Christmas, Liu Xiaobo, Oswaldo Payá and the power of small moral actions

"It's up to all of us to try, and those that say that individuals are not capable of changing anything are only looking for excuses." - Vaclav Havel, Interview with Amnesty International in 2011

Oswaldo Payá and Liu Xiaobo and the power of moral actions

Five years ago on Christmas morning in Beijing the nonviolent dissident, scholar and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison for the crime of speaking. He had already been jailed for more than a year for being one of the authors of Charter 08 that sought to gather signatures in a petition calling on the Chinese regime to gradually shift toward democracy.
The speech he delivered at his trial on December 23, 2009 is one that remains extremely relevant today and more so on Christmas. In a key passage of his final statement Liu Xiaobo said the following:

But I still want to say to this regime, which is depriving me of my freedom, that I stand by the convictions I expressed in my "June Second Hunger Strike Declaration" twenty years ago ‑ I have no enemies and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who indicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my enemies. Although there is no way I can accept your monitoring, arrests, indictments, and verdicts, I respect your professions and your integrity, including those of the two prosecutors, Zhang Rongge and Pan Xueqing, who are now bringing charges against me on behalf of the prosecution. During interrogation on December 3, I could sense your respect and your good faith.

Hatred can rot away at a person's intelligence and conscience. Enemy mentality will poison the spirit of a nation, incite cruel mortal struggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity, and hinder a nation's progress toward freedom and democracy. That is why I hope to be able to transcend my personal experiences as I look upon our nation's development and social change, to counter the regime's hostility with utmost goodwill, and to dispel hatred with love.

 This decision to bust up hatred with love combined with the firmness and courage at the same time to reject and defy the injustices committed is not only a core principle of nonviolence but also of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus commands us to love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us. When one says the Lord's prayer how many understand and internalize that "If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions." Liu Xiaobo in the statement above is doing just that.

In a Christmas Message delivered by the Christian Liberation Movement in 1990 and written by Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas although 19 years earlier and separated by great distance and different cultures the same message is found:

Let us not turn to violence and force, but we will not submit or allow ourselves to be intimidated by them. Yes, we want change, changes in all of society, because the heart of Cuba has already changed, and we have renovated it in hope, work, suffering and sorrow. We have renovated ourselves and do not want Cuba to sink and our children with her. That violence not explode, that repression not explode, that the truth break out, and let there be an outbreak of Peace and Freedom.

No one in Cuba wants to submit to a foreign power, or return to other forms of injustice. Let us not fool ourselves any more, Cubans know what we want: we want reconciliation among all, we want a reunion with our distant brothers in exile, we want to work for our Country and our families, with boundless generosity to our hard work and positive creativity, we want dialogue, we want to solve this juncture of our history together, with love, we want freedom. We know it is possible and we will achieve it, it will be everyone’s victory.

Oswaldo Payá was murdered by the Cuban regime's state security agents on July 22, 2014 but he lived the above creed until the end, and the movement, he helped to found, continues to embrace these nonviolent principled. On December 28, 2014  Liu Xiaobo will be observing his 59th birthday and his sixth behind bars in a Chinese prison. He is a prisoner of conscience imprisoned in 2008 for his participation in the drafting of Charter 08. His wife, Liu Xia, has been under house arrest since 2010 when her husband won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Norway was threatened by Communist China not to award the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo but courageously went ahead and did so. Relations between the two countries have not been the same since then. In addition the Chinese regime initiated its own "Peace Prize" in 2010 to counter Nobel's and Fidel Castro is the 2014 winner.  Human rights activists in 2014 organized a Christmas card writing campaign in solidarity with imprisoned Chinese  dissidents to mark the five years that have passed since the trial of Liu Xiaobo where he was found "guilty" of "incitement to subvert state power." 

Imagine for a moment that Norway with a population of five million shook up Communist China with a population of over 1.3 billion and the largest economy on the planet with a simple moral and courageous stand by recognizing one Chinese human rights defender who nonviolently advocates for a peaceful transition in China. This demonstrates how small moral actions can have huge consequences, and why sending Christmas cards to imprisoned dissidents is of such great importance.

Leopoldo López Mendoza and Venezuela's defining nonviolent moment

"Well brothers and sisters I ask you to continue in this fight and do not leave the street, to assume our right to protest, but to do it in peace and without violence, I ask that us, all of us that are here, all of the Venezuelans that want a change, to get informed, educated, organized, and to execute non-violent protests, the protests of masses, and the will of souls and hearts that want to change, but without hurting your neighbor. " - Leopoldo López Mendoza on February 18, 2014 in Caracas, Venezuela

Leopoldo López Mendoza

English Translation by Daniel Aponte @DanielSSTV with changes by the author of this blog

Before turning himself over to the Maduro regime for encouraging nonviolent protests Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López Mendoza addressed a gathering of tens of thousands in Caracas:

Perhaps there was a silence for a time. Leaving unclear the why of this whole fight. This fight is indeed for our youth, this fight is indeed for the students and for those who have been repressed, this fight is indeed for those who have been imprisoned, but this fight brothers and sisters, is for all the people of Venezuela, that is suffering today, is suffering making lines, is suffering scarcity, the youth have no employment, they have no future, because of the wrong model, for a model that is not implemented, but exported from other countries, that has nothing to do with the brave people of Venezuela, and that we together brother and sisters, have to be clear that we have to build an exit to this disaster. That exit brothers and sisters must be nonviolent, it must be within the constitution but it also has to be on the streets. Because we no longer have in Venezuela, we no longer have in Venezuela, a free media to express ourselves. If the media is silenced let the street speak loudly. Let the people speak, and may the streets speak with peace and with democracy.

