"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)
23 years and five days on May 10, 2002 Oswaldo José
Payá Sardiñas, Regis Iglesias Ramirez and Antonio Ramón Diaz Sánchez of the Christian Liberation Movement
(from left to right in above picture) turned in 11,020 signed Varela Project petitions to the Cuban authorities demanding reforms that would see human rights respected in Cuba
and fundamental freedoms restored.
Both Regis Iglesias Ramirez, Antonio Ramón Diaz
Sánchez and dozens of other activists involved in the Varela Project
were imprisoned in the March 18, 2003 crackdown known as the end of the Cuban
Spring and spent seven long years in prison and now suffer exile.
Oswaldo José
Payá Sardiñas was assassinated on July 22, 2012 by Cuban government agents together with Harold Cepero Escalante, the Chirsitian Liberation Movement's youth leader.
Totalitarians may terrorize and murder but those who live on have an
obligation to remember and rescue both the facts and the truth. Please
assist in this effort by spreading the word.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo
and Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia, Oswaldo José
Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante were killed for exercising their
fundamental rights as human rights defenders in Cuba.
At the same time it is important
remember that the Varela Project shook the foundations of the Castro
regime and continues to live on today as an example of the power of the powerless.
Project Varela was one of the projects Orlando Zapata Tamayo worked on, and his death impacted a Canadian rock band I.H.A.D.who wrote and sang the song "Orlando Zapata" in his memory.
Remembering two Cubans who paid the ultimate price for Cuba's freedom.
July 22, 2021 outside the Embassy of Cuba in Washington DC
Today paid homage to Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante, two martyrs for democracy in the Americas killed on July 22, 2012 by Castro's secret police. Had a meeting nearby the Cuban Embassy at 4:00pm, brought a large poster honoring both, and when I emerged from the gathering walked over and for nine minutes picketed in front. Gentleman passed by, and was willing to take a few photographs of this small action. He asked me if I spoke Spanish, and I said yes than asked him where he was from, and he told me "Costa Rica." We smiled and he took several pictures, and handed me back the camera and continued on his way.
Oswaldo was sixty years old at the time that he was murdered by agents of the Castro regime. 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, and over the next 23 years would carry out important campaigns to support human rights and a transition to democracy in Cuba.
Harold Cepero was 32 years old at the time he was killed together 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.
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 the news of the petition drive was reported worldwide.
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."
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 the crackdown, Oswaldo would turn in another 14,384 petition signatures 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.
Ten years, two months and twelve days after turning in the first Varela Project petitions while traveling in Eastern Cuba on a Sunday afternoon on July 22, 2012 with two international visitors Oswaldo and Harold were killed. Cuban state security bumped into the car they were driving, and when the vehicles stopped, with everyone still alive in the car, approached the driver striking him in the temple with the butt of a pistol. Within hours the lifeless and brutalized bodies of both men would appear.
These are somber times with a pandemic raging across the world killing millions, in part, due to the lack of transparency of the Chinese Communist Party.
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.”
The failure of the international community to advance human rights along with globalization that is made manifest by the West’s embrace of Communist China, ignoring its continuing dismal human rights record has created a crisis of values that has become a global economic and health crisis.
How did they not see that embracing a regime that killed over 45 million of its own people and building it up economically would not be a disaster? Have the lessons of Nazi Germany so faded from popular imagination that the world needed a reminder?
Oswaldo understood that the means are also the ends and in the same talk explained: “We now know that any method or model which purportedly aims to achieve justice, development, and efficiency but takes precedence over the individual or cancels out any of the fundamental rights leads to a form of oppression and to exclusion and is calamitous for the people.”
"It's obviously a matter of shame that our land is being used for that purpose, having foreign prisoners brought to Cuba. Even if they are terrorists they deserve respect. Their human rights should be respected."
In the midst of darkness, it is important to remember these points of light that give us hope and a path to freedom and improved human rights around the world.
Six years ago 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.
"Information that emerged in the months that followed and that was not at all considered by the Cuban court that convicted Carromero – consisting of witness statements, physical evidence and expert reports – suggest direct government responsibility in the deaths of Payá and Cepero. Specifically, the evidence deliberately ignored by the Cuban State strongly suggests that the events of July 22, 2012 were not an accident – as was quickly claimed by authorities in the state-owned media monopoly and later rubber – stamped by Cuba’s totalitarian court system – but instead 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."
Let there be truth and justice for Oswaldo Payá, Harold Cepero and the many victims of Communism around the world, and let us continue their work in defense of human dignity and in pursuit of the global solidarity that they advocated and lived for.
Oswaldo Payá, Harold Cepero and others living and dead have laid the groundwork that made possible the nonviolent character of the mass nationwide protests that marked a new before and after in Cuban history. However Oswaldo and Harold marked two such historic moments in Cuban history: turning in the Varela Project signatures on May 10, 2002 and their martyrdom on July 22, 2012.
One week later and the protests continue, despite the most brutal efforts of the Castro regime to silence Cubans on the island. It began on July 11, 2021 in San Antonio de los Baños, just South East of Havana when Cubans took to the streets in protest. Others saw it streaming live, and also took to the street in cities and towns across the country chanting "Freedom" and "Down with the dictatorship."
