Remembering Cuban martyr and dissident Harold Cepero on what would have been his 45th birthday

"Whoever destroys a single life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed the whole world, and whoever saves a single life is considered by Scripture to have saved the whole world." - Mishnah  (1135-1204)

Harold Cepero Escalante (1980 - 2012)

 

Harold Cepero Escalante was born in Ciego de Avila on January 29, 1980 and was murdered by the Cuban dictatorship together with Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in Bayamo, Granma on July 22, 2012. This was confirmed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on June 12, 2023. 

Harold was a member of the Christian Liberation Movement and a youth leader. Harold understood that those who engaged in repression were also not free stating: "Those who remove and crush freedom are the real slaves."

Harold Cepero nació el 29 de enero 1980.
Hoy cumple 45 años.
Asesinado por el régimen de Fidel y Raúl Castro, junto a Oswaldo Payá, el 22 de julio de 2012.

"Nos sigue la comunista" ( así llamaba él a la Gestapo cubana) le dijo a Ángel Carromero momentos antes del crimen. (1) pic.twitter.com/xGYVXNVoQ5

— Luis Michel (@LMichelCespedes) January 29, 2025

Today would have been his 45th birthday, but due to the actions of the Castro regime's secret police his life was ended 13 years ago at the age of 32.

Clare Short, a former Labor member of parliament addressing the topic of forgiveness and justice raises two important points that underline reconciliation within an ongoing injustice and repression:

"Is anger about injustice one of the forces that drives historical progress and important social reform? Is there an important difference between the bitterness,hatred and quest for vengeance that can be so damaging to those who have been hurt or wronged, and the anger that thirsts after justice?" ... "I also agree that the quest for vengeance is also wrong because it so often inflicts harm on people who share an identity with the original perpetrator but have no guilt,and it means the evil of the original harm is recreated in the actions of the person who has been wronged. But all this said, there is such a thing as just anger and those who are subject to continuing oppression can get strength from that anger in order to join with others to liberate themselves. And so I wish to conclude by celebrating forgiveness and reconciliation but also by reminding us that reconciliation can not be the answer when there is a continuing wrong or continuing oppression."

In the Cuban context, Antonio "Tony" Ramón Díaz Sánchez, a former prisoner of conscience and secretary general of the Christian Liberation Movement, rejects hatred while at the same time forgiving past injustices but refuses to forgive those that are ongoing or that will be carried out in the future. 

Because to forgive ongoing and future evils raises the danger of one becoming morally complicit in them or as Tony puts it:

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

The perils of speaking truth to power in Cuba were and still are understood by Tony Díaz Sánchez. Long years in prison and forced exile were the price he paid. 

Harold also understood the dangers of advocating for freedom in Cuba under the Castro dictatorship. In 2012, shortly before his death he explained the cost of resistance.

"Christians and non-Christians who have the courage and the freedom to consider the peaceful political option for their lives, know they are exposing themselves to slightly less than absolute solitude, to work exclusion, to persecution, to prison or death."

This courageous young man is remembered and the demand for justice continues.  The petition demanding an international investigation into the circumstances of Harold and Oswaldo's killing on July 22, 2012 has crossed 16,500 signatures. 

Defending memory by pursuing truth and maintaining the call for justice is an ever present opportunity for the other to repent and embrace justice and actual forgiveness. The antithesis of this is "forgiving and forgetting" while injustices are ongoing  and new ones being compounded not only harms the victims but also condemns the perpetrator to continue committing evil acts and is described as a "false reconciliation."

In the spirit of defending truth and memory, this video of a 2002 interview with Harold Cepero provided by the Christian Liberation Movement on their Youtube channel is being shared.

The truth about the murder of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero streams worldwide on May 19, 2022 at 8:00pm

#PAYÀVIVE

Ten years ago this upcoming July 22, 2012 near Bayamo in eastern Granma province of Cuba an incident provoked by State Security put into a motion a series of events that ended the lives of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante. 

At 5:00pm, in a telephone call, Felix Rivero Cordoví from Bayamo reported"Oswaldo Payá has died in a collision with a police car."  

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante murdered on July 22, 2012

Later we learned that Harold Cepero had also died of his injuries. Five years later and Cuban officials have still not handed over the autopsies to the families. Instead the Castro regime engaged in a massive coverup blaming the driver of the car for the deaths while denying that a second vehicle was involved.

On December  14, 2021 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights held an in-depth hearing on these two extrajudicial killings.

Tomorrow night, May 19th at 8:00pm over YouTube the documentary, The truth about the murder of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, will premiere and stream worldwide. Below is a link to the documentary.

