Oswaldo Payá, Harold Cepero and the Future of ODCA

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. - Martin Luther King Jr.  

Senator Ocejo Moreno

Excerpt from the Statement by the President of ODCA, Senator Jorge Ocejo Moreno before the 2012 Meeting of the ODCA Council 

Santiago, Chile
August 31, 2012

A few days ago, with much pain, we have seen the departure of one of those men of ours committed to our ideals and an example of heroism for his people.

Oswaldo Payá left us on this earth the example of a heroic struggle of an entire lifetime, but also left us a role model to follow as politicians and Christians. A young man also left us, Harold Cepero, and that his memory serves us to remember so many nameless faces in our history, which also fought for democracy and freedom.
 
Today I want to represent in them, in Harold Cepero and Oswaldo Payá, what should be our fight in the future. A struggle of commitment and heroism to make reality our communitarian dreams.

He said that man tends by nature, by the character of the human spirit, sooner or later, towards freedom, to the collective and fraternal good, to the pursuit of happiness and perfection in his encounter with his other brothers and in the final encounter with God.

For them, I was moved that in the midst of the pain of the departure of Oswald and Harold, there was no time to mourn or detain the march.

At the home of Oswaldo, we were together with youth of the Christian Liberation Movement, with smiling faces, with hands symbolizing the struggle for liberty, and with the spirit and the heart disposed for the new fight.

Yes friends, this has been the history of the ODCA in these 65 years; this is the story of the ODCA in the present and must be the future story of the ODCA. It is a history built from the conviction and spirit, it is a Christian humanist and heroic struggle, a struggle that cannot be stopped even one second until reaching our dream.

I know we have all the strength of the human spirit to achieve it and also that it will be that way until the end of time.

Oswaldo Payá y Harold Cepero

Extracto de la Declaración del Presidente de la ODCA, el senador Ocejo Moreno antes de la reunión de 2012 del Consejo de la ODCA

Santiago, Chile
31 de agosto 2012

Hace muy pocos días, con mucho dolor, hemos visto partir a uno de esos hombres nuestros, comprometido con nuestros ideales y ejemplo de heroísmo para su pueblo.

Oswaldo Payá nos dejó en esta tierra una lucha heroica de toda una vida, pero también nos dejó el ejemplo de un modelo a seguir como políticos y cristianos. Nos dejó también un muchacho joven, Harold Cepero, y sirva este recuerdo para no olvidar a tantos rostros sin nombre de nuestra historia, que han luchado también por la democracia y la libertad.

Hoy quiero representar en ellos, en Harold Cepero y Oswaldo Payá, lo que debe ser nuestra lucha en el futuro. Una lucha de compromiso y de heroísmo por hacer realidad nuestros sueños comunitarios.
Decía que el hombre tiende por naturaleza, por el carácter del espíritu humano, tarde o temprano, hacia la libertad, hacia el bien colectivo y fraterno, a la búsqueda de su felicidad y también a su perfección en su encuentro con sus otros hermanos y en el encuentro final con Dios.
Por ello, me emocionó que en medio del dolor por la partida de Oswaldo y Harold, no hubo tiempo para llorar o detener la marcha.

En la casa de Oswaldo, estábamos juntos a jóvenes del Movimiento Cristiano de Liberación, con los rostros sonrientes, con las manos simbolizando la lucha por la libertad, y con el espíritu y el corazón dispuesto para el nuevo combate.

Si amigos, esa ha sido la historia de la ODCA en estos 65 años; es la historia presente de la ODCA y ha de ser la historia futura de la ODCA. Es una historia construida desde la convicción y el espíritu, es una lucha humanista y cristiana heroica, es una lucha que no se puede detener ni un solo segundo hasta alcanzar nuestro sueño.

Sé que tenemos toda la fuerza del espíritu humano para lograrlo y se también que así será hasta el fin de los tiempos.







