Dr. Yang Jianli’s Speech at “Remembering The Legacy Of Liu Xiaobo”

Vigil in Washington D.C. for Chinese dissident, human rights defender and Nobel Laureate who died after prolonged imprisonment in China for nonviolently advocating for freedom in China. Yang Jianli spoke during the event organized by Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Marion Smith (VOC), Dr. Yang Jianli (Initiatives for China), John Suarez (FCF)

Dr. Yang Jianli’s Speech at “Remembering The Legacy Of Liu Xiaobo” 

Hosted by Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation

Monday, July 17th, 2017 at Victims of Communism Memorial

 By Yang Jianli

Tonight we mourn the tragic passing of Liu Xiaobo, a great loss to the people of China, indeed, to the entire humanity.

Liu Xiaobo was not only the best known freedom and democracy fighter of China, but, in life as well as in death, he represents the best of what China can ever be.

In April 1989, when the Tiananmen democracy movement just broke out, he returned to Beijing from New York and became the most important intellectual leader of the movement. After the Tiananmen Massacre, he shouldered both moral and political responsibilities and continued to fight from inside China while many others left the country and even abandoned the movement. He was in and out prison and spent half of the past 28 years after the Tiananmen Massacre in incarceration. Never wavering in spirit, he shared the sufferings of his compatriots and gave his life for them. He is a martyr and saint.

Yes. Liu Xiaobo is a martyr and saint who possesses a moral authority that his persecutors can only envy. His legacy of love, justice, peace and sacrifice will surely far outlive the deeds of those who persecuted him.

That is exactly why the leaders of China are so afraid of him, so afraid of his words and deeds, and so afraid of his legacy. They are afraid of the inevitable comparison between Liu Xiaobo’s Chinese dream and Xi Jinping’s; they are afraid of the unavoidable likening of the Chinese Communist regime to the Nazis regime because Liu Xiaobo has been the first Nobel Peace Prize winner who died under confinement since Carl von Ossietzky, a German pacifist and an opponent of the Nazis, who died in 1938.

The CCP regime took pains to show the world it was strong and not afraid of Liu Xiaobo, yet its actions suggested otherwise. The CCP regime took pains to show the world that China is rising as a great civilized nation, yet its actions suggested otherwise. No nation that routinely persecutes, tortures and murders its best people can ever be described as strong, as great; no nation that does not allow a man such as Liu Xiaobo to die as a freeman is going to rise as a respected world power. Never.

In death, Liu Xiaobo has overcome the limits of time and space. The leaders of China wanted to bury him, trying make him disappear all together. But these cowards failed to understand that Liu Xiaobo is a seed. Where you bury him, there he grows. He is everywhere and forever.

Source: Initiatives for China

 

Light in the Shadow of Castro's Funeral, A Vigil to Honor His Victims

The Weekly Standard reports on the victims of Fidel Castro

Gathering to mourn Castro's victims at the Victims of Communism Memorial in D.C.

Light in the Shadow of Castro's Funeral, A Vigil to Honor His Victims

Alice B. Lloyd @aliceblloyd

The Weekly Standard

December 5, 2016 at 7:47 AM

Hours after Fidel Castro's state funeral ended a national mourning in Cuba, a small but intent crowd gathered at the Victims of Communism Memorial in downtown Washington, D.C. Dissidents like Sirley Ávila León and advocates from Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation led mourners on a Sunday evening in remembering the Cuban dictator's actual legacy—when it seemed few others would.

The spirit of the vigil offset a dominant narrative, found in fawning eulogies from heads of state, that the murderous commandant was also a hero. Romantic tributes, in honoring Fidel Castro, dishonored his many victims.

Dr. Lee Edwards, who is also chairman of Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, remembered by name Cuban martyrs to democracy, sacrifices obscured from their countrymen. "We're here to remember Oswaldo Paya, and others like him, who suffered and died at the hands of communism," Edwards said, lest we forget late activist who strove, unto his death, to defend his country against one-party rule.

"We're also here to tell Raúl Castro and his police and his spies and his corrupt party that the day is coming when there will be a free Cuba—and that day will come sooner than they realize." Dr. Edwards led us in a chant: Viva Cuba Libre!

But what will it take to free Cuba when the reality of her bondage is too often forgotten and ignored?
"A failure to learn from history," said Marion Smith, Victims of Communism executive director, is what we face when a dead dictator comes to look like a martyr. "It's perhaps never been more difficult to speak truth about what is happening in Cuba," Smith said.

"And without that clear understanding, there can be no hope for a brighter and more just future for the people of Cuba." In service to a fading hope for Cuba's democratic future—renewed by Fidel Castro's death but dampened by a global ruling class that lionized him—we remember those who continue to risk their lives for the island's freedom.

Sirley Ávila León, an elected representative in her rural region who clashes with the corrupt and violent municipal authorities, exposes the criminal Castro regime against harrowing opposition. She testified before Congress in July, and in June was awarded the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation's Human Rights Prize. At the time, she was wheelchair bound thanks to a machete attack—the work of Castro's security officials, she reveals at her peril.

"The crimes of Fidel Castro are not just from the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s but they're still taking place today," León, living testament, told us through translator John Suarez who runs the blog Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter. Sunday, in a show of resilience deeper than mending muscle and tissue, she stood in the cold night air and spoke for her people:

"I speak for all those extrajudicially executed at the beginning of the regime. I also speak for all the millions who have died in exile without being able to see freedom for their country. And for the 11 million Cubans who remain in the island who have been indoctrinated and kept silent through the terror imposed on them by the regime. The thousands who have died on the high seas and in the jungles and the wilds trying to evade that dictatorship." 