How Castro killed Orlando Zapata Tamayo and then sought to obliterate his memory.

"Since for the Communist there is no divine government, no absolute moral order, there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently almost anything—force, violence, murder, lying—is a justifiable means to the “millennial” end. This type of relativism was abhorrent to me." - Martin Luther King Jr. (1958)

Recovering facts from the memory hole
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was tortured from 2003 until his death on February 23, 2010 but following his death the Castro regime continued the campaign to obliterate his memory in death. The Cuban dictatorship and their agents of influence continue to employee these tactics today. What was done to Orlando should be a cautionary tale to all who want to give Raul Castro, and his dictatorship, the benefit of the doubt.

Orlando's mom, Reina Luisa Tamayo, holds up son's bloodied shirt

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was moved around several prisons, including Quivicán Prison, Guanajay Prison, and Combinado del Este Prison in Havana. Amnesty International reported that on October 20, 2003 Orlando "was dragged along the floor of the Combinado del Este Prison by prison officials after he requested medical attention, leaving his back full of lacerations." Orlando managed to smuggle a letter out following a brutal beating that was published by Cubanet in April of 2004:

"My dear brothers in the internal opposition in Cuba. I have many things to say to you, but I did not want to do it with paper and ink, because I hope to go to you one day when our country is free without the Castro dictatorship. Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]."*

This type of mistreatment went on for years. Orlando Zapata Tamayo was pushed into undergoing hunger strikes as a last measure to try to save his own life, and dignity as a human being.

Orlando began his last hunger strike on December 3, 2009 refusing to wear the uniform of a common prisoner. His books and food had been confiscated when he was transferred as punishment to Kilo 8 prison in Camagüey. 

Never for one moment were demands responded to by either his jailers or the political police. During the water only hunger strike in an effort to break his spirit officials denied him water for more than two weeks. 

He was also taken to the Amalia Simoni Hospital and left exposed in a room with the air conditioning set very cold which caused him to contract pneumonia which worsened his already critical condition. Orlando Zapata Tamayo died 82 days later on February 23, 2010.

Orlando died after seven years of beatings, torture and lengthening prison terms for continuing his human rights activism while imprisoned. The dictatorship than began its systematic aim to obliterate and denigrate him.

Cuban human rights defender and martyr Orlando Zapata Tamayo

Trivializing the aim of his hunger strike
The Castro regime's official media misrepresented what Orlando Zapata Tamayo had demanded claiming that he had died for: “a television, a personal kitchen, and a cell phone to call his family in order to end his hunger strike and regime sympathizers without citing the source repeat the claim.”^1,2

Cuban political prisoner Abel Lopez Perez on December 3, 2009 was transferred to the same prison in Camaguey where Orlando Zapata Tamayo.  Abel briefly saw him and heard from other prisoners “that a few days before being taken away, Zapata stood up and shouted, ‘People, don’t let yourselves be lied to. Don’t believe anything that they tell you. I’m not demanding a kitchen or any of the things they took away from me. I’m demanding an improvement of treatment for all prisoners, and so you all know, I am going to die for it.’”³

When weighing the claims of the Castro regime, the official media, and agents of influence against a former Cuban political prisoner one should look at Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s background. This is a man who was arrested while on a hunger strike protesting the imprisonment of other prisoners of conscience who had been arrested with him in a December 2002 sit-in just days after he himself was released from prison in March of 2003. This fact, along with the rest of Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s trajectory as an activist would give more weight to Abel Lopez’s version of events than the dictatorship's.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo photographed with prominent Cuban dissidents.

Claimed that Orlando Zapata Tamayo was not a dissident despite having claimed so in the past

The Castro regime claimed that he was a common criminal and that he had never been a Cuban dissident. This necessitated ignoring that Orlando Zapata Tamayo had appeared photographed in the Cuban government’s own publication Los Disidentes, in photos prior to his 2003 arrest where he was recognized by officials as a dissident. The Spanish newspaper El Mundo carried a photo the day after the Cuban regime announced the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo with prominent Cuban dissidents. On January 29, 2004 Amnesty International outlined Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s past arrests:

“He has been arrested several times in the past. For example he was temporarily detained on 3 July 2002 and 28 October 2002. In November 2002 after taking part in a workshop on human rights in the central Havana park, José Martí, he and eight other government opponents were reportedly arrested and later released. He was also arrested on 6 December 2002 along with Oscar Elías Biscet, but was released on 8 March 2003. Most recently, he was arrested on the morning of 20 March 2003 whilst taking part in a hunger strike at the Fundación Jesús Yánez Pelletier, Jesús Yánez Pelletier Foundation, in Havana, to demand the release of Oscar Biscet and other political prisoners.”⁴

