Oslo Freedom Forum at XVII: Speaking truth to power for 17 years

 "Human rights are universal and indivisible. Human freedom is also indivisible: if it is denied to anyone in the world, it is therefore denied, indirectly, to all people. This is why we cannot remain silent in the face of evil or violence; silence merely encourages them." - Vaclav Havel  

 

May 26 - 28

Since 2011 this blog has followed the Oslo Freedom Forum and the different human rights themes over the past decade, and  celebrated in 2012 when the Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent was inaugurated. 

This year marks 17 years of this important human rights forum.   

On the first day there was a debate on the effectiveness of sanctions as a policy tool, but left out of consideration the role that increased resources play in exporting authoritarian and totalitarian models to other countries.

Nearly ten years ago, in the Panam Post I made the case against loosening sanctions on dictatorships, using the example of what had happened on the two occasions that they were loosened on the Cuban regime.

"The Carter Administration was the first to lift the travel ban and hold high-level negotiations with the Cuban dictatorship, and both sides opened Interest Sections in their respective capitals between 1977 and 1981. Then from 1981 to 1982, the Castro regime executed approximately 80 prisoners, which was a marked escalation when compared to 1976. Furthermore, during the Carter presidency, Fidel Castro took steps that resulted in the violent deaths of US citizens.

During the Mariel crisis of 1980, when over 125,000 Cubans sought to flee the island, the Cuban dictator sought to save face by selectively releasing approximately 12,000 violent criminals or individuals who were insane into the exodus. According to his bodyguard, “with the stroke of a pen,” Fidel Castro personally “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.”

In Latin America, this warming of relations coincided with the arrival of the Sandinistas to power in Nicaragua in 1979 and a widening civil war in Central America, all with Cuban backing.

The second to seek engagement was the Clinton administration in the 1990s, similarly coinciding with brutal massacres. That included 37 Cubans in the “13 de Marzo” tugboat sinking (1994) and the murder of four in the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down (1996). Despite all of this, President Clinton shook hands with Fidel Castro in 2000 and opened up cash-and-carry trade that formed a pro-Castro lobby in the United States. In Latin America, this warming of relations coincided with the arrival of Hugo Chavez to power in Venezuela in 1999 — with Cuban backing that has had negative consequences throughout the region."

Cuban speaker Enrique Del Risco was present at this 17th edition Oslo Freedom Forum on the second day, and he highlighted how regime elites are building shiny high rise hotels, while average Cubans live in squalor.  Western democracies are complicit in subsidizing these bad actors, often with taxpayer funds. Thanks to the U.S. embargo none of them are Americans.

Later the same day the 2025 recipients of the Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent: Azza Abo Rebieh, Sasha Skochilenko, and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara were recognized.

Luis Manuel was able to deliver an audio message from his prison in Cuba.

This blog entry thus far is Cuba-centric, but the Oslo Freedom Forum spans the world, as do the human rights crises .  

Oswaldo Payá when awarded the Sakharov prize for Freedom of Thought on December 17, 2002 spoke prophetically when he said: “The cause of human rights is a single cause, just as the people of the world are a single people. The talk today is of globalization, but we must state that unless there is global solidarity, not only human rights but also the right to remain human will be jeopardized.”

Too often some Cubans, for justifiable reasons, are focused on the troubles in Cuba, but fail to see what is happening elsewhere.  Too many believe that we are alone, and that no one is watching our plight.

This is not true.

Martin Luther King Jr. in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" explained why.   

“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be... This is the inter-related structure of reality.”

Just as what happened in Cuba affected what is happening in Venezuela, and Nicaragua, so is what happening in China and Russia affecting Cuba. Therefore we owe it to ourselves to learn what is happening around the world, and to be in solidarity with human rights defenders, and friends of freedom everywhere.

Tomorrow, May 28, 2025, is the last day of the 2025 Oslo Freedom Forum, please join them online.

The Velvet Revolution at 34: Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless, and the hope that it inspires today

 "The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility."- Václav Havel IHT (21 February 1990) 

The Velvet Revolution in Prague on November 17, 1989

What was achieved 34 years ago in Czechoslovakia on November 17, 1989 that makes it a day of celebration around the world? 