A letter was read aloud from the fiancee of graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado Machado, known as El Sexto, who was beaten and imprisoned after writing "Se fue"—he's gone—on a wall in Havana to mark Castro's death. At the time El Sexto remarked, "The exterior dictator has died, but the interior dictator still remains inside many Cubans."

"Now more than ever it is imperative to support those greater than us to speak out and to honor those who have given their lives in the fight for freedom," El Sexto's letter read. His fiancee had delivered the missive to the good folks at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. "Fear," she quoted El Sexto, "affects creativity and liberty." And, "It is not creative to have fear."

Hope, fear's antithesis, must keep vigilant watch. Evil seems to have won on several fronts, Smith told me, recounting Fidel Castro's last great coup. "In the final years of his life, Fidel enjoyed a kind of vindication when President Obama announced diplomatic opening without any reform," and, thus, Castro could die victorious. "He understood that he had outlived the United States opposition to his corrupt and and bloody regime."

And yet Castro had not, and he could never, outlast the living consequence of his abuse, however meager his many victims' memorial seems compared to his own solemn show. Thousands reportedly gathered to mourn as he was interred in a massive crypt, at the end of a four-day procession across the island.

At the Victims of Communism Memorial, a Baptist pastor Rev. Mario Lleonart who had brought his family from Cuba just three months ago, after a prison term that coincided with President Obama's diplomatic tour, said that he hopes now more than ever that his two daughters can return home someday. He gave a benediction, while his wife translated.

Afterward, a guitarist strummed while everyone took up their little white candle and passed the flame. For a few quiet moments a loose ring of wavering lights thronged the memorial statue, the Goddess of Democracy.

Alice B. Lloyd is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard .

Communism Kills ...

Today 1 in 5 live under a communist regime.

On October 13, 2016 the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation placed a series of advertisements in Times Square in New York City highlighting the crimes of communism including the killing of 100 million human beings in less than a century. The day before the organization posted a video that in the space of a minute exposes the malevolent nature of this ideology that in practice is a system of repression.


Among the victims highlighted is Sirley Ávila León, a local elected official who tried to keep a school in open in Cuba, was purged from her position, and once she became a dissident Sirley was subjected to a machete attack engineered by Castro's intelligence service in May of 2015.

She went back to Cuba last month, found her home occupied by strangers placed their by the Cuban government, and her attacker out on the street threatening to finish the job he started.

This is Cuba in 2016. It remains a brutal communist dictatorship. Thank you to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation for reminding the world of this at a time of great moral confusion.

This image of Sirley Ávila León now on display in Times Square

Victims of Communism Memorial Commemoration 2016: Cuba and how to educate Americans about communism

Revisiting the 2016 Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation Commemoration 

Every June the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation hosts a Commemoration on the anniversary of the dedication of their Memorial. Their purpose is to honor the memory of the more than 100 million victims of communism, to celebrate liberty where it has triumphed, and to further the pursuit of a world free from communism.

In 2016 they started off with a briefing on the state of human rights and political developments in Cuba, featuring Mauricio Claver-Carone executive director of Cuba Democracy Advocates;  Sirley Ávila León, Civil and Human Rights Activist; Julio M. Shiling, author and director of Patria de Martí; and John Suarez, international secretary of the Cuban Democratic Directorate.




This was followed by a panel discussion by distinguished experts on the monumental task of educating Americans about communism which included: Murray Bessette, PhD Director of Programs and Publications, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation; Bruce Cole, PhD Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center; Hope M. Harrison, PhD, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs, The George Washington University; Mackubin Thomas Owens, PhD Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor, The Institute of World Politics.



Paul A. Goble was awarded the 2016 Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom. He gave an important speech on the continued relevance of anti-communism in the 21st century.

Solidarity with Cuba

The Heritage Foundation and The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation  co-hosted a Cuba Solidarity Day Event on May 18, 2012.

 

Click the following links to read the translated statements of José Daniel Ferrer , Berta Soler , and Jorge Luis García Pérez Antúnez  

May 20 marks the 110th year of Cuba’s achievement of independence from its Spanish overlords. Yet, the struggle to realize the full blessings of independence so fiercely desired by the Cuban people remains incomplete. Individual rights and liberties are callously denied by a communist dictatorship that has ruled with absolute authority for over 50 years. Rights of speech, travel, association, and access to information as well basic economic and personal freedoms are denied in ways inconsistent with universal values and fundamental human rights. For this reason, May 20 remains a day closely associated with the thwarted aspirations and shattered hopes of the Cuban people, especially for those who courageously resist the regime’s cruel and arbitrary demands for obedience and silence.

In May 2008, people around the world observed the first Solidarity Day with Cuba – the purpose of which was to “shine a bright light on the Castro regime's abuses” and “call on the Government of Cuba to immediately and unconditionally release all prisoners of conscience.” In 2012, in the final hours of Castroism, the challenge remains to demonstrate support for the growing number of ordinary Cubans who reject a mere succession scenario and demand a genuine transition to a post-Castro Cuba where individual rights, political freedom, consent of the governed, and economic freedom prevail. It is their story, struggle and hope, Cuba Solidarity Day celebrates.