Orlando Zapata Tamayo: Before and after

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was murdered

Both Abel Lopez Perez and Reina Luisa Tamayo (Orlando's mother) charge that Cuban prison officials denied Orlando Zapata Tamayo water in an effort to break him. Reina Luisa Tamayo in an interview with Yoani Sanchez, hours after her son’s death denounced that officials had denied him water.⁵

Abel Lopez corroborates the charge describing what went on: “Before Zapata was checked into the hospital, he was regularly taking some vitamins. He was in a weak state of health. A military chief known as ‘Gordo’, who was the one responsible for ordering all of Zapata’s things to be taken out of the cell and to stop giving him water, also took his bottle of vitamins and poured all the pills down a drain. He told him, ‘Those who are in protest here don’t drink vitamins. I think those are pills sent to you by the Yankees so you can continue your hunger strike.’ Those were the exact words said to him, I verified them. His vitamins were taken away, as were any other medications. And they stopped giving him water for a while.”6

This type of practice was also documented in the 1966 death of Roberto López Chávez.^{7, 8} Denying water to a man on a water only hunger strike is cruel treatment that contributed to his death.

Libeling Orlando Zapata Tamayo outside of Cuba

Professor Salim Lamrani in his November 23, 2010 article “Cuba, the Corporate Media and the Suicide of Orlando Zapata Tamayo” in The Huffington Post libeled not only the late Orlando Zapata Tamayo but 75 Cuban prisoners of conscience as criminals while challenging the integrity of Amnesty International (AI). 

In his attack on Amnesty and these Cubans he fails to mention that the imprisoned activists were locked up allegedly for “publishing articles or giving interviews to US-funded media, communicating with international human rights organizations and having contact with entities or individuals viewed to be hostile.”⁹

International standards, outlined in The Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, provide guide posts as to what is a legitimate charge and what is illegitimate. The charges made against the 75 Cubans by the Cuban dictatorship, and repeated by Lamrani, fall far short. 

Other human rights organizations found that Cuba's state security laws violate these principles, illegitimately restricting fundamental rights and unjustly imprisoning Cubans.¹⁰

Fake News
It is a sad state of affairs that much of the international media in Cuba have not caught on to these practices and regurgitate the Castro regime's position without underlining the skepticism it merits. Instead some hedge their language rather than get at the facts of the matter.

Sources

1. Weissert, Will “Cuba TV Report Denies Gov't Let Hunger Striker Die” Associated Press March 1, 2010 http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=9983762
2. Parenti, Michael Parenti and Jrapko, Alicia “Cuban Prisoners, Here and There” MRZINE 4/15/2010 http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/pj150410.html republished by the Cuban Foreign Ministry at http://embacu.cubaminrex.cu/Default.aspx?tabid=18180 on 4/19/2010
3. Felipe Rojas, Luis “Abel Remembers the Last Days of Zapata in a Prison of Camaguey” Crossing the Barbed Wire November 24, 2010 http://cruzarlasalambradaseng.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/abel-remembers-the-last-days-of-zapata-in-a-prison-of-camaguey/ 
4. Amnesty International “CUBA Newly declared prisoners of conscience” January 29, 2004 http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR25/002/2004/en/308bf23e-d648-11dd-ab95-a13b602c0642/amr250022004en.html 
5. Sanchez, Yoani “Orlando Zapata Tamayo's Mother Speaks After Her Son's Death” The Huffington Post February 24, 2010 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/orlando-zapata-tamayos-mo_b_475006.html
6. Felipe Rojas, Luis “Abel Remembers the Last Days of Zapata in a Prison of Camaguey” Crossing the Barbed Wire November 24, 2010 http://cruzarlasalambradaseng.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/abel-remembers-the-last-days-of-zapata-in-a-prison-of-camaguey/
7. Valladares, Armando Against All Hope: The Prison Memoirs of Armando Valladares (1st edition Knopf April 12, 1986) quote taken from (1st Edition Encounter Books April 1, 2001) pg. 379
8. Glazov, Jamie United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror WND Books, 2009 Pg 48
9. Amnesty International “Cuba: Five years too many, new government must release jailed dissidents” Amnesty International March 18, 2008 http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/cuba-five-years-too-many-new-government-must-release-jailed-dissidents-2
10. Human Rights Watch New Castro, Same Cuba: Political Prisoners in the Post-Fidel Era November 18, 2009 HRW http://www.hrw.org/en/node/86554

State media of the Castro regime announces "suicide" of Fidel Castro-Diaz Balart due to depression. Some questions.