President Miguel Diaz-Canel appeared on official television threatening: "They [protesters] would have to pass
over our dead bodies if they want to confront the revolution, and we are
willing to resort to anything."
Cuban protesters were met with extreme violence by the dictatorship, but they have continued to take to the streets to the present day. Cubans in the diaspora around the world have taken to the street in solidarity with their counterparts in the island. On July 11th, I was outside of the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC protesting the repression of the dictatorship, and in solidarity with Cubans on the island demanding freedom.
On July 14, 2021 the Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero appeared on television and announced that the dictatorship would "temporarily lift restrictions on the quantity of food and medicine incoming travelers could bring into Cuba."
On Saturday, July 17 the regime held their official rally, and even there they could not obtain unanimity and violently dragged out an unknown protester who screamed "Freedom."
The opposition movement to the Castro regime since the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976 has been a nonviolent one, and regime brutality is an attempt to shock and outrage Cubans to embrace violence, and in turn give the regime the pretext to escalate their violence and terror against the populace.
Gene Sharp was the theoretician of nonviolent action, that thanks to Jose Basulto,
in June of 1996 I was able to meet and learn from him over a series
of lectures and conversations at Florida International University. This
encounter marked a before and after in my life. This blog has cited him time and time again and promoted the South Florida premiere of the documentary about his life, How to Start a Revolution, back in 2011. Professor Sharp passed away on January 28, 2018 at age 90.
"I say nonviolent struggle is armed struggle. And we have to take back
that term from those advocates of violence who seek to justify with
pretty words that kind of combat. Only with this type of struggle one
fights with psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons and
political weapons. And that this is ultimately more powerful against
oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence."
These weapons can be wielded by the average citizen to great effect, but also requires strategy and tactics to be successful.
Now is the time to double down on nonviolence. The Castro regime came into existence with the secret backing of the Soviet Union, the public backing of the United States, a U.S. arms embargo on Batista, then lies, terror, and mass murder to consolidate its rule. They have used violence and terrorism as state policy for 62 years. They are experts in the application of violence.
To abandon the strategy and tactics of nonviolence that have put the regime on the defensive is the equivalent of deciding to abandon a chess match with a boxer when you have him checked on the board to decide the battle in the boxing ring.
University Academics Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006 and there study finds “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.”
The usual counter argument is that nonviolence would not have worked
against the Nazis but history says otherwise with the successful
nonviolent action of the Rosenstrasse protest carried out by German wives who successfully got their Jewish husbands back from the concentration camps in 1943. Nor does one consider the scores of violent actions that failed to dislodge the Nazi regime but only consolidated their rule despite two close calls that nearly got Adolph Hitler in 1939 and 1944.
This dictatorship, I believe, has killed many this last week, and is continuing to kill Cubans and we may never have a full accounting. Thousands have been jailed or disappeared, and the oppressors responsible need to be identified and sanctioned by the international community. The Global Magnitsky Act holds torturers and kleptocrats accountable nonviolently through targeted sanctions, and needs to be applied now in Cuba. This is one of the weapons in the nonviolent arsenal described by Professor Sharp above.
Gene Sharp provides below a holistic look at how nonviolence works:
In
a great variety of situations, across centuries and cultural barriers,
another technique of struggle has at times been applied. This other
technique has not been based on turning the other cheek, but on the
ability to be stubborn and to resist powerful opponents powerfully.
Throughout human history, in a multitude of conflicts one side has
fought - not by violence, but - by psychological, social, economic, or
political methods, or a combination of these. This type of conflict has
been waged not only when the issues were relatively limited and the
opponents relatively decent. Many times this alter- native form of
struggle has been applied when fundamental issues have been at stake
and when ruthless opponents have been willing and able to apply extreme
repression. That repression has included executions, beatings, arrests,
imprisonments, and mass slaughters. Despite such repression, when the
resisters have persisted in fighting with only their chosen nonviolent
weapons, they have some- times triumphed. This technique is called
nonviolent action or nonviolent struggle. This is “the other ultimate
sanction.” In acute conflicts it potentially can serve as an
alternative to war and other violence.
We have witnessed it in Cuba over the years with a number if initiatives. The Cuban Committee for Human Rights and its ability to document human rights abuses in the island to expose the brutality of the regime in the 1980s and 1990s to the international community. The Christian Liberation Movement in the 1990s and 2000s that through the Varela Project non-violently petitioned the Cuban government to reform and respect international human rights standards, and gathered over 25,000 signatures of Cuban citizens in the island who knew what the cost would be to say they wanted change. The San Isidro Movement formed in 2018 by artists protesting Decree 349, a further tightening of restrictions on artistic freedom in Cuba, has carried out nonviolent campaigns that on November 27, 2020 shook the dictatorship when hundreds of artists and intellectuals engaged in a non-violent intervention outside the Ministry of Culture in Havana, Cuba.
Violent resistance to the regime was tried early on by courageous Cuban men and women, but was crushed by the Castro regime with the aid of Soviet counter-insurgency forces. Today, not only the Russians are there, but so are the Chinese.