Discurso del Presidente de la ODCA, el Senador Jorge Ocejo Moreno:  "Fundadores de Valores, Democracia y Futuro: el Legado Internacional de la ODCA"

Courageous Cubans crushing Castro's propaganda offensive with the facts

"In all honesty, in Latin American there is only one dictatorship: the Cuban." -Oscar Arias, former President of Costa Rica, Editorial Mexicana, 10/24/11


Despite their best efforts to spin and manipulate the media in order to cover up the dismal human rights situation on the island the facts are overshadowing the dictatorship's "good press." The ability of Cuban activists to tweet what is happening in Cuba in real time is circumventing both the official press and the cowed international bureaus in the island.

Late yesterday afternoon at the same time that state security carried out an operation against activists gathering at a park in Havana, Yoani Sanchez reported about it first tweeting, "Something is happening right now at the Martin Luther King park on 23 St in Vedado. Huge police operation, I'll find out the details!" In a follow up tweet she fulfills her earlier promise explaining: "Several civic activists prepared a meeting today at the park, but were prevented by the [state security] operation from reaching it. There were many detainees" In a final tweet on the subject Yoani identifies: "Detention confirmed of activists Sara Martha Fonseca and Rodolfo Ramirez to impede them arriving at the park."

Martin Luther King Jr. park in Havana, Cuba

In less than 420 characters over three tweets the world learns that Cuban state security has engaged in an act of repression detaining many Cuban civic activists and the names of two of the detainees: Sara Martha Fonseca and Rodolfo Ramirez. Sara Martha Fonseca's son, Julio León Fonseca confirms the names of the two identified detainees in Havana over the phone with the Cuban Democratic Directorate.

The ability to inform both via twitter and telephone is not due to the authorities reducing limits on criticism but rather activists circumventing censors and controls. They have paid a steep price for informing the world. Yoani Sanchez has been kidnapped and beaten up. Julio León Fonseca has suffered physical violence and arrest at the hands of state security trying to obtain information on the whereabouts of Cuban civic activists.

Cuban civic activists using the internet to inform the world have been vilified in the official media and are threatened with prison creating what human rights organizations have described as a climate of fear. Human rights defenders have suffered libel, threats and imprisonment in order to document and report what is happening. In the past, a founding member of the Cuban Committee of Human Rights, died of medical neglect after a long and unjust imprisonment.

Nevertheless, courageous Cubans continue to speak out and risk all to get the facts out to the world and the dictatorship can try to hide its true nature but fewer and fewer are falling for the regime's lies.

Embracing Non-Violence and Love: Boycotting Che Guevara's Image

The serious downside to the marketing of Che Guevara as a symbol of rebellion

Qaddafi as Che icon

The BBC reported on October 7, 2011 that the image of Che Guevara made it onto the list of top icons in the world. Three days later on October 10 came across a blog entry from Capitol Hill Cubans that echoed a sentiment that has been raised here in different contexts: Inspiring Violence Across the Globe with a focus on Yemen. The picture first posted in the Spanish publication El País with the headline "Che Guevara in Yemen."

Yemeni General Yehya Mohamed Abdalá Saleh

Yemeni General Yehya Mohamed Abdalá Saleh, the head of that country's brutal security services. During the interview, General Yehya expressed his great admiration for Che Guevara and "the Cuban model of democracy" then pulled out a picture of Guevara and autographed it.

Ideas have consequences and those ideas are sometimes represented by iconic images. This is the case with the image of Che Guevara and the philosophy of political action that he advocated and that other seek to emulate. In Havana, Cuba on April 16, 1967 Ernesto "Che" Guevara presented the essence of what should drive the revolutionary in a message to the Tricontinental, a gathering of guerrillas, terrorists and other activists:

"Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy."

In Yemen as in Cuba women have been assaulted by rock and club wielding men sent by the security services. On this blog the bloody impact of Che Guevara and his ideology have been reported. From the rise of military dictatorships in Latin America in response to Guevara's call for a bloody continent wide revolution to their coordinating efforts, successfully, to do away with leftist guerrillas like Guevara in Operation Condor. Another bloody episode was adding fuel to the fire in Northern Ireland. Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein, the civilian arm of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) euphemistically said that "Che was one of the inspirations for the Northern Irish civil rights movement." Whereas Mohandas Gandhi inspired Martin Luther King Jr. to nonviolent civic action. Che Guevara inspired the IRA into greater acts of terrorism and guerrilla warfare. The first with Gandhi's nonviolent vision the latter with Guevara's violent one.

