"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 Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo. Show all posts
NBC’s The Today Show featured a segment looking back at the spirited history of BACARDI
on April 3, 2025, from the company’s founding in Santiago de Cuba in
1862, expropriation by Castro’s communist dictatorship, to their ongoing
success, but much was left out.
Bacardi’s history is intrinsically related to the fight for Cuban
independence from Spain, the defense of democracy during the Republic,
and the ongoing struggle for the restoration of democracy and the rule
of law under the current communist dictatorship. The Bacardi family
arrived in Colonial Cuba from Spain in the early 1800s. In 1828, Don
Facundo Bacardi Massó joined his older brothers in Santiago, Cuba, where
Bacardi Limited was founded by him on February 4, 1862. Don Facundo had three sons who went into the family business: Emilio Bacardi Moreau, Juan Bacardi Moreau, and Facundo Bacardi Moreau.
Emilio Bacardi Moreau was born in Santiago de Cuba on June 5, 1844,
the son of Facundo Bacardí Massó,who together with his father was
arrested by Spanish loyalist forces for their support of Cuban
independence. Don Facundo was released shortly afterwards, but his son
Emilio spent four years imprisoned, and then forced into exile. Don
Facundo passed away at age 71 on May 9, 1886.
Emilio Bacardi Moreau’s son, Emilio Bacardi Lay, actively took part in Cuba’s war of independence. In 1895, he was a field officer for Gen. Antonio Maceo during the invasion of Cuba by independence forces. He reached the rank of colonel by the age of 22. After a life of entrepreneurship and patriotic service, Emilio Bacardi Moreau died on August 28, 1922,
of a heart ailment. He was 78 years old. The city of Santiago suspended
all public events for two days to mourn and celebrate his life. He had
been nicknamed “Cuba’s foremost son.”
Emilio Bacardi Lay, who had fought for Cuban independence and been
opposed to the dictatorships of Gerardo Machado and Fulgencio Batista
but remained in Cuba and repeatedly resisted authoritarianism, was
forced to flee when Castroism consolidated control in 1961. Emilio
Bacardi Lay, who was born in Santiago de Cuba on June 12, 1877, died in exile in Miami on October 14, 1972 at the age of 95. He was the last surviving ranking officer from Cuba’s war of independence with Spain.
Emilio Bacardi, especially, comes to life as the book’s most powerful character, though one so strange that Gabriel García Márquez might have invented him. Emilio was imprisoned twice by Spain off the coast of Morocco for his revolutionary activities.
But he still managed to hold the company together, to serve as
Santiago’s mayor during the unsettled years of the American occupation,
to help found a salon called the Victor Hugo Freethinker Group, to
practice theosophy in a predominantly Catholic country and to track down
a genuine mummy on a trip to Egypt, which he bought as the centerpiece
for a museum he had founded in Santiago. (Modest he was not; he signed
his revolutionary correspondence with the name Phocion, after the
Athenian statesman known as “the good.”)
Bacardi Imports, Inc., re-established its headquarters in
Miami in 1963 after having been based for a century in Santiago de Cuba.
This is the history that the Castros would like to erase but have
been unable to. Meanwhile, to all who read this, please consider that if
you wish to make a toast to freedom with alcoholic spirits, do it with
Bacardi or the real Havana Club.
In contrast, the Cuban dictatorship continues to sell their stolen version of Havana Club, that today
“pumps 1,288 cubic meters of waste liquids into the Chipriona inlet in
Cuba every day, mostly vinasse (a residual liquid remaining from the
fermentation and distillation of alcoholic liquors). It has been doing
that since the 1990s, although the problems became more acute starting
in 2007,” according to Julio Batista in his 2017 report described the impact of this pollution as follows:
“The Chipriona inlet is a place where no one goes, where
no one fishes, that doesn’t need a fence because no one wants to swim
in the boiling filth that flows into its waters every day. The waters of
what used to be a beach are now soupy and have the sour smell of
decomposition. No studies about the marine life in the inlet are
publicly available, but fishermen say there’s no fish there.” …”In the
last decade, Chipriona has become the drainage point for the Ronera Sana
Cruz, the biggest distillery in the country and one of the four owned
by Cuba Ron S.A. It’s the end point of the sewage of the only place
where the white and 3-year-old brands are distilled by Havana Club
International (HCI). And the dumping ground for a company that earned
$118.5 million in profits in 2016 from the sale of 4.2 million boxes
each with nine liters of rum.”