The documentary "A Force More Powerful" is about non-violence, and its
power to change the world over the past century. It is worth noticing
that faith and belief played a major role in these movements that
achieved positive and lasting change. We will need a lot of both in the days, weeks, and months to come.
Today marks 32 years since the founding of the Christian Liberation Movement, our thanks and admiration to its founding fathers, and many congratulations to all the brothers who during these years have remained firm and consistent with the principles and values of Liberation.
These years have been hard: persecution, repression, jail, exile, isolation, murder of our leaders; but also fruitful, there are the Varela Project, The Peoples Path (El Camino del Pueblo), the Heredia Project, Once Cuban one Vote (Un Cubano un Voto), among others; formidable expressions of citizen mobilization in order to demand the rights that the regime denies to the Cuban people.
We use nonviolence as a method of struggle to subvert oppression, and as a rational and civilized response to intolerance and hatred.
For the people a message of faith and hope, with the certainty that change is possible if all Cubans of good will work for that purpose.
Freedom for Cuba, enough of injustices and oppression!
Freedom for all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience!
1988-2020 XXXII Aniversario del Movimiento Cristiano Liberación.
Hoy cumple 32 años de fundado el Movimiento Cristiano Liberación, nuestro agradecimiento y admiración a sus padres fundadores, y muchas felicidades a todos los hermanos que durante estos años se han mantenido firmes y coherentes a los principios y valores de Liberación.
Estos años han sido duros: persecución, represión, cárcel, destierro, aislamiento, asesinato de nuestros lideres; pero también fecundos, ahí están el Proyecto Varela , El Camino del Pueblo, el Proyecto Heredia, Un Cubano un Voto entre otros; formidables expresiones de movilización ciudadana en aras de exigir los derechos que el régimen niega al pueblo cubano.
Empleamos la no violencia como método de lucha para subvertir la opresión, y como respuesta racional y civilizada a la intolerancia y el odio.
Para el pueblo un mensaje de fe y esperanza, con la certeza que el cambio es posible si todos los cubanos de buena voluntad trabajamos por dicho propósito.
¡Libertad para Cuba, basta ya de injusticias y opresión!
Libertad para todos los presos políticos y de ¡conciencia!
Ten years earlier, Oswaldo Payá along with other members of the Christian Liberation Movement in May 2002 turned in thousands of signatures from the Varela Project, a petition that called for human rights to be respected in Cuba, and that the matter be debated before the National Assembly.
In December of 2002, thanks to lobbying and pressure from Spain, Oswaldo Payá was able to travel to Strasbourg, France to receive the European Union's Sakharov Prize and address the chamber.
In 2011, seven Norwegian members of parliament nominated Oswaldo Payá for the Nobel Peace Prize.( Václav Havel had also twice nominated Oswaldo Payá ).
Following the untimely deaths of Oswaldo and Harold, the Cuban opposition leader's
family was subjected to death threats and heightened surveillance by
state security.
Eight years later and his legacy lives on in Cuba, in the diaspora, and with his family. This past year his book "The Night Will Not Be Eternal: Dangers and Hopes for Cuba" was published and today over Twitter, in Spanish, his daughter, Rosa María Payá Acevedo, remembered her dad and this important work.
“Y todos, sin excepción, vivan dentro o fuera de Cuba, ahora seremos protagonistas de los cambios hacia la libertad y la paz, aquí en esta tierra hermosa que Dios nos dio a todos como Patria y Hogar”#OswaldoPayá, te extrañamos.
"And all, without exception, living inside or outside Cuba, now we will be protagonists of the changes towards freedom and peace, here in this beautiful land that God gave us all as Homeland and Home"
#OswaldoPayá, we miss you.
Feb 29, 1952 - Jul 22, 2012 - Rosa María Payá A.
Today, let us remember and pray for the soul of this good man, who sacrificed all for the freedom of the Cuban people.
It is also a moment to share with others how others looking from outside the Cuban experience viewed this human rights defender and Cuban patriot. Below are observations made by Norwegian members of parliament in 2011 when they nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Norwegian members of parliament nominated Oswaldo Payá for Nobel Peace Prize in 2011
Norwegian MPs nominate Oswaldo Payá for Nobel Peace Prize
A
group of 7 Norwegian Members of Parliament has nominated the Cuban
Oswaldo Payá for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. – The Nobel Prize to
Cuba’s most important oppositional leader would be an important
contribution to peace and democracy for a people who have been denied
their fundamental human rights for far too long, the MPs write in their
nomination letter.
Through nearly two decades Oswaldo Payá has
been the leading figure in a peaceful struggle for basic human rights in
Cuba. Oswaldo Payá represents all Cubans who want a peaceful change
based on reconciliation and dialogue.
– We believe the Nobel Peace
Prize would send a strong signal to the Cuban government that it is time
for change, says Dagrun Eriksen, MP, deputy leader of the Christian
Democratic Party and one of the signatories.
Oswaldo Payá has
built his work on the conviction that all human beings have inviolable
rights. He believes that the right to freedom of speech is the basis on
which to solve all other problems in society. Only when the people
themselves can express their concerns, Cuba will be able to find its own
way out of the country’s challenges.