Libyan rebel sitting in vehicle with image of Che Guevara

Australia's News Limited reported on March 28, 2011 that jubilant rebels had set eyes on Qaddafi's home town. At one time Qaddafi himself was viewed as an "African Che." This meant that Qaddafi's rule was brutal, bloody and short for dissenters. At the same time the rebels, also embracing Guevara's bloody political code, have in their uprising against a tyrant also engaged in war crimes and despicable behavior. This does not bode well for what ever emerges out of the conflict in Libya.

Both Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. accomplished more than Che Guevara and achieved far greater authority over millions of people. Unlike Che Guevara they murdered no one. Both men also rejected hating and dehumanizing their adversaries. Gandhi was able to end British colonialism in his homeland and King was able to end Jim Crow segregation and empower African Americans with the vote.

What did Che do? Not much.

Che Guevara played a small role in the overthrow of a corrupt dictatorship in Cuba with a similarly corrupt military that the rebels could buy out when unable to fight them. After Batista fled into exile Che helped organize firing squads for defeated adversaries and for comrades in arms that were against the communist project in Cuba. Once Guevara encountered a professional military adversary, first in Africa and later in Latin America, he suffered defeat after defeat until being hunted down and executed in Bolivia. His is a record of failure but because he was photogenic and his philosophy appeals to base and violent impulses it is his image on t-shirts and graffiti around the world. The current shift to the left in Latin America was achieved at the ballot box not through armed struggle.

It is time to take a page out of the Gandhi and King handbook by boycotting businesses that sell Guevara's image and ostracizing those who wear it. The icon and what it represents: an appeal to hatred to generate greater violence in the pursuit of the total destruction of the adversary was an evil ideology in 1967 and continues to be so today as well as having proven to be suicidal in many cases for the practitioners.

Basta Ya!

Embrace Symbols that Celebrate Nonviolence & Reject Violence

"Anger is the enemy of ahimsa (nonviolence) and pride is a monster that swallows it up." - Mohandas K. Gandhi

"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’." - Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas




Events in Libya over the past few weeks have underlined the importance of nonviolent civic resistance and its moral and strategic advantage over violent resistance especially when confronting extremely brutal regimes.

Gene Sharp of The Albert Einstein Institution in an interview with the BBC on February 21, 2011 offered concrete steps on the path to a nonviolent revolution against a dictatorship:

* Develop a strategy for winning freedom and a vision of the society you want
* Overcome fear by small acts of resistance
* Use colors and symbols to demonstrate unity of resistance
* Learn from historical examples of the successes of non-violent movements
* Use non-violent "weapons"
* Identify dictatorship's pillars of support & develop a strategy for undermining each
* Use oppressive or brutal acts by the regime as a recruiting tool for your movement
* Isolate or remove from the movement people who use or advocate violence

The marketing of Che Guevara as a symbol of rebellion has had a serious downside. The ideas behind his image are the antithesis of the nonviolent philosophy of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and are summed up in two quotes by the Argentine revolutionary at the UN General Assembly in 1964: “We must say here what is a known truth, which we have always expressed before the world: firing squad executions, yes, we have executed; we are executing and we will continue to execute as long as is necessary. Our struggle is a struggle to the death."
and in Havana on April 16, 1967: "Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy."

This is an ideology born of violence, in the service of violence and terror with no mercy for the adversary nor recognition of that adversary's humanity. It inspired guerrilla and terrorist movements around the world and led to military juntas to combat them just as brutally. This is the opposite of a principled nonviolent philosophy and must be rejected if humanity is to have a future.