Bacardi has recognized the work of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and in 2017 that of his daughter, Rosa María Payá and they are supporting the Cuba Decide initiative to push for a democratic transition in Cuba.
Bacardi is synonymous with the best of Republican Cuba. Generations
of the Bacardi family fought for Cuban independence with one family
member fighting alongside General Antonio Maceo, and during the Republic
the family not only had enlightened business practices but also engaged
in civic activities that promoted a democratic culture based in the
rule of law. Through their marketing, Bacardi put Cuba on the map. They
continue in the long fight for a free and independent Cuba.
“A republic, if you can keep it.” -Benjamin Franklin's response to Elizabeth Willing Powel's question during the Constitutional convention: "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Cuban presidents 1902 to 1952, and dictator Batista 1952-59.
The Lost Republic
After 406 years of Spanish colonial rule, and four years of a United States occupation, Cubans got their Republic.
Cuba had several independent newspapers, radio, and television stations. There was a vibrant civil society, and culture that made its mark in the world.
Cuban diplomats in this democratic era fought for improved international human rights standards. They helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, lobbied for its passage in 1948 and the creation of the UN Human Rights Commission..
Cuba had regular and periodic, free and fair elections until March 10, 1952 when Fulgencio Batista carried out a coup against the last democratically elected president of Cuba, Carlos Prio Socarras.
Fidel Castro repeatedly told Cubans and Americans he was not a communist. Washington believed it, placing an arms embargo on Batista in March 1958, and diplomats pressured the Cuban dictator to leave power in December 1958.
Cuba had seventeendifferent rulers from 1902- 1959 versus two from 1959 - 2024, the brothers Fidel Castro (1959 - 2006) and Raul Castro (2006 - present).
Castro lied, but communists view lies in the service of imposing communism as justified, and the truth as non-existent when it does not advance their agenda.
This is how Cubans lost their Republic.
The Havana Cartel and the Terrorist International
Terrorists, drug dealers, and regime's hostile to democracies gained an ally with the rise of the communist dictatorship in Cuba.
The Castro dictatorship early on began, with the assistance of the KGB, assisting drug trafficking networks improve their ability to get more drugs into the United States to strike at American youth. The Havana Cartel documentary provides an overview of these practices to the present day.
Havana hosted terrorists from Africa, the Americas, and Asia at the Tri-Continental Conference on January 3rd through 16th in 1966.At the Conference, Fidel “Castro insisted that ‘bullets not ballots’ was the way to achieve power.” Hemaintained “‘conditions exist[ed] for an armed revolutionary struggle.’
The Cuban dictatorship created the Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAL) to coordinate terrorist groups worldwide.
Afterwards Havana set up terrorist training camps in Cuba, Libya, and Algeria.
This wreaked havoc in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, but it did not exempt the United States.
Terrorists attack on U.S. soil killing Americans
The Puerto Rican terrorist group, Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional
Puertorriqueña, (FALN), from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s,
carried out more than 130 bombings, including in the United States.
This group was started in the mid-1960s and received
advanced training in Cuba. This information is taken from Zach Dorfman’s
article “How Fidel Castro Supported Terrorism in America: ‘FALN was
started in the mid-1960’s with a nucleus . . . that received advanced
training in Cuba,’” published in The Wall Street Journal on June 8, 2017.
The FALN was responsible for the January 24, 1975 bombing of the historic Fraunces Tavern in New York City which killed
Alejandro Berger (28), James Gezork (32), Frank Connor (33), Harold H.
Sherburne (66) and wounded 63 others.