- Oswaldo Payá recognizes that
freedom of speech and respect for fundamental human rights is a
precondition for a peaceful development, says Jan Tore Sanner, MP,
deputy leader of the Conservative Party and one of the other
signatories.
Oswaldo Payá has consistently tried to work within
the frames of Cuban law, through petitions calling for the respect for
basic human rights. When the Varela project succeeded in collecting
enough signatures to set of a referendum in 2002, the Cuban regime’s
response, however, was to arrest 75 oppositional leaders, in what became
known as the Black Spring.
Last spring, Mr Sanner and Mrs
Eriksen took the initiative to form a support group for Cuban political
prisoners in the Norwegian Parliament, including MPs from all the
Norwegian parties. Following the release of more than 40 prisoners into
forced exile last summer, 19 of them wrote a letter to the group,
proposing that they nominate Oswaldo Payá for this year’s Nobel Peace
Prize.
- The support from the former prisoners of conscience shows
how Oswaldo Payá has succeeded in gathering different groups of
dissidents in dialogue and peaceful resistance, says Dagrun Eriksen.
Jan Tore Sanner was one of the nominators behind last year’s winner Liu Xiabo.
- Oswaldo Payá represents the same peaceful struggle for human rights as Liu Xiabo, says Mr Sanner.
Payá
has continued to call for unity and dialogue between all Cubans, in and
outside the country. His National Dialogue program and All Cubans
Forum, have involved thousands of Cubans in discussions on proposals for
a peaceful change towards democracy. Payá is now again calling for a
referendum on basic human rights.
- Oswaldo Payá would be a worthy winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, say Dagrun Eriksen and Jan Tore Sanner.
Observing the 67th anniversary of the birth of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas
February 29, 1952 - July 22, 2012
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas
would be sixty seven years old on February 29th but according to friends
and family, the Cuban human rights defender would joke that he had a
birthday once every four years due to it being a leap day. 2012 was a
leap year and Oswaldo celebrated his last birthday on February 29, 2012.
This husband, and father of three was the victim on July 22, 2012,
along with Harold Cepero Escalante, of an extra-judicial killing carried out by Cuban State Security that ended both their lives.
Payá pictured with his immediate family.
Oswaldo Payá was the founding leader of the Cuban Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), and Harold Cepero its youth leader. Five and a half years later the current MCL leader, Eduardo Cardet,
is a prisoner of conscience who has been repeatedly and brutally
attacked while unjustly imprisoned. MCL was founded thirty years ago in
1988.
Last year the story of what happened to Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, to make the
truth known, and seek justice was told through the eyes of his
daughter Rosa María Payá, and is part of a documentary series called The Witness Project, produced by Smock Media and executive produced by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Rosa María now heads the CubaDecide initiative which seeks a binding plebiscite in Cuba.
Below is a 2002 documentary short by the National Democratic Institute titled "Dissident: Oswaldo Payá and the Varela Project."
Fifteen years ago on March 18, 2003 a crackdown began in Cuba on the eve of the United States going to war in Iraq. Scores of Cuban dissidents were rounded up and subjected to political show trials. 75 were condemned to lengthy prison terms of up to 28 years in prison. This became known as the Black Cuban Spring. The majority of the imprisoned activist had participated in the Varela Project, a petition drive that called for a referendum under the terms of the Cuban Constitution on
whether there should be more freedom of expression, an amnesty for
political prisoners and a chance for ordinary citizens to own small
businesses. 11,020 signatures had been turned 10 months earlier on May 10, 2002. The regime had responded with its own mandatory petition drive to make the Cuban Constitution unchangeable, and with this crackdown that included the firing execution of three young black men who had tried to hijack a vessel to Cuba.
The Economist in its December 14, 2005 issue published a conversation with Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas titled "An unsilenced voice for change" that outlined what had taken place:
Between 2001 and 2004, Mr Payá's movement gathered 25,000 signatures in a
vain attempt to persuade Cuba's National Assembly to change the
constitution to allow multi-party democracy. Activists of his Christian
Liberation Movement made up more than two-thirds of the 75 dissidents
and journalists rounded up and jailed for long terms in April 2003.
[...] Spain is “complaisant” with Mr Castro's regime, Mr Payá says. “We
need a
campaign of support and solidarity with peaceful change in Cuba” of the
kind that brought an end to apartheid in South Africa and to the
Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.
It took over eight years, but the last of the group of the 75 were
eventually released. Oswaldo was murdered along with the Christian Liberation Movement's youth leader Harold Cepero on July 22, 2012. His successor Eduardo Cardet is a prisoner of conscience, brutally beaten, and repeatedly stabbed while under the Castro regime's custody. Nevertheless the legacy of the Varela Project continues in the campaign One Cuban, One Vote.
One Cuban, One Vote
proposes to members of the National Assembly that at the time of drafting a new electoral
law, the right to choose of all Cubans inside and outside Cuba, the
right to return to their own country and be elected all must be
recognized and guaranteed. The right of Cubans to vote directly and
without the Candidacy Commissions, which are the anti-constitutional
instrument of the regime to prevent it.