Today is the 52nd anniversary of the national Tibetan uprising. On March 10, 1959 thousands of Tibetans marched to the Dalai Lama's palace in response to the threat that Chinese Communists would arrest him and the Lhasa uprising began. Those heads of state denouncing alleged "colonial designs "on Libya and defending Qaddafi while denying the atrocities his regime is committing are silent about China's half century long colonization & military occupation of Tibet. 52 years later the Dalai Lama has become a disciple of Gandhi and with regards to nonviolence says: "[T]he very root of respect for human rights and nonviolence is love and kindness to others."

Today, March 10, 2011 also coincides with the announcement that another Gandhian disciple of non-violence Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet shortly will be freed after a decade of unjust captivity in Cuba during which he has maintained his commitment to nonviolence.

Now is the time to end the marketing of Che and the cult of violence and promote Gandhian nonviolence and a culture of love and truth.

Follow Martin Luther King, Jr.'s example and raise your voice against injustice

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for the law.
- Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," April 16, 1963

Here, in this dark jail where they force me to live, I will be resisting until the freedom of my people is obtained." - Oscar Elias Biscet, August 25, 2006


Martin Luther King, Jr. would've been 82 today but never saw 40 because an assassin shot the 39 year old Baptist minister in the head on April 4, 1968 at 6:01pm in the midst of the final campaign before his death: the support of a strike by sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. On the 25th anniversary of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday where a monument is being erected to honor the man in the nation's capitol it is an important moment to reflect on the man and his legacy. There are numerous entries in this blog about the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., but until now not placed in a Cuban context.

Fernando Delgado, a Cuban on hunger strike in Vienna, Austria because the Cuban regime has denied him entry to his own country without explanation. He has said that he will remain on hunger strike until the Cuban embassy explains the reason for banning him from returning to his homeland. As of January 15, 2010 he has lost 17.6 pounds.

According to Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, nine hours ago in Banes, Cuba a new repudiation rally was carried out against the family of Orlando Zapata Tamayo including his grieving mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, subjected to a hate rally organized by the Cuban dictatorship. Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a prisoner of conscience who died on hunger strike on February 23, 2010 demanding an end to the torture and mistreatment of political prisoners. Orlando Zapata following in the footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr. in nonviolent resistance exposed the evil nature of the dictatorship in Cuba during both his life and even in death. Martin Luther King Jr., in a speech he gave in Detroit, Michigan on June 23, 1963 declared: "I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live." Orlando Zapata Tamayo has proven in Cuba the power of the above statement.

For the past half century human rights have been systematically violated and dismissed as "bourgeois" by a dictatorship that has murdered thousands of Cuban nationals and engaged in state terrorism both domestically and internationally.

Now 12 men have refused exile in exchange for freedom preferring to remain in prison then abandon their homeland. Meanwhile another Cuban dissident Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina, imprisoned on December 9, 2010 to prevent him from holding an activity on International Human Rights Day has spent his third day on hunger strike demanding his freedom.

On Hunger Strike: Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina

One of the most well known Cuban prisoners of conscience is also a disciple of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi his name is Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet Gonzalez. From the bowels of a Cuban prison on June 1, 2003 Dr. Biscet's message to the world referenced Rev. King: My inspiration is alive: God and the great teachers of nonviolence, present today now more than ever. As Martin Luther King said: "If a people can find among their ranks a 5% of men willing to voluntarily go to prison for a cause they consider just then there is no obstacle that can stop them."

Martin Luther King Jr. observed that "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." In a Cuban context the question arises what are you doing or at least saying to denounce these and many more injustices?


You have an opportunity to do something this Sunday , January 16, 2010 at Our Lady of Charity [La Ermita de la Caridad] located at 3609 South Miami Avenue Miami, FL at 2:00pm EST Winnie Biscet, the daughter of Oscar Elias Biscet is organizing a vigil for the freedom of her father and other Cuban prisoners of conscience followed by a special Mass at 3:00pm. She is asking that those in attendance wear black and carry a white flower.