It was a rejection of totalitarianism and the system of lies and hatred on which the regime thrived. It was a rebirth of freedom and of normal human relationships. In Vaclav Havel's address to the European Parliament on November 11, 2009 he outlined the daunting challenges faced after the transition:

A democratic political culture cannot be created or renewed overnight. It takes a lot of time and in the meantime there are plenty of unanticipated problems to be solved. Communism ruled just once in modern times (and, hopefully, for the last time), so the phenomenon of post-Communism was also a novelty. We had to confront the consequences of the rule of fear that lasted for so many years, as well as all the dangers related to a redistribution of property without precedent in history. So there were and are lots of obstacles and we are only now acquiring experience of such a state of affairs.

Months earlier in the summer of 1989 Jiří Křižan and Václav Havel had drafted "A Few Sentences" Petition calling for the release of political prisoners and respect for human rights. Tens of thousands of Czechoslovakians signed the petition and it contributed to the Velvet Revolution and the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia.

What took place on November 17, 1989 was the nonviolent triumph of the power of the powerless over a brutal totalitarian regime.This is in profound contrast to the centenary of the start of World War One that was supposed to make the world safe for democracy and instead ushered in two totalitarian systems: Nazism and Communism, a Second World War, a Cold War, and the age of nuclear weapons.

The Velvet Revolution was not inevitable, but a combination of providence, free will, and principled human action. The "Velvet Revolution" achieved profound non-violent change without wholesale slaughter and violence associated historically with revolutions. A cursory look would claim that the "revolution" took 11 days in November for the Communists to relinquish power. 

Some say it began in 1976 after the beating and arrest of the rock band, the Plastic People of the Universe, led to a number of intellectuals, Vaclav Havel, among them drafting and signing Charter 77 challenging the Czech communists to honor the rights outlined in their own constitution, and in the Helsinki accords which the communist government had signed in 1975.

Plastic People of the Universe

However some nonviolent theoreticians place the roots of the 1989 success even further back in the nonviolent response to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. After Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring, an effort by Czechoslovak communist reformers to build socialism with a human face, Havel wrote the following to the Czechoslovak President Alexander Dubcek who had been one of the reformers later purged: "Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance." The response by Czechs in what later became known as a civilian based defense, nonviolently bogged down the advancing Soviet army for eight months. The nonviolent lessons learned in 1968 planted seeds that bore fruit in 1989.  

Havel passed away on December 18, 2011 but his legacy endures and his ideas remains relevant raising the call to vigilance at a conference at Charles University titled “Freedom and its Enemies”:

The era of dictatorships and totalitarian systems has not ended at all. It may have ended in a traditional form as we know it from the 20th century, but new, far more sophisticated ways of controlling society are being born. It requires alertness, carefulness, caution, study and a detached view.

I've had the privilege to have walked the streets and breathed the air of Prague in May of 1990, barely five months after Havel went to the Castle in December of 1989, and returned nineteen years later in October of 2009 to participate in Forum 2000 and see the changes that had taken place. 

Although Czechs may no longer look in awe at all that they have accomplished after walking around the center of the city visiting shops and a grocery store, and talking with Czechs over a few beers I left impressed by all that had been accomplished, and with an overwhelming sense of happiness at bearing witness to a flowering of freedom and creativity that continues to endure and thrive. 

Vaclav Havel greets crowds in Wenceslas Square during 'Velvet Revolution'.

Victims of dictatorship the world over have experienced first hand the solidarity of the Czech and Slovak peoples. Further evidence that 34 years later the ideals of the Velvet Revolution endure.

 In Cuba, three years ago the San Isidro Movement, a collective of artists founded in 2018 to resist new restrictions on artistic freedom imposed by Havana's Decree 349 has marked a before and after in Cuban history with their civic protest, and the regime's violent reaction. 

Artists from the San Isidro Movement celebrating Cuban culture

Two years ago members of the San Isidro Movement together with compatriots in the diaspora challenged the dictatorship's culture of death embodied in the phrase "Patria o Muerte" (Homeland or Death) with a song titled "Patria y Vida" (Homeland and Life). Let us pray that soon Cuba will have its nonviolent revolution and its people freed from seven decades of first authoritarian, then totalitarian dictatorship and the old phrase of a democratic Cuba returns "Patria y Libertad" (Homeland and Freedom).