Was it suicide or is something else going on?

Fidel Castro Diaz Balart with Paris Hilton and Naomi Campbell on February 27, 2015

CubaDebate, an official press outlet of the Castro regime, announced that Fidel "Castro Diaz-Balart, who had been attended by a group of doctors for several months due to a state of profound depression, committed suicide this morning." Was it really a suicide or was it a "suicide", in other words a staged suicide?

Fidel Castro Diaz Balart, age 68, was a a nuclear scientist who was also involved in the field of nanotechnology, scientific advisor to the Council of State, and was vice-president of the Castro regime's Academy of Sciences. He traveled the world promoting the Cuban revolutionary project and had been involved in trying to develop nuclear power in Cuba and some of his interviews and excerpts of his presentations can be found on social media.

In 2006 he was giving a talk in South Africa on Cuban efforts to develop nuclear power, nuclear technology for medicine and other technologies that was covered by the Associated Press. In 2013 he was on Putin's propaganda channel RT discussing the uprisings during the Arab Spring in a program titled "Fidelity to the Revolution"and pushing forth the usual official narrative. A couple of years later he was partying with Naomi Campbell and Paris Hilton at a cigar festival in  Havana on February 27, 2015.

Could the systemic social economic crisis in Cuba, the death of his father in 2016, and family tensions provoked a profound depression? Could it have been something biochemical or bipolar? Or was it even suicide?

Could this be the first casualty in the succession struggle inside the Castro clan? Does this begin to shed light on the decision in late December 2017 to change the "vote" from February 2018 to April 2018? Is there internal dissension in the ruling family?

In Communist totalitarian states like the Soviet Union, North Korea and Cuba "suicides" aren't necessarily suicides but maybe failures in positioning oneself in a new power scheme, or failing to take power, or being viewed as a threat. The same holds true for some "accidents."

Fidel Castro Diaz Balart may have been killed or it may have been another of the many suicides of regime loyalists depressed by the disaster created in Cuba by the Castro regime, or tensions within the Castro family exacerbated following the death of Fidel Castro Ruz in November of 2016.

Meanwhile for those obsessed with lives and deaths of dictators and their families, please take a moment to consider their victims. There is a  long list of Cubans executed by firing squad, extrajudicially killed, or massacred for wanting a free Cuba: Yunisledy Lopez Rodriguez (2014) Harold Cepero Escalante (2012), Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas (2012), Juan Wilfredo Soto (2011), Orlando Zapata Tamayo (2010),  Armando Alejandre Jr, (1996), Carlos Costa (1996), Mario Manuel de la Peña (1996), Pablo Morales (1996), Armando Hernández González, (1982), Ramón Toledo Lugo (1982), Pedro Luis Boitel Abraham (1972) Virgilio Campanería Angel (1961) ,Alberto Tapia Ruano (1961), or for wanting to flee Cuba to live in freedom: Yuriniesky Martínez Reina (2015), Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo (2003), Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García (2003), Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac (2003), and tens of thousands more victims and martyrs of Cuban communism under the Castro dictatorship. The full scale will have to be accounted for in a post-Castro Cuba when truth commissions can work on the island to document all that has happened.

This includes the question of whether or not Fidel Castro Diaz Balart committed suicide this morning due to depression or if something else happened. One must remember that state media in a communist dictatorship is the ultimate in fake news.

Tourism to Cuba: Travelers beware

What the travel guide won't tell you about Cuba

Sheila Dumbleton with her husband Ray

My conscience is clear because I have consistently warned tourists of the dangers of traveling to Cuba. The more pragmatic thing to do is to inform on purposeful travel to Cuba, how to avoid becoming a mouthpiece for the dictatorship and avoid being accused of sensationalism or fear mongering but then remaining silent would haunt me.

Visitors to Cuba have gone missing, been stabbed to death or strangled in their rooms, and shot to death. In March of 1997 an AK-47 wielding Cuban soldier, who according to the official explanation, had his weapon jam while firing warning shots over a Danish student studying Spanish cutting him in half with 7.62 x 39 mm rounds killing him instantly. In January of 2015 Albert Romero, a 39 year old Tampa attorney, was found dead with a hand chopped off, repeatedly stabbed and tied down in a chair in his room in Havana, with a family friend who was also murdered.

Cuba remains a totalitarian, communist dictatorship without a free press, accurate violent crime statistics are unavailable, and foreign media in the island self-censor. The same holds true with hygiene and healthcare. Under the Castro regime there have been outbreaks of cholera for the first time since the colonial period when it had been eradicated over 130 years ago. Sadly, tourists occasionally get to see behind the veil of propaganda. Sometimes they do not survive the experience.