It would also be a good idea to bring posters with the image of Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet and the 11 prisoners of conscience from the 2003 Black Cuban Spring who remain imprisoned refusing exile along with the image of Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina. There names and faces are listed below:

Pedro Argüelles Morán

Oscar Biscet González

Eduardo Díaz Fleitas

José Daniel Ferrer García

Diosdado González Marrero

Iván Hernández Carrillo

Librado Linares García

Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez

Angel Moya Acosta

Félix Navarro Rodríguez

Guido Sigler Amaya

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. - Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963

Orlando Zapata Tamayo and his ongoing nonviolent victory

A nonviolent moment that shook the dictatorship and exposed its repressive nature to the world.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo

July 23, 2010 marks exactly 5-months since Cuban prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after 83 days on a water only hunger strike in which prison officials for more than two weeks denied him water in an effort to break his will and failed. He was protesting the systematic denial of human rights and horrible prison conditions which recently freed prisoners described as subhuman. On February 24, 2010 the New York Times reported on how Orlando Zapata's death had ignited protest actions, among them Guillermo Fariñas.

Five months later the dictatorship's smear campaign continues against Orlando but only succeeds in exposing its own reprehensible nature. The latest Mariel Castro, Raul Castro's daughter, interviewed in Der Spiegel on July 21, 2010 led the interviewer to correct her on the facts. recognition of what he has accomplished is being reported around the world. At first media focus was on the role of the Catholic Church and the Spanish foreign minister, but over time it has shifted especially when taking into account what has brought about the largest release of Cuban political prisoners since Pope John Paul II's 1998 visit. The role of the Ladies in White was highlighted in a previous posting and should not be underestimated. In the video below CNN describing the release of prisoners into exile Orlando Zapata Tamayo's hunger strike and death is referenced:



On July 22, 2010 the Chicago Reader published The Martyr and the Stool pigeon where the author Michael Miner described "Orlando Zapata Tamayo as Cuba's Bobby Sands" and a martyr. Although both men were willing to defend fundamental principles putting their own lives on the line there is a crucial difference between Orlando Zapata and Bobby Sands: Sands advocated political violence in an "armed revolution" and Zapata rejected it embracing nonviolence as practiced by Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.



Despite Bobby Sands and the Irish Hunger strikers attracting greater international press attention at the time Orlando Zapata Tamayo was able to achieve concrete results that eluded the Irish hunger strikers namely the release of Cuban political prisoners. Orlando Zapata Tamayo also exposed the structural violence undergirding the Cuban dictatorship to the world. This was achieved because, unlike Bobby Sands who had advocated revolutionary violence, Orlando Zapata Tamayo had died has he had lived a practitioner of nonviolent resistance and a human rights defender.

The facts about the kind of man he was can be gathered by information, provided by Amnesty International when declaring Orlando Zapata Tamayo a prisoner of conscience in January of 2004, described his history of activism as follows:

Orlando Zapata Tamayo is a member of the Movimiento Alternativa Republicana,Consejo Nacional de Resistencia Cívica, National Civic Resistance Committee. Alternative Republican Movement, and a member of the

He has been arrested several times in the past. For example he was temporarily detained on 3 July 2002 and 28 October 2002. In November 2002 after taking part in a workshop on human rights in the central Havana park, José Martí, he and eight other government opponents were reportedly arrested and later released. He was also arrested on 6 December 2002 along with Oscar Elías Biscet, but was released on 8 March 2003.

Most recently, he was arrested on the morning of 20 March 2003 whilst taking part in a hunger strike at the Fundación Jesús Yánez Pelletier, Jesús Yánez Pelletier Foundation, in Havana, to demand the release of Oscar Biscet and other political prisoners. He was reportedly taken to the Villa Marista State Security Headquarters. He has not been tried yet, but the prosecutor is reportedly asking for three years’ imprisonment for “desacato”, “desordenes publicos”, “public disorder”, and “desobediencia”.

He has reportedly been moved around several prisons, including Quivicán Prison, Guanajay Prison, and most recently, Combinado del Este Prison in Havana. According to reports, on 20 October 2003 he was dragged along the floor of Combinado del Este Prison by prison officials after requesting medical attention, leaving his back full of lacerations.