The Velvet Revolution gives us hope that freedom can be achieved in Cuba, and Cuban artists are on the front lines of this effort. Some of them, including Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo Pérez, "El Osorbo" are enduring prison today in Cuba.

The Velvet Revolution at 32: Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless, and the hope that it inspires today

 "The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility."- Václav Havel IHT (21 February 1990) 

The Velvet Revolution in Prague on November 17, 1989

What was achieved 32 years ago in Czechoslovakia on November 17, 1989 that makes it a day of celebration around the world? 

It was a rejection of totalitarianism and the system of lies and hatred on which the regime thrived. It was a rebirth of freedom and of normal human relationships.  In Vaclav Havel's address to the European Parliament on November 11, 2009 he outlined the daunting challenges faced after the transition:

A democratic political culture cannot be created or renewed overnight. It takes a lot of time and in the meantime there are plenty of unanticipated problems to be solved. Communism ruled just once in modern times (and, hopefully, for the last time), so the phenomenon of post-Communism was also a novelty. We had to confront the consequences of the rule of fear that lasted for so many years, as well as all the dangers related to a redistribution of property without precedent in history. So there were and are lots of obstacles and we are only now acquiring experience of such a state of affairs.

Months earlier in the summer of 1989 Jiří Křižan and Václav Havel had drafted "A Few Sentences" Petition calling for the release of political prisoners and respect for human rights. Tens of thousands of Czechoslovakians signed the petition and it contributed to the Velvet Revolution and the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia.

What took place on November 17, 1989 was the nonviolent triumph of the power of the powerless over a brutal totalitarian regime.This is in profound contrast to the centenary of the start of World War One that was supposed to make the world safe for democracy and instead ushered in two totalitarian systems: Nazism and Communism, a Second World War, a Cold War, and the age of nuclear weapons.

The Velvet Revolution was not inevitable, but a combination of providence, free will, and principled human action. The "Velvet Revolution" achieved profound non-violent change without wholesale slaughter and violence associated historically with revolutions. A cursory look would claim that the "revolution" took 11 days in November for the Communists to relinquish power. 

Some say it began in 1976 after the beating and arrest of the rock band the Plastic People of the Universe led to a number of intellectuals, Vaclav Havel, among them drafting and signing Charter 77 challenging the Czech communists to honor the rights outlined in their own constitution and in the Helsinki accords which the communist government had signed in 1975.

However some nonviolent theoreticians place the roots of the 1989 success even further back in the nonviolent response to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. After Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring, an effort by Czechoslovak communist reformers to build socialism with a human face, Havel wrote the following to the Czechoslovak President Alexander Dubcek who had been one of the reformers later purged: "Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance." The response by Czechs in what later became known as a civilian based defense, nonviolently bogged down the advancing Soviet army for eight months. The nonviolent lessons learned in 1968 planted seeds that bore fruit in 1989.  

Havel passed away on December 18, 2011 but his legacy endures and his ideas remains relevant raising the call to vigilance at a conference at Charles University titled “Freedom and its Enemies”:

The era of dictatorships and totalitarian systems has not ended at all. It may have ended in a traditional form as we know it from the 20th century, but new, far more sophisticated ways of controlling society are being born. It requires alertness, carefulness, caution, study and a detached view.

I've had the privilege to have walked the streets and breathed the air of Prague in May of 1990, barely five months after Havel went to the Castle in December of 1989, and returned nineteen years later in October of 2009 to participate in Forum 2000 and see the changes that had taken place. 

Although Czechs may no longer look in awe at all that they have accomplished after walking around the center of the city visiting shops and a grocery store, and talking with Czechs over a few beers I left impressed by all that had been accomplished, and with an overwhelming sense of happiness at bearing witness to a flowering of freedom and creativity that continues to endure and thrive. 

Vaclav Havel greets crowds in Wenceslas Square during 'Velvet Revolution'.

Victims of dictatorship the world over have experienced first hand the solidarity of the Czech and Slovak peoples. Further evidence that 25 years later the ideals of the Velvet Revolution endure.

