A Christmas Message from the Christian Liberation Movement

Ten years ago following the murder of their national coordinator and youth leader by Castro's secret police, the Christian Liberation Movement re-released this Christmas message by Oswaldo Payá.

 

 Happy New Year 2023 to all Cubans. Year of Liberation 

 The MCL Coordinating Council has decided to re-release the Christmas message of 1990, which our national coordinator Oswaldo Payá wrote on behalf of our Movement. Reading it we found that its contents, twenty one Christmases later remains equally beautiful and appreciated. Today, on behalf of your people, we say to you: Thank you for this gift Oswaldo. Hopefully Cubans today will start making this utopia possible. 

It is is our hope that it will be so: 

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas wrote MCL's 1990 Christmas Message

  

Christmas Message 1990

The rifles will be buried face down, the words of hatred will vanish in the heart without reaching the lips, we'll go out into the street and all of us will see in the other a brother, let us look to the future with the peace of he that knows that he forgave and he that has been forgiven. Let there be no blood to clean or dead to bury, the shadow of fear and of catastrophe will give way to the reconciliatory light, and Cuba will be reborn in every heart, in a miracle of love made by God and us.

That will be the Liberation, it will be the new life and all of us will have the sensation that we are all good and want to be good, that everyone wants the other to be happy, it will be like that special time, and it will be like Christmas, that same Christmas when Jesus arrives.

Cubans!, that this hope not die, let us not be discouraged. We believe it is possible and we work and struggle with all our hearts, to make this, that many call utopia, possible and for which, if necessary, we will give our lives without claiming the lives of others.

That those who hold power and for a long time have had great privileges and have lived as the rich in the midst of a poor people reflect on it.

The people have no voice and want to express themselves. The nation disintegrates and Cubans want to save her, save Cuba for all, Cuba is greater than the power of a few and those that have that power that do not feel attacked, because the people awake, do not abuse the nobility of the Cuban people. Come on men of power! For you to there is a place among the people if you descend from the stands, and that is better than power.

Let all within Cuba and outside Cuba reflect. Let us act with great courage, but with a lot of responsibility, with great firmness but especially with much love.

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.

Yes, Jesus is coming, he who was also a victim of violence, victim of the mob and its repudiation, victim of the pride of the powerful and of the slaves of the lie. Jesus is coming and he brings the victory of life over death, of love over hatred. He is the only one who brings true Liberation. That is Christmas.

The Christian Liberation Movement wishes you a Merry Christmas!

December 2012

The original Spanish text is available here.

In Solidarity with the Hong Kong 47: A call for hope and action

“The solidarity of the shaken can say ‘no’ to the measures of mobilization that make the state of war permanent. … The solidarity of the shaken is built up in persecution and uncertainty: that is its front line, quiet, without fanfare or sensation even there where this aspect of the ruling Force seeks to seize it.” - Jan Patočka

Wong ji-yuet is on trial and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison

Over the past 71 years the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has murdered tens of millions of Chinese citizens, backed the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the Kim regime in North Korea. The CCP through its lack of transparency, silencing of Chinese scientists and journalists, has led to a global pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands and crashed the global economy.

These are the fruits of engaging with a mass murdering totalitarian dictatorship, but too many have not learned the lesson, and seek to return to the old unacceptable status quo.

Press accounts report that "39 men and eight women are charged with 'conspiracy to commit subversion' in connection with the unofficial primary to choose opposition candidates for the now-postponed 2020 Legislative Council election, which attracted some 600,000 voters." These 47 activists face great legal jeopardy in China, but in a free country they would be congratulated for being good citizens.

In early January 2021 mass arrests were carried out and grueling bail hearings are now underway that have left four of the defendants hospitalized due to exhaustion.

In the largest single crackdown yet on the opposition under a China-imposed national security law, 47 pro-democracy campaigners and activists were charged in Hong Kong https://t.co/XB2YAb3utd pic.twitter.com/sNL5gqsaSo

— Reuters (@Reuters) February 28, 2021

One of the youngest defendants is 23-year-old Wong Ji-yuet, she is  a first time political hopeful. The pro-democratic primary nominee won 22,911 votes, and came in third in the NTW Constituency in Hong Kong. Let us speak up for her and the other 46 who are unjustly persecuted.

In the Orwellian world that is the Peoples Republic of China in the 21st century, exercising democratic rights under the National Security Law imposed last year on Hong Kong is grounds for a maximum sentence of life in prison. 

Worse yet, members of the UN Human Rights Council supported this law stifling democracy and freedom of expression.