The same Puerto Rican terrorists were also responsible for a bombing spree in New York City
in August 1977 that killed Charles Steinberg, (age 26),
injured six, and forced the evacuation of 100,000 office workers; and
the purposeful targeting and maiming of four police officers, among many
other crimes.
Joseph Connor, who's father Frank Connor was murdered in the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing, on March 20, 2024 made a statement in which he revealed that William "Guillermo" Morales, the FALN bombmaker, likely responsible for his dad's untimely death, fled U.S. custody becoming a fugitive, and is currently protected in Cuba by the Castro dictatorship that harbors him.
Other terrorists groups in the United States were also backed by the Communist dictatorship in Cuba. The New York Times reported on October 9, 1977 that
“according to a top‐secret report of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation” prepared in August 1976 and 400 pages long, “Cuban
espionage agents operating in the United States and Canada supplied
limited aid to the Weather Underground, a militant antiwar organization,
in the late 1960's and early 1970's.”
President Biden, during his 2020 campaign, promised a return to the Obama Cuba policy, and engagement by an Administration that, unlike his predecessor, "would act rationally."
The disastrous Afghanistan pullout completed on August 30, 2021, sent a green light to Havana that they could further intensify the migration crisis and leverage additional concessions from the Biden Administration
The influx dramatically increased with Cubans traveling through Nicaragua in the last month of 2021. In late November 2021, days after the United States condemned Cuban-ally Daniel Ortega for stealing the Nicaraguan presidential election on November 7, 2021, Managua lifted visa requirements on Cubans entering the country, creating a new and larger channel for an exodus.
Over 500,00 Cubans have entered the United States over the past two and a half years.
History demonstrates that economic conditions and sanctions are not the determining factors in generating a migration crisis. It is the ability to obtain unilateral concessions from the United States without incurring a negative response for compromising U.S. national security, and taxing resources with hundreds of thousands of refugees.
The communist dictatorship murders and brutalizes Cubans to maintain absolute power.
Cubans who seek a better life abroad on their own terms are targeted with violence by the dictatorship.
Mariel 1980
The 1980 Mariel exodus was the first time that acts of repudiation were seen and documented, when Cubans who simply wanted to leave the country were brutally assaulted and forty Cubans were lynched.
Granma, the Communist Party’s daily paper, compiled a list of 100 insults to scream at those who wanted to leave. Meanwhile Fidel Castro prepared to associate these refugees with the worse of the worse.
Juan Reinaldo Sanchez, Fidel Castro's former bodyguard, wrote a tell all book published in May 2014 of his time with the dictator titled, The Double Life of Fidel Castro: My 17 Years as Personal Bodyguard to El Lider Maximo that included a remarkable passage on the events of Mariel.
Brian Latell, a former U.S. intelligence analyst and academic at the University of Miami, in a June 8, 2015 op-ed in The Miami Herald reviewing the above book touched on how Castro dealt with the Mariel boatlift during the Carter presidency:
For me, Sánchez’s most appalling indictment of Fidel concerns the
chaotic exodus of more than 125,000 Cubans in 1980 from the port of
Mariel. Most who fled were members of Cuban exile families living in the
United States. They were allowed to board boats brought by relatives
and to make the crossing to South Florida.
But many of the boats were forcibly loaded by Cuban authorities with
criminals and mentally ill people plucked from institutions on the
island. Few of us who have studied Fidel Castro have doubted that it was
he who ordered those dangerous Cubans to be exported to the United
States. He has persuaded few with his denials of any role in the
incident.
Yet Sánchez adds an appalling new twist to the saga. We learn that
prison wards and mental institutions were not hurriedly emptied, as was
previously believed. Sánchez reveals that Castro insisted on scouring
lists of prisoners so that he could decide who would stay and who would
be sent to the United States. He ordered interior minister Jose
Abrahantes to bring him prisoner records.
Sánchez was seated in an anteroom just outside of Fidel’s office when
the minister arrived. The bodyguard listened as Fidel discussed
individual convicts with Abrahantes.