Today, one of the Cuban dissidents arrested, tried and sentenced to 18 years in prison, Regis Iglesias Ramírez, wrote a reflection, in Spanish, on the 15th anniversary of the crackdown. Below is the translation.
11,020 Varela Project signatures turned in on May 20, 2002
15 years after the "Black Spring" of Cuba
by Regis Iglesias Ramírez
There
is no need for a pretext, the mere fact of dissent and work so that in
Cuba the people take back the reins of their own destiny is enough for
the gangster regime of Havana to repress with all the violent forces of
power those that challenge it even by exercising the rights that a draconian Constitution in force recognizes.
On
May 10, 2002, the world learned that Cubans not only expressed their
disapproval with more than half a century of totalitarianism by setting
up rustic and fragile boats or taking refuge in embassies to try to
escape from the suffocating lack of freedom and economic hardship. On that day, the Varela Project initiative of law was presented to the National
Assembly with the support of 11,020 citizen signatures as established in
article 88, paragraph g of the Cuban Constitution. The
collection and revision of that vote was made by a handful of leaders
and activists of the opposition, also citizens who without belonging to
any organization joined and in the midst of persecution, without
material resources, with betrayals, manipulations, repression, and violence
crossed the whole country to find the Cubans who were tired of their own fatigue and wanted to tell the regime "we have the right to rights."
The
Project had been announced to the public in January 1998, then, in
2000, more than 140 opposition and human rights groups, under the
unifying initiative All United Todos Unidos, promoted, led by Oswaldo Payá, an
appeal to the population to join the initiative. In
2001, when it was already evident that some from All United dedicated themselves to giving us false signatures, discouraging the
liberating attempt and deceiving about the objectives and mobilizing
methodology of the Varela Project, the Citizens' Committee were founded
that saved and achieved the objective of collecting the signatures but also that of extending to every corner of the country the civic action
and began to be the minimum social base capable of being the reference
in the fight against totalitarianism.
This
was what really triggered the alarms of the dictatorship, many Cubans
inside the island began to organize themselves in a civic way to demand
their rights. When the first 11,020 citizen signatures validating the bill demanding
the referendum were presented to the National Assembly on May 10, 2002,
the Spring of Cuba began.
Therefore,
on March 18, 2003, the regime unleashed a repressive escalation that
lasted several days and more than forty national managers of the
referendum lawsuit, seventy-five opponents in all, were kidnapped and
sentenced in summary trials to long prison sentences.
The 15th
anniversary of those events that were known as "The Black Spring" has
been celebrated, but the repressive vortex against those in Cuba or
exile remains coherently committed to returning popular sovereignty to
the Cubans.
In 2010 most of the managers of the
Varela Project in prison were exiled to Spain, after the regime left to
die in prison after a prolonged hunger strike in which potable water was
removed during a critical time, to Orlando Zapata Tamayo.A
few months later, the regime was in negotiated with Cardinal Jaime Ortega
and the Spanish Socialist government of José Luis Zapatero for the
exile of most of the prisoners of that Black Spring.
Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero, the latter a young man who had been
expelled from the Universityfor collecting signatures backing Varela in
2003 and joined the Christian Liberation Movement, were murdered
in 2012 while traveling to the east of the island to meet with activists
and leaders of the Citizens Committee. Laura
Pollán, leader of the Ladies in White, the group of mothers, wives,
daughters and relatives of the opponents imprisoned in 2003, which was
founded to demand the freedom of their own, had died due to medical
complications still not fully clarified. We, the Referendum Managers on the Varela Project, banished, do not have the right to return to our own country.
The regime managed to get the democracies of the old continent to lift the Common European Position, which was an instrument in solidarity with the rights of the Cuban people. It restored its relations with the United States. But it continues to imprison opponents such as the leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, Dr. Eduardo Cardet. They also tried to murder him a few months ago in the prison where they keep him kidnapped. The regime maintains the segregation, the oppression, the Black Spring
has not ended, the rights demanded in the Varela Project have not yet
been recognized and guaranteed.
But
no one can prevent spring from coming, that the Cuban people will be
reborn after more than half a century of darkness and oppression.The spring that made possible 11,020 citizens who have been joined over these years with tens of thousands more in the demand for freedom
Some questions about the US embassy in Havana and its warnings to Cuban Americans
Cuba is a lawless autocracy with exhibit A being its response to the Varela Project, a citizen initiative that should be legal within existing Cuban law, but instead led to a massive crackdown and long prison sentences in 2003. This is further concrete proof that the regime in Cuba is a tyranny.
Within this context the statement from the United States embassy in Havana regarding the rights of Cuban-Americans and natural born Americans of Cuban descent is of great concern. The Obama administration has engaged in a policy of unilateral concessions in an effort to normalize relations with the Castro dictatorship. This has emboldened the regime in Cuba. Repression and violence are spiking in numbers not seen in decades.
The US embassy issued some serious warnings to Cuban borns and their children last year and after bad press over the past week quickly changed the language. Initially it gave a number of ominous warnings:
Dual Nationality
The Government of Cuba does not recognize the U.S. nationality of
U.S. citizens who are Cuban-born or are the children of Cuban parents.