Before moving on it is necessary to revisit Orlando's December 6, 2002 arrest. Amnesty in an earlier report offered more details on what happened:

On 6 December 2002 Oscar Elias Biscet González, president of the unofficial Fundación Lawton de Derechos Humanos, Lawton Human Rights Foundation, was detained with 16 other dissidents after they attempted to meet at a home in Havana to discuss human rights.(15) This meeting was reportedly part of an effort by Dr. Biscet to form a grassroots project for the promotion of human rights called "Friends of Human Rights." When police prevented them from entering the home, Oscar Biscet and the others reportedly sat down in the street in protest and uttered slogans such as "long live human rights" and "freedom for political prisoners." They were then arrested and taken to the Tenth Unit of the National Revolutionary Police,Décima Unidad de La Policía Nacional Revolucionaria (PNR), in Havana.

The attempts to smear Orlando Zapata Tamayo and the pro-democracy movement in general is part of a desperate attempt by the dictatorship to diminish the moral authority of the opposition. The regime understands its own shortcomings. Miner went on to describe, in the before mentioned article The Martyr and the Stool pigeon, one of the Cuban agents who infiltrated the dissident movement, Manuel David Orrio, as a "stool pigeon" explaining that this word is a close approximation of the Spanish word "chivato" and quoted The Chicago Tribune's Gary Marx's observation that Orrio seemed kind of "despicable" and "someone with no moral compass." The contrast between Cuban human rights activist and prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo and the snitch of a brutal dictatorship Manuel David Orrio could not be more stark as laid out in an article of an "alternative weekly."



Orlando Zapata Tamayo posthumously won an important nonviolent battle that along with the Ladies in White and the opposition in general placed the dictatorship on the defensive. It pressured the Castro brothers into the current round of releasing political prisoners. That is not just the opinion of the author of this article but the reported analysis of the BBC, the New York Times, The Guardian, AlJazeera, and many more cite Orlando Zapata Tamayo by name as a major factor leading to the prisoners release.

The MettaCenter reproduces the definition originated by Yehudhah Mirsky of a nonviolent moment:

[A] climactic event in a campaign when all of the resistors’ forces are pitted against all of the oppressor’s forces in an open confrontation. The oppressor has two choices: escalate the oppression in a way that is repugnant to the rest of humanity, or back down and concede. Historical examples include the Dharasana Salt Raid during India’s anti-colonial struggle, the EDSA confrontation during the Philippines People Power movement, and Dr. King’s Selma march. Whether or not a nonviolent moment succeeds depends on numerous factors, some of which can be learned and practiced, such as the strategic efficacy of the resistors. However, not all factors are controllable and sometimes you can miscalculate, as in the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The Cuban dictatorship was faced in early 2010 with two nonviolent moments where it decided to ignore international opinion and escalated its brutality. One was to deny Orlando Zapata Tamayo water during his water only hunger strike and refuse to meet his demands leading to his death and the second was a month later when the regime organized mobs that beat up Cuban women seeking to march peacefully to demand their loved one's freedom.

Five months later the dictatorship is refusing to allow Reina Luisa Tamayo Danger, Orlando Zapata Tamayo's mother, to attend Mass and peacefully march in remembrance of her son and has resorted to acts of repudiation and violence. Yesterday, Reina was able to text blogger Yoani Sanchez the following message which Yoani tweeted on her account:

YOANI I INFORM YOU THAT SINCE TODAY AT EARLY HOUR BEEN UNDER SIEGE BY STATE SECURITY & PNR CARIDAD CABALLERO WAS ARRESTED & BEATEN & MARI BLANCA IS MISSING, WE LOVE YOU #OZT FAMILY

If this escalates , and the opposition is able to maintain its nonviolent discipline, then another nonviolent moment may emerge where the regime either escalates repression that will generate international and national repugnance or back down.