“I was present when they brought him the lists of prisoners,” Sánchez
writes, “with the name, the reason for the sentence, and the date of
release. Fidel read them, and with the stroke of a pen designated which
ones could go and which ones would stay. ‘Yes’ was for murderers and
dangerous criminals; ‘no’ was for those who had attacked the
revolution.” Dissidents remained incarcerated.
A number of the criminal and psychopathic marielitos put on the boats to
Florida went on to commit heinous crimes — including mass murder, rape,
and arson.
The author and former bodyguard of Fidel Castro, Juan Reinaldo Sanchez,
passed away at age 66 on May 25, 2015. Within a year of the Spanish
edition of the book being published.
Cuban migrant shot in the back by State Security in 2015
Three Cuban families totaling about 70 persons looking for a better life away from the regime boarded the Cuban tugboat "13 de Marzo" in the early morning hours of July 13, 1994. The captain of the tug was among those who wanted to depart. Despite their best efforts, an informant had already reported them to State Security. They left the port at 3:00am on July 13, 1994 and almost immediately were being pursued by other tugboats, also of the Maritime Services Enterprise of the Ministry of Transportation. Seven miles from the Cuban coast line at a location known as "La Poceta" the “13 de Marzo” tugboat was confronted by the tugboats. Amnesty International in their 1997 investigation reported that the vessels which attacked the “13 de Marzo” were Polargo 2”, “Polargo 3″ and “Polargo 5″ and identified as belonging to the Ministry of Transport. According to the IACHR report the attack did not appear improvised. Thirty seven were killed in the "13 de marzo" tugboat massacre.
Massacres of Cubans fleeing continue to the present day
On October 28, 2022, off the coast of Bahía Honda, Artemisa Province, Ministry of the Interior (MININT) agents of the communist dictatorship in Cuba rammed and sank a boat of fleeing Cuban refugees. Seven Cubans were killed in this latest attack, and their names are: Aimara Meizoso, Israel Gómez, Indira Serrano, Omar Reyes, Yerandy García, Nathali Acosta, and Elizabeth Meizoso (age two). This is not an isolated incident, but the latest in a list of vessels sunk by the regime to prevent Cubans from fleeing communism. Those who survived the attack on October 28th stated that the MININT vessels blocked their path as soon as their boat departed, and that they were deliberately attacked to break the boat in half with which they intended to flee the island. These witness reports, gathered after the event, say that one of the repressors threatened to “split them in two.”
Cubans who stay, and seek democratic change within the existing rules of the system face death threats, attempts on their life, and extrajudicial killings by government agents.
Sirley Avila Leon: Machete attacked for speaking out.
Sirley Ávila León was a delegate to the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power in Cuba from June 2005, for the rural area of Limones until 2012 when the regime gerrymandered her district out of existence. The Castro regime removed her from her position because she had fought to reopen a school in her district, but been ignored by official channels and had reached out to international media. Her son, Yoerlis Peña Ávila, who had an 18 year distinguished career in the Cuban military was forced out when he refused to declare his mother insane and have her committed to a psychiatric facility.
Sirley joined the ranks of the democratic opposition and repression against her increased dramatically. On May 24, 2015 she was the victim of a brutal machete attack carried out by Osmany Carriòn, with the complicit assistance of his wife, that led to the loss of her left hand, right upper arm nearly severed, and knees slashed into leaving her crippled. Following the attack she did not receive adequate medical care and was told quietly by medical doctors in Cuba that if she wanted to get better that she would need to leave the country.
On July 22, 2012 agents of the Cuban dictatorship murdered pro-democracy leaders Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero. Oswaldo Payá was a Sakharov Laureate who had been twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Why did the Cuban dictatorship seek revenge against Oswaldo and Harold?
The Varela Project demonstrated to the international community that thousands of Cubans were not satisfied with the status quo, and wanted human rights to be respected, and multiparty democracy to return to Cuba. This contradicted the official narrative that Cubans are happy with the existing communist dictatorship.
On May 10, 2002, Oswaldo, along with Regis Iglesias and Tony Diaz Sanchez of the Christian Liberation Movement, turned in 11,020 Varela Project petitions, and news of the petition drive was reported worldwide.