These individuals will be treated solely as Cuban citizens and may be
subject to a range of restrictions and obligations, including military service.
The Cuban government may require U.S. citizens, whom the Government of
Cuba considers to be Cuban, to enter and depart Cuba using a Cuban passport.
Using a Cuban passport for this purpose does not jeopardize one's U.S.
citizenship; however, such persons must use their U.S. passports to enter and
depart the United States. There have been cases of Cuban-American dual
nationals being forced by the Cuban government to surrender their U.S.
passports. Despite these restrictions, Cuban-American dual nationals who
fall ill may only be treated at hospitals for foreigners (except in
emergencies). See the paragraph below on Consular Access for information
on Cuba's denial of consular services to dual American-Cuban nationals who have
been arrested, as well as the paragraph below on Children's Issues for
information on how dual-nationality may affect welfare inquiries and custody
disputes.
Cuban-American dual nationals should be especially wary of any
attempt by Cuban authorities to compel them to sign "repatriation"
documents. The Government of Cuba views a declaration of repatriation as
a legal statement on the part of the dual national that she/he intends to
resettle permanently in Cuba. In several instances, the Government of
Cuba has seized the U.S. passport of dual nationals signing declarations of
repatriation and has denied these individuals permission to return to the
United States.
The crowd that is backing engagement and has the ear of the White House came out to discount the above statement as false. Now the U.S. embassy page reads as follows:
Dual Nationality
The Government of Cuba does not recognize the U.S. nationality of U.S. citizens who are Cuban-born. These individuals will be treated solely as Cuban citizens and may be subject to a range of restrictions and obligations. The Cuban government may require these individuals to enter and depart Cuba using a Cuban passport. Using a Cuban passport for this purpose does not jeopardize one's U.S. citizenship; however, such persons must use their U.S. passports to enter and depart the United States.
Now there is an attempt to back track and say that the matter has been cleared up. Pedro A. Freyre, the Chairman of International Practice at Akerman LLP, says in a CBS4 interview with Hank Tester that one can rest easy that what the U.S. embassy posted was false. He also tried to downplay it stating: “What I look at is what has been happening, what is happening on the
ground. Never mind there is an obscure statement in a sub file of a U.S.
Embassy in obscure location.”
Attorney Freyre should speak with whoever was informing him on the location of the statement on the U.S. embassy page because he misspoke. The statement was displayed on the main page of U.S. Citizens Services ( http://havana.usembassy.gov/service.html ). This was not an obscure and hidden statement as Mr. Freyre implies. Quite the opposite and for that reason this controversy raised alarm, is far from cleared up, and raises a number of important questions.
1. Was this a trial balloon to intimidate Cuban American travelers now that with the number of U.S. travelers increasing they are no longer needed?
2. Who at the U.S. embassy in Havana placed the controversial text on the website in 2015?
3. Did they receive instructions to do so from the State Department?
4. Is this unique to Cuba or does the State Department give erroneous information to prospective American travelers heading to other countries?
5. The Castro regime enforces its rules and regulations arbitrarily to suit the dictatorship's agenda. Is it now tightening up now on Cuban American travel because non-Cuban Americans are visiting the island in large numbers?
Things are getting worse on the human rights front for Cubans living in the island. Why wouldn't also worsen now for Cuban Americans visiting the island while American corporations are willing, with U.S. approval, to discriminate against them to appease the Castro regime?
These
are the top 15 blog entries of the year in terms of visits arranged in
chronological order. George Santayana understood the importance of
remembering the past in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes. The first two blog entries turned conventional wisdom upside down reporting on the decline in trade during the Obama Administration and the brutal torture and murder of a Cuban American attorney visiting Havana, Cuba in January 2015.
Swissleaks exposed the banking practices of the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes and how they have their own 1% living very well while the majority in their respective countries live in misery.
The conventional wisdom views detente as something positive but the historical says different and that was explored on this blog. An example of how this approach is disastrous was seen in April in Panama with Cuban diplomats disrupting the Summit of the Americas and attacking dissidents in a public park and later organized acts of repudiation against them when they returned home to Cuba.
Despite continuing bad acts the Obama administration took Cuba off the list of state terror sponsors. On the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta this blog reflected on Cuba's Varela Project. Meanwhile both North Korea and Cuba made outrageous healthcare claims that were examined in this blog. This followed an examination of rising violence in Cuba in what appeared to be a correlation with U.S. outreach to the dictatorship while marginalizing and ignoring Cuban democrats that has generated a body count.
In a presidential election year the Clinton record on Cuba was examined and found wanting. This blog also reported on the show trial of Leopoldo López Mendoza and the unjust verdict of guilt and sentence of 13 years
and 9 months in prison. Cuban exiles protested against Raul Castro in New York City and against the Obama administration's Cuba policy in Washington DC. A soap opera of the Cuban music sensation Celia Cruz offered an opportunity to discuss how her music was censored in Cuba and she was banned by the dictatorship from returning.
1. What the Associated Press left out of its story on Cuba Trade and the US Embargo
What Agribusiness and the Castro regime prefer you did not know: 1.