 In Cuba, a year ago the San Isidro Movement, a collective of artists founded in 2018 to resist new restrictions on artistic freedom imposed by Havana's Decree 349 has marked a before and after in Cuban history with their civic protest, and the regime's violent reaction. 

Artists from the San Isidro Movement celebrating Cuban culture

Earlier this year members of the San Isidro Movement together with compatriots in the diaspora challenged the dictatorship's culture of death embodied in the phrase "Patria o Muerte" (Homeland or Death) with a song titled "Patria y Vida" (Homeland and Life). Let us pray that soon Cuba will have its nonviolent revolution and its people freed from seven decades of first authoritarian, then totalitarian dictatorship and the old phrase of a democratic Cuba returns "Patria y Libertad" (Homeland and Freedom).

The Velvet Revolution gives us hope that it can be achieved, and Cuban artists are on the front lines of this effort.

24th Forum 2000: “A New World Emerging? Restoring Responsibility and Solidarity”

 "Of course, after this crisis, there will be thousands of theorists who will try to describe precisely how and why it happened and how to prevent it next time. But this will not be a sign that they have understood the message that this crisis has provided." - Vaclav Havel, Forum 2000, 2010

Over the past 24 years, Forum 2000 has organized an annual gathering to focus on pressing international issues. This year's Forum 2000 Conference theme “A New World Emerging? Restoring Responsibility and Solidarity” will be a virtual conference held from October 12 - 14, 2020.

It coincides with the United Nations General Assembly voting several dictatorships with terrible human rights records onto the UN Human Rights Council, and takes place in the midst of a pandemic that was made worse by one of these candidates, the People's Republic of China that has been aided and abetted by the dictatorship in Havana.

Therefore it is no small coincidence that Tsai Ing-wen, President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), will be opening the Forum 2000 Conference. The Conference kicks off on Monday, October 12, at 2 PM (CET). This is a courageous stand rooted in truth challenging a powerful dictatorship at a time of crisis. Communist China has threatened retaliation against the Czech Republic for their solidarity with Taiwan.

We are honoured that the President of the Republic of China (Taiwan) Tsai Ing-wen @iingwen will open the #Forum2000 Conference on Monday, Oct 12. Join us for the live stream at 2 PM (CET)! #NewWorldEmerging
👉https://t.co/XpHXRTyUbf pic.twitter.com/tHgc63Da9p

— Forum 2000 (@Forum_2000) October 9, 2020

This act of defiance is very much in the spirit of the founders of Forum 2000.  Forum 2000 is a joint initiative of the late Czech President Václav Havel, Japanese philanthropist Yohei Sasakawa, and the late Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel. In 1990 in his book, Disturbing the Peace, President Havel presented a definition of hope that is relevant to the moment the world is traversing today.

“Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpromising the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

This is why Forum 2000 will be taking place later today and pushing for the restoration of solidarity and responsibility in the world that is emerging out of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Ten years ago at Forum 2000 Vaclav Havel spoke of the financial crisis that had shaken the international community, but his words were not heeded and unfortunately are even more relevant for today. 

 The former Czech president observed that "the crisis is a call to humility. We should not take things for granted." This was true when he said it in 2010, and even more so today in 2020.

Fidel Castro, Carlos Franqui and the 1968 Invasion of Czechoslovakia

"Totalitarian or authoritarian forms of government tend to have very inconspicuous beginnings and employ very ingenious means of controlling society. Only now, in hindsight, do many of us realize how deviously they were entangled in the totalitarian web."  -Vaclav Havel November 11, 2009 Brussels

Czechs nonviolently resisted the 1968 invasion of the Warsaw Pact that ended the Prague Spring

Invasion and Occupation as described by Czech radio with images
Czechoslovakia had its Prague Spring in 1968, a moment when reformers in the government sought socialism with a human face and it was ended 52 years ago today with the arrival of Warsaw Pact tanks and occupation that crushed the reformist initiative. Two days after the Soviet led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 23, 1968 Fidel Castro publicly supported the invasion and occupation of the central European country.

Part of Castro's defense of the invasion and occupation was that basic human rights standards such as freedom of expression were being re-established or in Castro's words:

A series of slogans began to be put forward and in fact certain measures were taken such as the establishment of the bourgeois "freedom" of the press. This means that the counter-revolution and the exploiters, the very enemies of socialism, were granted the right to speak and write freely against socialism. 