Regis Iglesias and Tony Diaz Sanchez were sentenced to long prison sentences in March 2003 following show trials, along with 73 other Cuban dissidents. Many of them had taken part in the Varela Project and, nearly eight years later, were forced into exile as an alternative to completing their prison sentences.
In spite of the crackdown, Oswaldo would turn in another 14,384 petition signatures with Freddy Martini on October 5, 2003. He would spend the next eight years campaigning for the release of his imprisoned compatriots and continuing campaigns to achieve a democratic transition in Cuba.
Early in 2012 Oswaldo also denounced that the Cuban government was engaged in a fraudulent change in which Cuban exiles were being asked to be complicit in their own repression.
Once again he was disrupting the Cuban regime's narrative, they killed him, and through continuing death threats forced his family into exile.
His daughter, Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo, continues his struggle for a free Cuba.
What Cubans want and what the Communist dictatorship in Cuba wants are in conflict.
Cubans want to live in freedom. In recent protests across the island in addition to chants of "food" and "electricity" one can also hear the chants for "liberty." Cubans want to be the protagonists in their own lives, not automatons with everything decided for them by the communist elite of the dictatorship. They want their Republic back.
The communist dictatorship wants to maintain power, and continue to spread their model beyond Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to other countries while assisting America's enemies in Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran.
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."
"Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so
that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]" - Orlando Zapata Tamayo, letter smuggled out April of 2004*
Orlando Zapata Tamayo May 15, 1967 - February 23, 2010
Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in his 1861 book, The House of the Dead
that "the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering
its prisons." What does this say about the Cuban government that has
barred the International Committee of the Red Cross from visiting Cuba's prisons for decades?
Throughout the previous 64 years, a large number of Cubans have perished as a result of inhumane treatment by prison guards of the Cuban communist dictatorship.
Tomorrow will observe the 13th anniversary of another unjust death. Orlando Zapata Tamayo was the martyred man's name.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was a human rights
defender who was unjustly imprisoned in the Spring of 2003 and was tortured by Cuban prison officials and state security agents over the
next six years and ten months. He died on February 23, 2010 following a prolonged hunger strike, aggravated by prison guards refusing him water in an effort to break his spirit. He is a victim of Cuban communism.
Human rights defender Orlando Zapata Tamayo was wrongfully detained in the spring of 2003. Throughout the ensuing six years and ten months, he was tortured by state security personnel and prison guards in Cuba. Following a protracted hunger strike that was made worse by prison guards depriving him of water in an effort to crush his spirit, he passed away on February 23, 2010. He is a casualty of communist Cuba.
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas with photocopy image of Orlando Zapata Tamayo
Cuban opposition leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, who was killed under suspicious circumstances on July 22, 2012, issued a statement
the same day that Orlando died and appeared in a photograph holding up a
photocopy of the martyred human rights defender name and image.
"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."
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was born in Santiago, Cuba on May 15, 1967. He was by vocation a brick layer and also a human rights activist, a member of the Movimiento Alternativa Republicana, Alternative Republican Movement, and of the Consejo Nacional de Resistencia Cívica, National Civic Resistance Committee. Orlando gathered signatures for the Varela Project, a citizen initiative to amend the Cuban constitution using legal means with the aim of bringing Cuba in line with international human rights standards.
Amnesty International
had documented how Orlando had been arrested several times in the past.
For example, he was temporarily detained on 3 July 2002 and 28 October 2002.
In November of 2002 after taking part in a workshop on human rights in
the central Havana park, José Martí, he and eight other government
opponents were arrested and later released. He was also arrested on December 6, 2002 along with fellow prisoners of conscience Oscar Elías Biscet and Raúl Arencibia Fajardo.