How American agribusiness and members of Congress signed "advocacy
contracts" in exchange for the purchase of exports and became lobbyists
for the dictatorship. 2. How Castro dictatorship stopped making payments
to trading partners of what they owed in order to buy billions in U.S.
exports during the Bush years.
Associated Press coverage of Cuba over the past few years has been a source of controversy with well founded claims of bias. On January 5, 2014 a new episode unfolded with the article by Michael Weissenstein "Figures show US-Cuba trade hit decade low last year." The first paragraph blames "long standing barriers to trade" but the second paragraph states: The statistics from the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council show that
U.S. farmers sold slightly more than $253 million worth of food and
agricultural products to Cuba in the first 10 months of 2014. If the
last two months of the year reflect similar sales levels, 2014 could be
the worst year for U.S. exports to Cuba since 2004.
What is not mentioned in the article is that the peak years of the
Castro regime purchasing U.S. food and agricultural products was during
the Bush Administration. In August of 2008 the Cuban dictatorship said
that the United States was its fifth leading trade partner.
With the entrance of the Obama Administration in 2009 and its policy of
loosening Bush era restrictions trade between the two countries has
been consistently lower.
2. Cuban American attorney killed in Cuba last week while visiting family
Details still murky
Albert Romero killed in Cuba
Tampa Bay Times is reporting that Alberto Romero (age 39), a Tampa based marital and family law attorney, was killed in Cuba while visiting extended family last week either on Thursday night or Friday morning. [...] The victims were found after a friend of Cruz Navarro
tried to communicate with him and would not respond to his calls.
Shortly afterwards the owner of the home went to the room rented by
Romero and found the crime scene. The two men were tied up, beaten,
stabbed and in the case of the Cuban American atttorney one hand was
severed according to the source. Martí Noticias obtained a copy of the death certificate.
3. Communists from Cuba and Venezuela with Swiss bank accounts
How communists cultivate more poverty and inequality
The regimes in Caracas and Havana speak of social justice and defending
the poor, but in practice they are the opposite of what they claim.
Dictators with absolute power who once and while are revealed for who
they truly are: a rich and unaccountable minority plundering the riches of once great nations whose peoples are spiraling into deeper poverty and misery.
4. Lessons from Eastern Europe on Engagement: Poland and Romania
"I think detente had manifestly failed, and that the pursuit of it
was encouraging Soviet expansion and rendering the world more dangerous,
and especially rendering the Western world in greater peril." - Jeane
Kirkpatrick, U.S. Ambassador to the UN for President Reagan
Ronald Reagan entered office on January 20, 1981 and on December 13, 1981 the communist regime in Poland had declared martial law
and was cracking down on the Solidarity movement. 10,000 people were
rounded up and about 100 died during martial law. Ronald Reagan in his
Christmas Address on December 23, 1981 denounced the crackdown
(beginning at 4 minutes into the above video) and outlined economic
sanctions against Poland while demanding that the human rights of the
Polish people be respected.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
5. The Castro Regime's idea of dialogue: The monologue of the closed fist
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. - George Orwell
Yesterday it was seen dramatically at Porra park
in Panama City when a group of Cuban dissidents from the diaspora and
the island sought to lay flowers before a bust of Jose Marti and were
subjected to a violent act of repudiation by Castro regime state
security. Carlos Alberto Montaner reported on twitter: They have identified the ringleader of the attacks on Cuban democrats in Panama. It is Col. Alexis Frutos Weeden, head of Cuban intelligence in Venezuela.
6. State security organizes mobs to attack Cuban resistance leaders
Update: State security agents repeatedly made death threats against Jorge Luís García Perez “Antunez” in reprisal for his trip to Panama and the Summit of the Americas
Jorge Luís García Perez “Antunez and Iván Fernández Depestre
ACT OF REPUDIATION ORDERED AGAINST JORGE LUÍS GARCÍA PÉREZ ANTUNEZ. STATE SECURITY OPERATION AND CASTRO MOBS SURROUND HIS HOME
Placetas, Villa Clara April 14, 2015. Assembly of the Cuban Resistance.
Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez", National Secretary of the National
Resistance Front Orlando Zapata Tamayo denounces over telephone that
Cuban State Security has given orders to the populace of Placetas, to do
a violent act of repudiation in reprisal for his presence as a member
of the Cuban resistance last week at the Summit of the Americas in
Panama. http://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2015/04/state-security-organizes-mobs-to-attack.html
Friday, May 29, 2015
7. Ten reasons that Cuba under the Castro regime should have remained on the list of terror sponsors
To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice. - Magna Carta, June 15, 1215
Today the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta
is being observed in the United Kingdom and it is important to look at
societies where authoritarian or totalitarian dictatorships continue to
systematically deny freedom and how citizens in those societies have
appealed for change echoing elements of "The Great Charter." In Cuba, the Varela Project, under the dictatorship of the Castro brothers to date is the most serious challenge where more than 25,000 Cubans petitioned the regime to reform itself in 2002-2003.