I am now about to proceed to go towards the squad where the National Guard is to turn myself in.

(One of the reporters yells: " COME ON MAN DON'T TURN YOURSELF IN")

I am going to do it. I thought about it a lot. I'd like to let you know that these past few days, I had a lot of time to think, analyze, listen to the radio, watch TV or read what I haven’t for a while, speak with my family, and the option I had was to leave the country, but I will never leave, never. The other option, was to stay hidden in secrecy, but that choice could leave doubts among some, including some who are here now that we have something to hide. We have nothing to hide, I have not committed any crimes, I am not a criminal, I do not have to hide, then the other option is to turn my self in, and I ask you, and beg you with my heart, that when I pass by and turn myself in, that you keep calm, we have no other option. I do not want any more violence or confrontation, so I ask for your understanding, for your organization and your discipline.

I would like to thank everyone, but especially someone who has given me strength, a person that today represents my strongest pillar to be here with you, my wife Lilian who is here.

Well brothers and sisters I ask you to continue in this fight and do not leave the street, to assume our right to protest, but to do it in peace and without violence, I ask that us, all of us that are here, all of the Venezuelans that want a change, to get informed, educated, organized, and to execute non-violent protests, the protests of masses, and the will of souls and hearts that want to change, but without hurting your neighbor. I ask you not to lose faith, and I am sure in the name of my children, my daughter Manuela, my son Leopoldo, and like Luis Eloy Blanco once said, who is the father of one child is the father of all the children. In the name of all the children of Venezuela, I swear we will prevail and that soon we will have a Free and Democratic Venezuela.

Forum 2000 Commits to Furthering the Legacy of Václav Havel

"We believe that injustice and tyranny must be confronted with courage and perseverance." - Forum 2000 participants

Forum 2000 Declaration

Our Commitment to Furthering the Legacy of Václav Havel

Fresh from travelling around the globe as the new President of Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel came to realize that, although civilization had always faced challenges, those it faced today appeared more complex, more interconnected and more in flux than at any time in the past. He saw that such challenges could not be effectively met by a single individual, group, country, or region, nor could they be dealt with from the perspective of a single ideology, religion, or branch of knowledge. Instead, the search for solutions would require, he believed, a continuous, open-minded dialogue on a broad range of topics involving a wide variety of participants.

Václav Havel searched for a way to make this happen. That is why he, along with Elie Wiesel and Yohei Sasakawa, established Forum 2000 in 1997 providing it with their sponsorship, their ideas, and practical means to operate. Over the past decade and a half, Forum 2000 has made a unique contribution to facilitating a wide ranging global dialogue on many different issues, set in the symbolic environment of Prague.

The past year has been marked by two painful losses: the passing away of Václav Havel, and the death of Oldřich Černý, who from the beginning was Forum 2000’s Executive Director and moving spirit. Their legacy, however, remains and the time has come to restate clearly where Forum 2000 stands and where it is heading.

This year's conference, focusing on Media and Democracy, in itself a fundamentally Havelian topic, offers a perfect opportunity for such reflection.

Our Inspiration

Forum 2000’s founders have left us the indelible legacy of their ideas and approaches, whether it be Václav Havel’s insistence that "telling lies can never save us from further lies," or Elie Wiesel’s profound observation that "indifference is the epitome of evil," or Yohei Sasakawa’s devotion to alleviating disease and human suffering. These are the principles that will continue to guide us as we move forward.

Since 1997, our discussions have also been shaped by the growing number of Forum 2000 participants, prominent personalities from all walks of life, who cherish the experience and often return to participate again, providing us with valuable feedback and inspiration for our further activities.

And the inspiring genius loci of Forum 2000’s primary location: For centuries, Prague has been a crossroads of history. It represents a symbiosis of different cultures, in particular the Czech, German and Jewish cultures, until their relative harmony was destroyed by nationalist clashes and the horrors of Nazism. In both 1938 and 1948, Czechoslovakia paid dearly for the politics of appeasement and yielding to intimidation. Communism, which established a totalitarian state in post-war Czechoslovakia, managed to survive attempts at reform by crushing the Prague Spring in 1968 and went on to last a total of forty years. Democracy has not come easily to this region, and it has had to be struggled for throughout a troublesome transformation. The quest continues.