This led to Carlos Franqui, one of the early backers of Fidel Castro's July 26 movement and a leader of the Revolution to break with the regime in 1968 over Castro's support of the invasion. 

Dissident figure erased 

Carlos Franqui's protest of conscience would lead him to then suffer a Stalinist erasure from Cuba's revolutionary history. 

Josef Stalin had pioneered airbrushing colleagues who had fallen out of favor. Nikolai Yezhov ,a Stalin loyalist, had written the treatise that intellectually justified the need for purges in 1935 and became head of the Soviet secret police (NKVD) in 1936. He staunchly maintained that it was better for "ten innocent people to suffer than one enemy of the people to escape." He presided over the execution of hundreds of thousands only to fall out of favor with Stalin in 1939 and disappeared, but unlike Franqui, not just in official photos and publications, he was never heard from again.In the picture below Nikolai Yezhov, appears next to Josef Stalin only to be airbrushed out in the picture directly below redone years later. 

Nikolai Yezhov, erased by Josef Stalin

In the picture below Carlos Franqui appears on the right (in the middle of the picture) and is airbrushed out of the picture on the left. 

Carlos Franqui erased by Fidel Castro from official photograph

Franqui wrote a short poem about being erased that is translated and reproduced below:

I discover my photographic death.

Do I exist?

 I am a little black,
I am a little white,

I am a little shit,

On Fidel's vest.

Four decades later Carlos Franqui would return to the Czech Republic which he had visited in 1960 to contrast
 what he characterized the slave society of 1960s and the free society of today. He offered the following description of Prague in 1960 as he 
lived it:

The Prague I saw in 1960 under communism was a Prague with tense, dramatic people there were many police everywhere, gross corruption on the part of the regime. I came with a delegation of journalists and went to the hotel Jalta. There was a dance and there were very pretty young Czech girls ... Most of the journalists who were with me were good dancers and they began to dance. And they were very happy because they thought they were going to have an affair with these girls. But when the dance ended at midnight the girls told them that if they wanted to go with them that it would cost them the equivalent of thirty dollars. Then, as I was the treasurer of the delegation they came to borrow the money. I said I was sorry but could not justify it and they spent all night together with these girls. These girls told them that the police gave them apartments, and that they had to deliver foreign currency to the police chief the next day, that they had to ask the foreigners questions about politics, record and then deliver them . After that we went to the shops where only Tuzex could be purchased with foreign currency and actually saw official representatives doing the currency changes.

Contrasting with what he saw on his return to Prague in 2000:

I believe that slavery affects people in many ways. In countries where there is tyranny, where communism, normally people faces are tense, everybody is worried. It is difficult to find the relaxation, people simply smiling on the streets. And of course there were some great privileges among the Communist leaders, who lived as upper hierarchy, and people who had to work and obey. Now with what I have seen I have a different impression. It is clear that the heritage communism left is difficult to overcome because it is a legacy not only material but spiritual. Communism destroys the individual. And when the individual is free it is hard to recover the idea of being free. Under communism it is as if the state was the father of all the children. Then, to change that mentality is difficult but very important. A society can progress only through the efforts of all ... in all walks of life. [...] I think it was a country with a great industrial development, with a culture with certain traditions, which despite everything communism failed to destroy. I also think that having Václav Havel as a president has contributed mightily to create a balance, to solve serious problems like the thing with Slovakia in a peaceful and civil manner.

Fifty two years later and the totalitarian temptation continues to threaten free nations through academic and cultural institutions on the one hand and an ascendant communist China on the other hand, but the legacy and writings of Vaclav Havel continue to be relevant and required reading.

We also remember that end of the Prague Spring in 1968 was the prelude to the Velvet Revolution in 1989 that ushered in thirty years and counting of freedom.  

AI Cuban prisoner of conscience José Ramón Gabriel Castillo dies at 61 from chronic illness contracted in a Cuban prison

Did the Castro regime inoculate him with the disease that claimed his life?