This led to the dictatorship altering the constitution to prevent
amendments that would reform the system, imprisoning scores of petition
organizers in March of 2003, and on July 22, 2012 extrajudicially killing Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante of the Christian Liberation Movement who had led the initiative. This citizen's demand remains active and like the Magna Carta was not a single event but a process that is still underway.
9. Examining Cuba and North Korea healthcare claims
"Communist political violence flowed from a utopian vision of the
future, from the great goals pursued, and from the intolerance the
service of these ideals inspired, as well as from an intense attachment
to power. The means had to be subordinated to historically unparalleled
ends that require extraordinary measures." - Paul Hollander, The Distinctive Features of Repression in Communist States
Regimes in Cuba and North Korea are totalitarian allies
Both Cuba and North Korea are totalitarian dictatorships that have made claims of great achievements in the area of healthcare over the course of the past month. On June 19, 2015 the regime in North Korea said that it had "created a wonder drug which not only cures AIDS, but also eradicates Ebola and cancer." At the same time North Korea has approximately 10.2 million North Koreans currently facing famine. On June 30, 2015 the World Health Organization said that the regime in Cuba had "became the first country in the world to receive validation from
WHO that it has eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV and
syphilis." This is the same regime in Cuba that tried to cover up or under reportdengue and cholera outbreaks jailing doctors and reporters who warned of the outbreaks at the time in order to preserve a false image of its healthcare system.
10. Policy paper shows correlation between US engagement and rising repression in Cuba: The Obama Administration’s Cuba Engagement Policy and Rising Repression
“The Cuban people deserve the support of the United States and of an
entire region that has committed to promote and defend democracy through
the Inter-American Democratic Charter.” – The White House December 17, 2014
Sirley Ávila León: Holds state security responsible for May 2015 machete attack
Summary:
Levels of violence and numbers of arbitrary detentions have grown
exponentially during the 18 months of secret negotiations between the
Castro regime and the Obama administration.
Human Rights defenders were victims of brutal, life threatening
machete attacks in the same month that secret negotiations between the
Obama administration and the Castro dictatorship started.
The December 17, 2014 announcement of normalized relations was surrounded by repression, violence and death.
There has been an explosion of arbitrary detentions in Cuba, jumping from an average of 550 per month to 742.
The Castro regime has been implicated in heightening repression
against pro-democracy activists in Venezuela, including extrajudicial
killings.
12. The body count during the normalization of relations in Cuba
“Our Movement denounces the regime's attempt to impose a fraudulent
change, i.e. change without rights and the inclusion of many interests
in this change that sidesteps democracy and the sovereignty of the
people of Cuba.” - Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, March 30, 2012
The United States Embassy in Havana
Cuba is much more than the dictatorship that has oppressed Cubans for 56
years, but in its official dialogue the Obama State Department by excluding Cuban democrats from the official opening of the embassy today
confuses the two. Worse yet, the snub to Cuban democrats arises out of a
fear that the dictatorship's apparatchiks would not attend. Combine
this with Admiral John Kirby, the State Department spokesman threatening to physically remove Rosa Maria Paya, who had proper accreditation as a member of the press from the State Department press conference with Secretary Kerry and the Castro regime's foreign minister on July 20, 2015 makes the message crystal clear.
13. Show trial in Venezuela sentences Leopoldo Lopez to 13 years and 9 months in prison
All With Leopoldo!
Learned tonight that Leopoldo López Mendoza was sentenced to 13 years
and 9 months in prison.The four student protesters charged alongside
Lopez had all been released on probation.
The show trial has concluded. The injustice continues. The struggle to
free Leopoldo Lopez and the many others prisoners of conscience in
Venezuela continues. Condemned by this judicial farce is the Maduro
regime that now stands revealed as a dictatorship that imprisons its nonviolent, democratic opposition leaders. This also means that the South American country is a satellite of Cuba.
14. Why we are protesting Raul Castro in New York City
"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but
there must never be a time when we fail to protest." - Elie Wiesel, Nobel Lecture 1986
Protests on September 28th at the UN and Cuban Mission
On September 28, 2015 in New York City at the Cuban
Mission to the United Nations and in front of the United Nations Cuban
exiles gathered to protest Raul Castro. The question asked by many was
why we were protesting? Below is an attempt to provide a succinct answer.
15. Celebrating Celia Cruz and her decision to live and sing in freedom
How the Castro regime sought to censor and punish Celia Cruz for living in freedom
Celia Cruz: The Queen of Salsa
On October 21st the world will observe the 90th
anniversary of the birth in Havana, Cuba of Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la
Caridad Cruz Alfonso better known as Celia Cruz. Last night Telemundo
aired the first of an 80 part - novela of the life of the woman who would become known as the Queen of Salsa and "La Guarachera de Cuba". The first episode is available online. However in Cuba the Castro regime continues to ban the music of Celia Cruz from the radio airwaves. She is not alone. There are other banned Cuban musicians of great importance. The above censorship is widely known, but not as well known is that when the mother of Celia Cruz was dying the Cuban musical icon was blocked by Fidel Castro from returning to Cuba to say goodbye to her mom or attend her funeral afterwards. This practice still goes on today with Cuban dissidents in the diaspora barred arbitrarily from seeing their loved ones by the Castro regime.
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