On July 1, 2020 the Cuban dictatorship introduced a  resolution at the UN Human Rights Council praising China for passing the Hong Kong National Security Law, also known as 66 article law.  53 governments backed this resolution, endorsing the death of a free Hong Kong. Official Chinese media "celebrated" their victory at the human rights body.

The Chinese Communist Party in a secretive legislative process circumvented Hong Kong's sovereignty and imposed this new law a day earlier on June 30, 2020, the 23rd anniversary of the British handover of Hong Kong. 

This action is a breach of the agreement made with the British.  Professor Johannes Chan, a legal scholar at the University of Hong Kong in a BBC news report explained that "effectively, they are imposing the People's Republic of China's criminal system onto the Hong Kong common law system, leaving them with complete discretion to decide who should fall into which system." 

Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, in an interview with the BBC put it more succinctly, "It spells the death knell for Hong Kong."

Today 47 citizens of Hong Kong are being subjected to China's communist legal system for exercising their fundamental human rights, that prior to June 30, 2020, had been recognized by the government in Hong Kong and tolerated by Beijing. 

It is worthwhile to explore Cuba's role in backing this repressive measure.

Communist China and Cuba are joined by ideology

President Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, exchanged congratulatory messages with Raul Castro Ruz, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee, and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel to celebrate the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two communist dictatorships.

In September 1960 the Cuban government diplomatically recognized the Peoples Republic of China. Between 1960 and 1964 the two regimes would collaborate closely together. 

Ernesto "Che" Guevara with a Cuban delegation visited Mainland China and met with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and other high ranking Chinese officials in November 1960 to discuss conditions in Cuba and in Latin America, and the prospects for communist revolution in the Western Hemisphere.

This was at a time that Havana still had normal diplomatic relations with the United States. Diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States were severed on January 3, 1961.

Relations between China and Cuba cooled in 1964 when the Castro regime sided with the Soviet Union in the Sino-Soviet  split, but warmed again in 1989 following the Tiananmen Massacre. The Castro regime was one of the few governments to support the massacre, and the Castro regime had distanced itself from the Soviet Union viewing Perestroika and Glasnost  as existential threats to their rule.

Cuba's relationship with the Soviet Union provided Havana with expertise in biological warfare and biotech that had been denied the Chinese due to the above mentioned split. The Castro regime beginning in the late 1980s began offering that knowledge to their counterparts in Beijing and signed a  formal agreement to produce monoclonal antibodies in 2002.

The two regimes have been working closely together during the COVID-19 pandemic that originated in Wuhan, China in December 2019.  Above is a video presentation given in April 2020 on this relationship.

Little surprise that on July 1, 2020 the Castro regime took the lead in backing the new security law in Hong Kong that effectively ends freedom there.

We must do what we can to speak up for our Chinese brothers and sisters imprisoned for non-violently exercising their rights in the defense of human rights and democracy.

Erazim V. Kohák in his book Jan Patočka: philosophy and selected writings refers to Patočka’s “solidarity of the shaken” as a community freed “from the preoccupation with the pursuits of peace and prosperity that inevitably lead to war and turn it instead to the pursuit of the Good, the care of the soul” that is “living with a clear conscience, living in truth, or in far older terms, seeking first the Kingdom of God.” 

This solidarity of the shaken is not passive resistance but an active nonviolent resistance to injustice. People of goodwill must join together to resist this expanding tide of totalitarianism and authoritarianism, and in doing so preserve freedom. 

In 1990 in his book, Disturbing the Peace, the late Czech President, and dissident, Vaclav Havel reflected on the nature of hope, and it is even more relevant in these challenging times. 

“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."

Let us be hopeful, and not despair, continuing to speak out for brethren in China and elsewhere that repression and injustice are operating.

Havel at 82: Celebrating Václav Havel's living legacy of hope

"The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle." - Václav Havel

Václav Havel born on October 5, 1936

Václav Havel was that rarest of statesmen, a great and good man. In his first New Year's Message in 1990 as President he addressed the country with a candor and truthfulness both rare and needed stating: "I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you." 

Today, we observe the 82nd anniversary of his birth. The Czech play write, who became a dissident, defended artists, a prisoner of conscience, president of Czechoslovakia, resigned in protest over the Velvet Divorce, then president of the Czech republic and finally citizen and play write once again. All the while he demonstrated his solidarity with victims of repression in his own country and around the world.

This was done not out of a sense of optimism, but out of hope.  Consider for a moment how Havel responded to the invasion of his homeland.