José Ramón Gabriel Castillo with Omar Pernet Hernandez and Pedro Pablo Álvarez

Former Cuban prisoner of conscience José Ramón Gabriel Castillo died of cirrhosis of the liver on July 16, 2018. He was just 61 years old. The disease may have been the product of a purposeful inoculation of hepatitis while he was jailed. Cuban authorities sentenced José Ramón Gabriel Castillo to a 20-year prison term in 2003 for his pro-democracy activism. He was one of 75 activists sentenced to long prison sentences in March-April of 2003 in what became known as the "Black Spring." He spent five years of his life in a Cuban prison before being exiled to Spain in 2008.

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.

Later that same year we would meet Vaclav Havel in Prague, present him with a list of political prisoners, and obtain his support in a campaign to release them.


José Ramón Gabriel Castillo addressed the first two Geneva Summits and in 2010 spoke of the then recent and untimely death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo on February 23, 2010.  He also spoke of the tortures he had been subjected two while imprisoned in Cuba.

José Ramón, or Pepin to his friends, was from Santiago de Cuba and worked in the Universidad de Oriente (University of Oriente) where he was expelled in 1993 for founding the first human rights organization in the Eastern region of Cuba, called the Instituto Independiente Cuba y Democracia.

Requiescat in pace Jose Gabriel Ramon Castillo.

Forget Castro: Next month we observe five years since two were killed that would've led a free Cuba transition

The talk today is of globalization, but we must state that unless there is global solidarity, not only human rights but also the right to remain human will be jeopardized. - Oswaldo Paya, December 17, 2002

History knows the names Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Mart Laar, and Vytautas Landsbergis all of whom presided over the liberation of their countries: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, and Lithuania respectively. These movements had the solidarity of the free world and the Catholic Church which offered a measure of protection and moral support that made a difference.

Sadly others have not had such support. This is the case with dissidents in China and the moral failing of the West to back Chinese democrats in 1989 in order to pursue commercial interests with their communist oppressors. The consequences are seen today with an aggressive communist regime in China with a modern military that backs rogue regimes such as North Korea. The political show trial of Chinese scholar, dissident and Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo in 2009 who has spent the past eight years unjustly imprisoned and today faces terminal liver cancer and the specter of medical neglect while in the custody of the Chinese communists.

The same holds true in Cuba where the embrace of commercial priorities, especially during the previous Administration coincided with the deaths of many high profile dissident leaders. Next month on July 22nd friends, family and human rights activists the world over will remember Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante two who were killed for dedicating their lives to a nonviolent transition to democracy and freedom in Cuba.

Harold Cepero (age 32) was a youth leader in the Christian Liberation Movement of which Oswaldo Payá was a founder. In 2002 he was expelled from the university for his role in a petition drive to reform Cuban laws to bring them in line with international human rights standards. At the time he wrote a statement on the injustice of what was taking place not only for him, but Cuban society as a whole:

"They are wanting to perpetuate something that it is not even known if it is fair, and in this manner they are denying the progress of a society that wants something new, something that really guarantees a dignified place for every Cuban. They are pressuring people or preventing them from expressing their true feelings, they are cultivating fear in the nation."

Vaclav Havel and Oswaldo Payá meet in Prague (2002)

 Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas (age 60) spent his entire life advocating for Cuban freedom and consequently in opposition to the Castro regime's tyranny. He exchanged letters communicating with Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel. When Havel passed away in December 2011 Oswaldo Payá remembered his friend stating:

Havel, precursor and guide to liberation in this new era. God receive you, friend in solidarity with the cause of democracy in Cuba. Personally I lose an inspiring friend, from whom I received a great education. Always grateful to Havel for the reception he gave me.

Havel met Oswaldo in Prague in 2002 but Lech Walesa never did and following the Cuban dissident's death observed:

I regret that I never had the opportunity to meet with Oswaldo and personally express my admiration for his courage and his extraordinary spiritual strength. But Oswaldo, although he died, in my memory he will remain alive forever. I am confident he will stay alive in the memory of all, for whom freedom and human rights are a fundamental value. 

We owe it not only to these two Cuban martyrs but all Cubans to remember and place their struggle into the Cuban historical context. Furthermore all people of good will should continue to demand an international investigation into the suspicious circumstances surrounding the deaths of Oswaldo and Harold.