Dr. Biscet just released from prison a month earlier had sought to form a grassroots project for the promotion of human rights generally and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights more specifically, called "Friends of Human Rights." State security prevented them from entering the home of
Raúl Arencibia Fajardo, Oscar Biscet, Orlando Zapata Tamayo,Virgilio Marante Güelmes and 12 others held a sit-in in the street in protest and
chanted "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)
Orlando Zapata Tamayo
was released three months later, on March 8, 2003, but Oscar Elias Biscet, Virgilio Marante Güelmes, and Raúl Arencibia Fajardo remained
imprisoned. On the morning of March 20, 2003 whilst taking part in a fast at the Fundación Jesús Yánez Pelletier, Jesús Yánez Pelletier Foundation, in Havana, to demand the release of
Oscar Biscet and the other political prisoners. Orlando was taken to the Villa Marista State Security Headquarters.
"My
dear brothers in the internal opposition in Cuba. I have many things to
say to you, but I did not want to do it with paper and ink, because I
hope to go to you one day when our country is free without the Castro
dictatorship. Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so
that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that
are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]."*
Even though it has been thirteen years, the martyred Cuban human rights defender is still remembered. The dictatorship tried from the start to put down and stifle protests and acts of remembrance for him, but they were unsuccessful.
In
March of 2010 at the second Geneva Summit for Human Rights,
former prisoner of conscience Jose Gabriel Ramon Castillo testified to
what had happened to Orlando Zapata.
In Norway, regime agents became
violent and created international controversy after a Cuban diplomat bit a young Norwegian-Cuban woman
for trying to record her mom engaged in a protest remembering Orlando
Zapata Tamayo in front of the Cuban Embassy in Oslo in May of 2010.
On September 30, 2010 the Canadian punk rock band I.H.A.D. released a
song linking what happened to Orlando Zapata Tamayo to the indifference
of Canadian tourists visiting Cuba asking the question: Where were you
the day Orlando Zapata died? On May 10, 2012 the Free Cuba Foundation
published a video accompanying the song, after receiving the band's
permission, with images and song lyrics.
Rosa María Payá Acevedo remembers Orlando Zapata Tamayo in 2016.
On February 23, 2016 at the 8th edition of the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy Rosa María Payá
gave the final presentation in which she remembered and honored the memory of Orlando Zapata Tamayo on the sixth anniversary of his passing.
On 2/19/2018 twenty activists remember Orlando Zapata Tamayo
Four
days prior to marking eight years to the day that Orlando Zapata
died, activists inside Cuba took to protest in the streets with banners
remembering the martyred human rights activist. The Castro regime
continues to do all it can to eliminate the memory of this humble and
good man, but the dictatorship has failed.
On May 21, 2021 Cuban feminist Ileana Fuentes in an essay published in Cubanet titled "Let it be known: Black Lives Do Not Matter in Cuba" brought together the cases of Orlando Zapata Tamayo and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara.
Tomorrow, we will once again honor and remember the brick layer
and human rights defender by writing about him, holding a vigil at Lafayette Park, next to the White House, then march to the Cuban Embassy, and hold a second vigil outside the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC.
We are also continuing Orlando's work for human rights in Cuba by circulating a petition calling for the release of the hundreds of political prisoners held in Cuban jails under the Castro regime, allowing the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all Cuban prison facilities, and a second petition requesting the expulsion of Cuba from the UN Human Rights Council.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo's legacy is carried on by nonviolent protests against injustice both inside and outside of Cuba's prisons. The Castro dictatorship was shocked to find that tens of thousands of Cubans were carrying on his tradition of upholding human rights and demanding an end to the Castro regime in mid-July 2021.
Mass for Orlando Zapata Tamayo at Our Lady of Charity on February 23, 2020
*Source:
"Queridos hermanos míos de la oposición
interna de Cuba", escribió Zapata
en su misiva, "tengo muchas cosas que
decirles,
pero no he querido hacerlo por papel y
tinta,
pues espero ir a ustedes un día cuando
nuestra patria sea libre y sin dictadura
castrista.
Vivan los derechos humanos, con mi
sangre les
escribí, para que la guarden como parte
del salvajismo de que somos víctima el
presidio
político Pedro Luis Boitel". - "Golpiza y
celda tapiada para Orlando Zapata" La Habana, 22 de abril 2004 (María
López, Lux Info Press / www.cubanet.org)
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