However, just because the regime has lost a battle does not mean that it will not seek to recoup its losses and maintain power. That is to be expected, and the opposition in the island and friends of freedom everywhere need to be prepared for the next battles in the ongoing struggle for fundamental human rights and freedoms to be restored and respected in Cuba. Nevertheless Alvaro Vargas Llosa is correct when he observes that: "The Black Spring heroes and their Ladies in White have revealed to us, against all odds, that the Castros are not invincible. "

Thank you Orlando Zapata Tamayo. My prayers and thoughts are with you and your family especially today.



Update: This afternoon learned that despite increased repression, detentions and death threats Reina Luisa Tamayo Danger was able, along with about twenty others, to march from her home to the cemetary in Banes, Cuba where her son is buried and honor her son's memory. Audio above provided by the Cuban Democratic Directorate.

In Solidarity with a Free Burma & with Aung San Suu Kyi on 20th anniversary of last free elections

Amnesty International Action: On June 18 Stand with Aung San Suu Kyi. She turns 65 on June 19, 2010!

A little over three years after Fidel Castro and his cohorts took power in Cuba during the same year as the 1962 Cuban missile crisis the military junta came to power in Burma and would go on to change the name to Myanmar and like Cuba destroy their citizen's freedoms and in the process their country through the systematic violation of fundamental human rights. Unlike Cuba, the dictatorship in Burma was foolish enough to believe that they could win free and relatively fair elections. Human Rights Watch offers a brief summary of what took place:

On May 27, 1990, surprisingly free and fair elections in Burma resulted in a resounding win for the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), which secured 60 percent of the popular vote and 80 percent of the parliamentary seats (392 out of 485). The NLD will not contest the 2010 elections because of new laws aimed to deter the opposition from running and the imprisonment of many party members, including NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Unfortunately, having learned this lesson they will not dare repeat it. Aung San Suu Kyi has spent the last 20 years under house arrest with brief internments in prison. In 1991 she won the Nobel Peace Prize, but was unable to attend the ceremony being under arrest in Burma. Meanwhile the country has been subjected to brutal oppression with a huge number of political prisoners estimated today at 2,100 with 428 of them members of the victorious NLD party arrested in 1990 and thousands of victims of torture and extrajudicial killings. Despite all of this the opposition carries on and is observing the anniversary of the last free elections in Burma. They are holding activities in Burma and around the world. Despite all these horrors Aung San Suu Kyi remains firmly committed to nonviolent resistance to tyranny. Listen to her in this video:



Martin Luther King Jr. once observed that "All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality." I would learn the truth of this thanks to Aung San Suu Kyi and former Cuban prisoner of conscience José Gabriel Ramón Castillo. Attending the Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance, and Democracy in 2009 I met José Gabriel there and after listening to Soe Aung, from the National Council of the Union of Burma speak about the situation in his country. José Gabriel turned to me and explained how reading a book by Aung San Suu Kyi in Cuba had led him to decide to become a political dissident and join the ranks of the Cuban opposition to the dictatorship. Years later he would be part of a group of former political prisoners demanding her release. This led me to reflect on another Kingian observation that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" and realize that it needed a corollary "Striving for justice anywhere is a threat to injustice everywhere."

This is a small contribution to this effort in solidarity with a Free Burma and with the Lady, Aung San Suu Kyi. My prayers and best wishes for her and the people of Burma.

Thwa dau me

Gandhi: Sixty two years after his assassination

January 30, 1948 - 2010

Mohandas Gandhi, the middle class British educated Indian lawyer was transformed into a principled strategic non-violent activist in South Africa at the end of the 19th century struggling against racist laws and policies of the colonial authorities. The most important theoretical result of the South African campaign was the development of Satyagraha. Gandhi announced on September 11, 1906 in his newspaper Indian Opinion a contest to submit names to describe this movement. The final name was the fusion of two words as explained by Gandhi: “Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force…the Force which is born of Truth and love or nonviolence.”

Although Gandhi described himself as a socialist he rejected Marx’s theory of the class struggle as inherently violent and offered a profound critique stating: “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.”