Polish solidarity leader, Lech Walesa sent his condolences to the Payá family on July 23, 2012 and eight days later on July 31, 2012 in a second communication called for an international investigation:

 It's hard to calm the pain and be resigned to the loss of a loved one. It is difficult to understand the meaning of this suffering, when the family is denied the truth about the circumstances of the death of someone close. The lack of official information, the denial of contact with the participants of the accident, raises questions about the version of events presented in the mass media in Cuba. That is why I am supporting your efforts and those of the MCL for an open transparent investigation and to convene an international commission

Five years have passed and both the demand and need for justice continue to be called for around the world. How do you plan to remember and honor Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero?

International Day of Nonviolence: Reflection on nonviolence in Cuba

"Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies." - Mohandas Gandhi

Mohandas Gandhi was born on this day 147 years ago

October 2nd is recognized by the United Nations as the International Day of Nonviolence in observance of the birth of Mohandas Gandhi. This presents an opportunity to reflect on the continuing relevance of Gandhian nonviolence in 2016 and on this blog look at it within the Cuban context.  

Cuban independent journalist Yoani Sanchez interviewed in El Salvador's El Diario de Hoy, on September 29, 2016 describes the mood in among Cubans in the island observing: "Two years after the announcement of the reestablishment of relations between Cuba and the United States, Cubans live worse than they could have ever imagined the future would bring." Too many Cubans have passively waited for change to arrive depending on external actors: the United States, the European Union, the death of Fidel Castro to achieve the long awaited change. The reality has begun to sink in that the Castro family has prepared a dynastic succession and have no plans of abandoning power and that the international community is willing to accept their continued rule. 

Cuba has been in the news regularly since President Obama announced a new Cuba policy on December 17, 2014 that could best be described as neo-appeasement. Thus far the fruits of the new policy have been disappointing, with a deteriorating human rights situation in Cuba and an emboldened dictatorship that is increasingly violent. Sadly this has led to a new mass exodus of Cubans who have lost hope in a democratic opening in Cuba.  Nevertheless, Cubans need to embrace nonviolence by not ignoring conflicts but developing strategies to confront them nonviolently not only in action, but in speech and in spirit as well. The alternative is a politics of despair that ends in desperation and violence with no guarantee of achieving positive change.

Monument to Mohandas Gandhi in Geneva, Switzerland

Following the path and teachings laid out by Gandhi offers practitioners of nonviolence an effective alternative to war that leads to liberation and the end of tyranny by becoming soldiers of peace. If Cubans want to be free then they should follow in Gandhi's footsteps and resist evil without perpetrating new evil deeds.
This presents Cubans inside and outside of the island with an opportunity to explore and exercise nonviolent discipline in the current debate at a higher level. In 2002, President Vaclav Havel addressed the Cuban people and offered words that should be heeded now:

Our world, as a whole, is not in the best of shape and the direction it is headed in may well be quite ambivalent. But this does not mean that we are permitted to give up on free and cultivated thinking and to replace it with a set of utopian clichés. That would not make the world a better place, it would only make it worse. On the contrary, it means that we must do more for our own freedom, and that of others.

Things have gotten worse since 2002. Human rights standards internationally are declining with the rise of a modernized and totalitarian China, product of a Western policy that has not and does not live up to its own democratic standards. Recognizing this reality does not permit one to abandon the struggle for freedom but demands doing more, and in our small corner of the world that means how we approach the struggle for freedom in Cuba.

3 nonviolence icons: Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr and Oswaldo Payá

One must consider that for 57 years the Castro body count continues to rise in Cuba and abroad. The murders of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante on July 22, 2012 is but one high profile example. Not as well known are the death threats that followed against his daughter, Rosa María Payá, and the rest of the Payá family. This drove them into exile in 2013. The same people who were organizing mass executions in 1959 are the same ones in charge today of the Castro dictatorship.
Nonviolence requires recognizing these extreme injustices and the justifiable anger that it generates but at the same time channeling it into creative and productive means to end the injustices. Some would argue that one must remove their anger, as one takes off a back pack, but that is profoundly mistaken. Martin Luther King Jr. offered a different approach that has proven far more powerful: 

"The supreme task [of a leader] is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force." 

