the appeal during a briefing.
Less than a month later on April 15, 2013, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) received a petition filed by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights to investigate if the Cuban government was responsible for the deaths of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, on July 22, 2012.
On July 22, 2015, Javier El-Hage and Roberto González of the Human Rights Foundation released a 147-page report titled The Case of Oswaldo Payá that concluded Harold and Oswaldo’s deaths were "the result of a car crash directly caused by agents of the State, acting (1) with the intent to kill Oswaldo Payá and the passengers in the vehicle he was riding, (2) with the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm to them, or (3) with reckless or depraved indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to the life of the most prominent Cuban activist in the last twenty-five years and the passengers riding with him in the car."
Ten years later after the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights delivered their petition to the IACHR, the 28 page decision was published today in Spanish and in English on their website.
Based on the findings of fact and law, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights concludes that the State of Cuba is responsible for the violation of the rights established in Articles I, IV, V, VIII, IX, X, XVIII, XXII, XXIV and XXV of the American Declaration to the detriment of Oswaldo Paýa; also is responsible for the violations of the rights established in Articles I, IV, V, XXII, XVIII and XXIV to the detriment of Harold Cepero; also is responsible for the violation of the rights established in Articles I, XXVI y XXV to the detriment of Ángel Carromero; and responsible for the violation of the rights established in articles VIII, IX and X in detriment of the relatives of Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero.
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights celebrated the decision published today by the IACHR, and Kerry Kennedy, president of the organization said in a video statement: “It has been our honor to represent the Payá and Cepero families in their pursuit of justice and accountability, and it is my sincere hope that this long-awaited verdict brings them some degree of peace and healing.”
Today @RFKHumanRights we’re celebrating an important victory that’s over TEN YEARS in the making. Thank you to the @CIDH, our international team for their determination and resolution in this case, and Oswaldo Paya’s courageous family. https://t.co/KY8ZMCikRJpic.twitter.com/YvSs0t5ynq
Today, let us also remember Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, and how they lived.
Oswaldo Payá was sixty years old when he was murdered by Castro regime agents. He was a family man and lay Catholic from Havana, an engineer, who in September 1988 founded the Christian Liberation Movement with fellow Catholics in the neighborhood of El Cerro. Over the next 23 years he carried out important campaigns to support human rights and a transition to democracy in Cuba. He spoke out against human rights violations and demand dignity for victims, even if it meant criticizing the US for the mistreatment of Al Qaeda prisoners at the Guantanamo Naval Base prison in 2002. Oswaldo was a consistent defender of human rights. He was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament in 2002.
Harold Cepero was 32 years old when he was killed along with Oswaldo. He was from the town of Chambas in Ciego de Ávila. At age 18, he began to study at the University of Camaguey, and in 2002, together with other students, Harold signed the Varela Project. It was an initiative that was legal within the existing Cuban constitution that had been authored by the Christian Liberation Movement. Despite this, Harold and other students were expelled from the university for signing it and sharing it with others. The secret police would organize a mob to "judge", scream at, insult, threaten and expel the students who had signed the Varela Project. Following his expulsion on November 13, 2002, Harold wrote a letter in which he cautioned that "Those who steal the rights of others steal from themselves. Those who remove and crush freedom are the true slaves."
Ortega's massacre of moms on Mother's Day in Nicaragua.
Moms in Nicaragua peacefully protested for children killed by government.
Wednesday, May 30, 2018 was Mother's Day in Nicaragua, and it is a day traditionally of great celebrations across the country. This year Ortega's Sandinista regime, in the midst of protests sparked on April 18, 2018 by a pension "reform" that cut benefits to pensioners while raising the amount taken from current workers, continued the bloody crackdown on Mother's Day to silence dissent.
Nicaraguan mothers marched on this day to remember the children, who were among the 80 killed since the start of the protests. Pro-government para-police called "shock forces" and armed third parties fired on the non-violent demonstrators. Official reports are that 15 people were killed and 199 were injured in Managua, Estelí and Masaya.
Last month the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) visited Nicaragua from May 17-21, 2018 to observe the human rights situation in the country and on May 21st reported that "since April 18 at least
76 persons have died and 868 have been wounded, the vast majority in
the context of the protests. Of the wounded, five remain in hospitals
in critical condition. In addition, 438 persons were detained,
including students, human rights defenders, journalists and other
members of the civilian population."
Following the IACHR visit the violence continued in "Managua, Leon and Chinandega, in Nicaragua, where three people died and scores were injured" on May 23rd.
The IACHR is now calling on the Nicaraguan government "to investigate and punish the use of force by parapolice forces, to dismantle such groups and to find a peaceful, constitutional and democratic solution to the ongoing political crisis in the country."