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." 

Václav Havel's signature card for Charter 77

Havel believed that moral actions, no matter how small or futile they may appear at the time can have profound consequences for both freedom and a just society. It is because the world is not a puzzle to be solved but incredibly much more complex that decisions of right and wrong made by each person have such great importance.

President Havel, in a November 11, 2009 address to the European Parliament in Brussels issued a challenge to the European Union and warned of the consequences of failure:

"Above all, clear and unequivocal solidarity with all those confronted by totalitarian or authoritarian regimes wherever they are in the world. And economic or other particular interests should not hinder such solidarity. Even a minor, discreet and well-intentioned compromise can have fatal consequences– even if only in the long term, or indirectly. One must not retreat in the face of evil, because it is in the nature of evil to take advantage of every concession. Besides, Europe has already had its own unfortunate experience of appeasement policies. 

On the other hand he understood that living up to the challenge of unequivocal solidarity with those resisting totalitarian regimes would have unexpected positive consequences, not only in those countries living under dictatorship, but also lifting up the moral values of those true to themselves by practicing the values preached.

"Our support can help open-minded people or outspoken witnesses to the situation in North Korea, Burma, Iran, Tibet, Belarus, Cuba or anywhere else, much more than we think. But it will help us too. It will help us build a better world and also to be more true to ourselves; in other words, to put into practice the values that we proclaim in general terms."

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and President Václav Havel in Prague (2002)

At the same time, he did not link hope with success but rather the certainty that what one is doing is both good and coherent. In 1990 in the book, Disturbing the Peace, Havel explained how he viewed hope.

“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.

The fruits of his legacy can be seen in the work of Forum 2000, an annual gathering of politicians, philosophers, artists, scientists, and the public to reflect on important issues challenging civilization. The topic on the twentieth gathering of Forum 2000 was "The Courage to take Responsibility." In two days the 22nd gathering will focus on "Democracy: In need of a critical update?"  Václav Havel was born 82 years ago today and passed away seven years ago, but his legacy of good works live on. Take part in his legacy attending Forum 2000, in person if you are in Prague, or via social media and live stream video if you are elsewhere.

A Christmas Message from the Christian Liberation Movement

Happy New Year 2013 to all Cubans. Year of Liberation 

 The MCL Coordinating Council has decided to re-release the Christmas message of 1990, which our national coordinator Oswaldo Payá wrote on behalf of our Movement. Reading it we found that its contents, twenty one Christmases later remains equally beautiful and appreciated. Today, on behalf of your people, we say to you: Thank you for this gift Oswaldo. Hopefully Cubans today will start making this utopia possible. 

It is is our hope that it will be so: 

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas wrote MCL's 1990 Christmas Message

Christmas Message 1990

The rifles will be buried face down, the words of hatred will vanish in the heart without reaching the lips, we'll go out into the street and all of us will see in the other a brother, let us look to the future with the peace of he that knows that he forgave and he that has been forgiven. Let there be no blood to clean or dead to bury, the shadow of fear and of catastrophe will give way to the reconciliatory light, and Cuba will be reborn in every heart, in a miracle of love made by God and us.

That will be the Liberation, it will be the new life and all of us will have the sensation that we are all good and want to be good, that everyone wants the other to be happy, it will be like that special time, and it will be like Christmas, that same Christmas when Jesus arrives.

Cubans!, that this hope not die, let us not be discouraged. We believe it is possible and we work and struggle with all our hearts, to make this, that many call utopia, possible and for which, if necessary, we will give our lives without claiming the lives of others.

That those who hold power and for a long time have had great privileges and have lived as the rich in the midst of a poor people reflect on it.

The people have no voice and want to express themselves. The nation disintegrates and Cubans want to save her, save Cuba for all, Cuba is greater than the power of a few and those that have that power that do not feel attacked, because the people awake, do not abuse the nobility of the Cuban people. Come on men of power! For you to there is a place among the people if you descend from the stands, and that is better than power.

Let all within Cuba and outside Cuba reflect. Let us act with great courage, but with a lot of responsibility, with great firmness but especially with much love.

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.

Yes, Jesus is coming, he who was also a victim of violence, victim of the mob and its repudiation, victim of the pride of the powerful and of the slaves of the lie. Jesus is coming and he brings the victory of life over death, of love over hatred. He is the only one who brings true Liberation. That is Christmas.

The Christian Liberation Movement wishes you a Merry Christmas!

December 2012

The original Spanish text is available here.