Mohandas Gandhi spoke in 1920 of learning "through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power that can move the world."
This is not hating but harnessing a powerful spiritual energy and channeling it productively. Blowing up and screaming at someone is a waste of that energy that can be channeled into creative solutions to end the injustice.

Christian Liberation Movement conversation on nonviolence

Antonio Ramón "Tony" Díaz Sánchez, a former prisoner of conscience and secretary general of the Christian Liberation Movment,  rejects hatred and forgives past injustices but refuses to forgive those that are ongoing or injustices that will be carried out in the future. Once again he does not do this out of hatred but out of the knowledge that to forgive ongoing and future evils is to be complicit in them: 

"Because what I do not forgive is that the year has started with the same repression that ended last year. What I can not forgive is that in my country, those who govern, do not recognize the need to change to democracy and allow the people to decide in free and pluralistic elections. I can not and do not want to forgive that right now at this instant there are political prisoners in Cuba and that the existing laws guarantee their imprisonment or perhaps the firing squad for others. I do not forgive that young people are living without life projects, while a group in power live as billionaires. Nor do I forgive the complicity of many interests that seek capital now in Cuba without wanting to find out today what is happening there. I do not forgive out of hate. No, no but because forgiving a present and a future of injustice and totalitarianism for your country, is not mercy but complicity with the evil of others."

Taking all the above into consideration on January 2, 2015 came across the following challenge by Stephanie Van Hook of the MettaCenter what she describes as an experiment in nonviolence: 

"We can train ourselves to transform hostility into its counterparts - compassion and empathy - not because we are not willing to disagree, but because we feel assured that we can disagree and still maintain the dignity of the person with whom we differ.  Like much else in nonviolence, this is an art to cultivate." ... "Listen to someone who holds a difference of opinion from you today. (This can and will be anyone.) What can you learn from them?"

Nonviolent thought can be divided into two general categories: strategic nonviolence and principled nonviolence but although emphasizing different perspectives they need not be in conflict.

Strategic nonviolence takes a pragmatic approach that is based on being more effective then violence. Non-violent resistance is an armed struggle but its weapons are not deployed to do violence or kill. These arms are  psychological, social, economic and political weapons. Gene Sharp argues with much evidence "that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence. Historical studies are cited that demonstrate the higher success rates of nonviolent movements when compared against violent ones:

University Academics Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006. They found that major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just under half that at 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns. Finally there study also suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.”

Principled nonviolence looks at the spiritual dimension, and the power of an individual to change and in doing so impact the world. Mohandas Gandhi described it as follows on September 8, 1913 in Indian Opinion:

"We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do."

The advantage of principled non-violence and taking it up as a daily practice in ones life is that it gives one the strength to resist provocations and builds up the character of the practitioner that assists in carrying out a strategic nonviolent plan. Metta Center defines principled nonviolence as follows:

Principled nonviolence is not merely a strategy nor the recourse of the weak, it is a positive force that does not manifest its full potential until it is adopted on principle. Often its practitioners feel that it expresses something fundamental about human nature, and who they wish to become as individuals. To adopt principled nonviolence is not a quick and easy decision one can make through logic but a slow, perhaps lifetime endeavor. Nonetheless, we focus on principled nonviolence because we think it has the potential for creating permanent, long-term change.  Ultimately it can rebuild many of our institutions on a more humane and sustainable foundation. In the long run nonviolence is, as Gandhi said, an “experiment with truth.” We have all to experiment with nonviolence in the way that seems best to us, because in the end the world will need all our experiences to arrive at a new order based on nonviolence.

Both principled and strategic nonviolence empower individuals to be protagonists in their own future giving them both the practical and spiritual tools to be able to do more for their own freedom, and that of others.

In pursuing an approach grounded in strategic and principled nonviolence practitioners must be deeply respectful not only of themselves, their adversaries, but also of the existing law. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr explained it as follows: “I  submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law." Therefore laws that are just need to be respected and followed while at the same time within a strategic framework to achieve change those laws that are understood to be unjust must be challenged. 

This is the challenge faced by free Cubans today: pursuing nonviolent change that breaks down tyranny in a way that does not harm but heals that sweeps away unjust laws while preserving just laws and expanding them to restore the rule of law in Cuba. 


"A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences." - Jacques Maritain