Gandhi’s revolutionary movement stands dramatically in opposition to the other revolutionary movements of the 20th century Communism and Fascism born in violence and sustained by levels of brutality and wholesale slaughter never seen before in human history that still leave wreckage today. What of the inheritors of Satyagraha? They have been and continue to be a force for good in the world. Martin Luther King Jr. in the American South fought segregation and deep seated racial hatred exercising Satyagraha as did Benigno and Cory Aquino in the Philippines, Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement in Poland, Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia, the Dalai Lama in Tibet, the monks in Burma, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet and Oswaldo Paya Sardiñas in Cuba today and many more are continuing Mohandas Gandhi’s legacy.

Gandhi despite his successful revolution and the establishment of the largest democracy on the planet was felled, after repeated assassination attempts they gunned the old man down as he went to worship. They murdered him because they did not believe that India could survive with Gandhi promoting Satyagraha. Gopal Godse, a co-conspirator and brother of the assassin Nathuram 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.”

The choice is clear on one side the force which is born of truth and love or on the other the force that is born of lies and hatred. Satyagraha saved India and Pakistan from a genocidal civil war, and Gandhi’s death at the hands of Hindu radicals led to Indians rejecting the assassins toxic approach to exercising force. The ends justifying the means which was espoused by Niccolo Machiavelli in the 15th Century in his political treatise The Prince dealt with using amoral means to achieve "moral" ends such as destroying your adversary utilizing violence and lies. Gandhi took the opposite approach, his autobiography was subtitled "my experiments with truth" and he sought to convert the enemy into a friend using truth and nonviolence to reject injustice and oppression stating that, “real non-cooperation is non-cooperation with evil and not with the evil doer.”

Nonviolent activists writing Castro's final chapter

Originally published in The Miami Herald on Sat, July 26, 2003

Nonviolent activists writing Castro's final chapter
by John Suarez

Today, Fidel Castro will celebrate with rallies and speeches the 50th anniversary of the violent act that helped establish his dictatorship. In 1998 the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was observed by beating and arresting activists.



Fifty-five years ago, a Cuban delegation representing a constitutional republic wrote the first draft of the Universal Declaration. It provided an eight-hour work day; the right to strike; university independence; and had large numbers of newspapers and radio stations with diverse political and ideological viewpoints.

After Fulgencio Batista destroyed the constitutional order with his dictatorship, the Cuban people fell for a charismatic young lawyer who promised the return of democracy through violence. On Jan. 1, 1959 Castro came to power and has remained there 44 years.



What of the values of the men who, in good faith, used violence to effect democratic change? They did not fare so well. Mario Chanes de Armas, for example, survived the Moncada barracks attack -- whose anniversary is today -- along with Fidel Castro. The two served in prison, trained in Mexico and returned to Cuba on the Granma yacht to defeat Batista.

Chanes could have had any position in the new regime, but opted to return to his brewery job. After two years of watching Castro betray their movement, Chanes spoke out against the communist influence. Chanes was tried as a counterrevolutionary and imprisoned for 30 years.

The men and women who battled Batista's dictatorship had hoped for the restoration of Cuba's Constitution of 1940 and its republic. They got a totalitarian dictatorship instead. They then fought Castro for six years in a civil war with casualties on both sides substantially higher than the struggle against Batista. This opposition ended up in exile, graves or imprisoned. Within those cells, Cuba's human-rights movement was forged.



A movement that saw the power of nonviolent resistance exercised by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. practiced it in Castro's dungeons and saw it as a means to mobilize the Cuban populace. It grew into a national civic movement challenging the dictatorship's monopoly of power.



Its means and ends are a civic, nonviolent struggle that educates citizens, rebuilds democratic culture, reclaims human rights, refuses to accept injustice and challenges repression. Members expose the dictatorship's internal contradictions by demanding that it respect the democratic provisions of its own constitution.

Oswaldo Payá, a movement leader, observes: "What we are seeing with this crackdown is the last chapter of this system."