At least 97 people have been killed since the start of the protests.
Ortega regime responds to call for an end to the killing by killing protesters.
The Venezuelan regime and their allies in the Castro regime continue to escalate repression.
Military snipers targeted and killed protesters on Sunday in Venezuela
Thousands of Cuban military advisers and intelligence officials are assisting the Maduro regime to further consolidate power to entrench the dictatorship in Venezuela. The OAS Secretary General described it last month as "being like an occupation army." The Castro regime's personnel have been training the military, security services and pro-regime militias in tactics and strategies to terrorize and repress the citizenry in Venezuela.
Ender
Peña (age 18) shot and killed by Maduro's repressive forces on Sunday
On May 18, 2017 The Miami Herald reported on a recording of a Venezuelan general advocating for the use of snipers
against street demonstrators "in the future." Maduro regime snipers
were spotted this past Sunday, August 30th on roof tops shooting
peaceful protesters in the head. At 4:29pm Blanco tweeted: "Adrián
Rodríguez (13) was assassinated in Capacho, Táchira. Army sniper shot
him in the head from the roof of a school." At 8:18pm he tweeted: "Ender
Peña died (18), shot by bullet during protest in Táchira. Transferred
to a polyclinic, he didn't survive the operation." A few minutes later
at 8:36pm Blanco tweeted:
"Conflict escalation is very obvious. Weeks ago military fired tear gas
into the chest, now firing with rifles to the head."
This has been going for years but the final steps to a Cuban style regime began to be reached in October of 2016 when Venezuela became a dictatorship. On October 20, 2016 when the people of Venezuela called for a referendum to vote on removing Nicolas Maduro from office, a mechanism found in the current constitution, the dictatorship suspended it without a legal basis to do it. The Venezuelan
Education-Action Program on Human Rights [Programa Venezolano de Educación-Acción en Derechos Humanos] PROVEA said on October 23, 2016:
"With the
seriousness and responsibility that characterizes us, we share the
following position to public opinion: Following the illegal suspension
of the process of the realization of the recall referendum, ratifying the
absence of independence of the powers in the country, the government of
Nicholas Maduro should be described as a dictatorship.
The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on July 29, 2017 condemned arbitrary restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly in Venezuela citing:
On July 27, 2017 the Minister of the Interior, Justice, and Peace, Major
General Néstor Reverol, announced the prohibition throughout the
Venezuelan national territory of "public demonstrations and meetings,
concentrations of persons or any similar act that may disturb the normal
development of the electoral process"
On July 16, 2017 over seven million Venezuelans voted in a non-binding plebiscite rejecting the Constituent Assembly of the Maduro regime. A general strike was successfully carried out and despite regime violence and a prohibition to protest Venezuelans still took to the streets in protest.
Wuilly Moisés Arteaga, a young man playing the national anthem with his violin, was told to shut up and was shot in the face last Saturday. From his hospital bed he said that he would return to protest in the streets, and he did. He was arrested on Thursday, July 29th beaten up and tortured for protesting against the Maduro regime to the degree that he has lost hearing in his right ear.
Despite threats of reprisals from the Maduro regime for those who did
not go out to vote only 12.4% of Venezuelan voters took part in the sham election and 87.6% abstained from taking part in ratifying the dictatorship. The international community has reacted negatively to the carnage in Venezuela and the dictatorship there. The Castro dictatorship that has helped to install it denounced "the initiation of a well-orchestrated international operation,
directed in Washington ... to silence the voice of the Venezuelan
people" while celebrating the fraudulent election. Venezuelan citizens spoke out by the vast majority boycotting the vote this past Sunday and brave souls taking to the streets to protest, despite the presence of snipers that permanently silenced some to terrorize many.
The Maduro regime's election officials claimed that 8.1 million voted in their sham election, but Smartmatic, the company that provided the voting machines issued a statement that the turnout numbers had been tampered with.
In the early morning hours of August 1, 2017 Maduro's security services grabbed opposition leaders Leopoldo López Mendoza and Antonio Ledezma in a manner reminiscent of Cuba or Russia under Stalin. The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro condemned the repression:
On Sunday there were 16 indiscriminate murders of citizens who protested
against a fraudulent election and the installation of an illegitimate
national constituent assembly.
Today there was the selective targeting of opponents. The regime is
trying to silence Ledezma and López and, through them, silence and
subdue an entire people. It is no accident. They are opposition
political leaders in a framework of the social, political and economic
crisis of a Venezuela that is suffering to return to democracy.
There are no legal rationale for Ledezma and López to be in jail.
The Castro and Maduro regimes are working over time to silence Venezuelans and impose a totalitarian dictatorship in Venezuela.
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