Our Values

We believe that injustice and tyranny must be confronted with courage and perseverance. The very least we can do is to remember and remind. The late Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá, as well as Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, were regularly invited to Forum 2000 conferences, even though it was certain their authoritarian rulers would not allow them to attend. Forum 2000 also repeatedly drew attention to the plight of freedom loving people in Belarus, Russia and Tibet. Václav Havel was the first head of state to invite His Holiness the Dalai Lama for an official visit, and support to Tibetans has been maintained via Forum 2000 till the present. Through Forum 2000’s Shared Concern Initiative, Václav Havel began a successful campaign to award the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, jailed in China for his human rights activities, and urged his and his wife’s release from prison. As symbolic as these actions are, we believe they bolster the power of these powerless and confirm the legitimacy of their uncompromising stances. The struggles of human rights activists are an acute reminder of the need to stand up for democracy and human rights, freedom and liberty, and the principles of citizenship, civility and responsibility, wherever they are under threat.

We believe that vibrant and engaged civil societies form the bedrock on which respect for human rights, functioning democracy, social justice and sustainable economic prosperity are based. These civil societies are equally vital for posing the key questions of public life, and often help find practical solutions.

We believe in genuine and open dialogue. Rather than pretend we have ready-made answers to the problems we face, Forum 2000 seeks to create a space for frank and profound reflection about the values that underlie human behavior and for exploring how they can be applied to real-world situations. It seeks to be a place where commonly accepted orthodoxies can be questioned with audacity, and directly.

We believe that real partnership can exist among those who speak openly and tell the truth. Such a relationship requires tolerance between nations, ethnic groups, cultures, religions and individuals at a basic human level. It requires a willingness to listen and, on occasion, an agreement to disagree. It is only by attempting to place oneself in the shoes of another that entrenched differences can be overcome and solutions to great challenges envisaged.

Our Methods

Our flagship annual Conferences gather dozens of participants of many different ethnic, cultural, religious and professional backgrounds, including prominent politicians, senior academics, religious leaders, but also little known dissidents and young activists. The discussions are open to the public in Prague, and to a global audience via online broadcasting and the publication of contributions and outcomes. In addition, Forum 2000 conducts specific dialogues in other smaller-scale formats. We envisage bringing the dialogue to other locations in the world.

The Shared Concern Initiative is a vehicle for facilitating the joint expression of an opinion shared among groups of distinguished leaders and personalities. Wherever our shared values come under attack, the Shared Concern Initiative can give a voice to that concern, one that can be heard around the world through a number of media outlets. Developments in Venezuela, Tibet and Ukraine are recent additions to the issues the Initiative has addressed since its establishment in 2005.

Forum 2000 provides intangible yet direct support to the evolution of civil society in the Czech Republic and Central Europe. The annual NGO Market in Prague helps civil society actors intensify their cooperation, find partners more easily and operate freely and effectively. Finally, an indispensable part of Forum 2000's mission is outreach to young people through a variety of educational activities.

***
We, participants of the 2012 Annual Forum 2000 Conference, along with members of Forum 2000 governing and advisory bodies, salute the lifelong work of the late President Václav Havel and pledge to uphold his legacy as set out in this declaration.

http://www.forum2000.cz/

Orlando Zapata Tamayo born 45 years ago today martyred on February 23, 2010

Orlando Zapata Tamayo
Human Rights Defender

May 15, 1967 - February 23, 2010

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was born 45 years ago today in Cuba on May 15, 1967. A bricklayer and carpenter with a heightened sense of dignity he became a human rights defender. He gathered signatures for Project Varela, a citizen initiative to reform the Cuban system and bring it into line with international human rights standards. Orlando was arrested with Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet and other activists in December of 2002 for gathering to discuss how to empower Cubans with knowledge about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and nonviolent resistance. Released in March of 2003, he would be rearrested for engaging in a fast demanding the release of Dr. Biscet and his other imprisoned colleagues that same month. Amnesty International recognized Orlando Zapata Tamayo as a prisoner of conscience.

He would spend the last seven years of his life in Cuban prisons suffering beatings tortures, and constant assaults on his human dignity. Orlando Zapata was defiant until the end demanding his right to be treated like a human being. His struggle ended after a prolonged hunger strike on February 23, 2010. Cuban officials, in an effort to break his spirit, had denied him water for days to force him off the water only hunger strike. They contributed to his death.

Following the international outcry Orlando's extra-judicial killing generated, agents of the Castro regime engaged in a campaign of slander against the dead human rights defender in a crude attempt to deny his history of activism.



They have failed because people were paying attention and refused to remain silent. In Canada, a punk rock band composed and played a song titled Orlando Zapata that placed his death in context. The video above was edited by the Free Cuba Foundation, a student group formed at Florida International University in 1993.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo should have been 45 years old today but his physical life ended at 42. What the dictatorship did not count on was that his courage and sacrifice would live on. He is now a symbol of resistance in the defense of human dignity and freedom.

Orlando Zapata Vive!