On April 30, 2016 the blog post "Why travel to Cuba is no carnival ride" stated the following:

If you get sick don't count on the healthcare being free in Cuba. New York high school teacher Alfredo Gómez contracted cholera during a family visit to Havana during the summer of 2013 and was billed $4,700 from the government hospital. A total of 12 tourists have been identified who have contracted cholera in Cuba. 

Unfortunately the above information is not widely known because it does not fit the narrative promoting Cuba as a vacation destination or the dodgy nature of travel health insurance. Sadly there is now another cautionary tale.

Ray and Sheila Dumbleton traveled to Cuba in June of 2016 on what was supposed to be a dream vacation that turned into a nightmare that is still ongoing. Sheila (age 57) is dead and the family is trying to raise $26,700 to get her remains back from Cuba.

Birmingham Mail and ITV have covered the story interviewing family members. On July 24, 2016 Ray Dumbleton, the widower spoke to the press:

A grief-stricken pensioner said his wife was "left to die" in a Cuban hospital - because they could not pay a £20,000 medical bill. Ray Dumbleton said he was even banned from saying a last goodbye to his beloved Sheila, his soulmate of 34 years, as her body lay alone . The 67-year-old, from Frankley , said his ordeal was like "hell on Earth".

He said: "If you think of a World War Two scene, then that might just start to come close."
Sheila died in hospital in Holguin, Cuba, after falling ill on the sixth day of what had been planned as the couple’s ‘dream holiday’.
Despite taking out ‘gold cover’ travel insurance, she was unable to claim for her medical treatment and was left with a £20,000 medical bill.
The 57-year-old, who suffered a stroke, a bleed on the brain and other complications, died while she was receiving treatment in hospital.
Now, her distraught family have been ordered to settle her medical bill to pay and must also find an extra £7,000 to bring Sheila’s body home.
“It felt that, as soon as the hospital knew we couldn’t pay, they left her to deteriorate,” Ray said.
“All the doctors kept saying to us was ‘payment, payment’ but we didn’t have the money to give them.
“The conditions in that hospital were horrendous – something I find hard to put into words.
“There were dead bodies left uncovered.
"It was as if they didn’t care about people’s dignity.
“They wouldn’t even allow me to see my wife’s body and pay my last respects to her.
"They just kept saying it was Cuban law.
“I will never get that chance again. They have broken my heart,
“I kept saying: ‘Forget Cuban law, I want to see my wife’.
"But they would not allow me that last moment with her.
“I felt powerless over there.
"At one point they even threatened to put me into prison if I carried on demanding to see her.
“As soon as Sheila died, it felt like they couldn’t get me out of the country quickly enough.
“It was like nothing I had ever seen before – I was treated like a VIP, ushered straight through customs and there were no security checks.
“Now, I am glad to be back home but I will cannot rest until Sheila is back here with her family.
“The only saving grace was that I did meet some lovely people out there and without them, I probably would not have got through this ordeal.”
A spokesman for White Horse Insurance Ireland, with whom the couple had travel insurance, said: “We were very sorry to hear of Mrs Dumbleton’s circumstances.
“Regrettably, as Mrs Dumbleton’s medical history was not disclosed, her claim was not covered by her insurance policy.”
Relatives launched a fundraising drive when they discovered Sheila had fallen ill and would be unable to claim on her insurance.
A GoFund me campaign was launched to pay the medical bill and bring her home alive – but she died before the target could be reached.
“We have raised more than £4,000 already, so if it’s just the £7,000 then we could probably do it,” said daughter Erica McCleary.
“But we still don’t know if they will allow us to bring Mum home without paying the medical bill.
“I cannot begin to say how generous and kind people have been after reading about our story.
“We have had complete strangers offering us large amounts of money. One person even offered us their life savings just so that we can get Mum’s body home.
“We just want Mum home with us so we are able to grieve properly, as a family.
“It’s good to finally have Ray home with us after him being stuck out there for a month but we need to be allowed to grieve properly.
“This whole process has been a nightmare and it’s still not over.
“We managed to go out and see Mum when she first fell ill but we were not allowed much time with her. and we didn’t really feel like she was being cared for properly.”
Sheila became a great-grandmother while she was in Cuba but never got to meet her first great grandchild.

As a matter of conscience I would not travel to Cuba to go on holiday for a number of reasons. Personally going to the island would only be to help everyday Cubans obtain their freedom while seeking to limit hard currency that my visit would give to the dictatorship's most repressive sectors. At the same time it is important to know that there are risks to going to the island, and if you are going to go you need to have an emergency plan if something goes wrong, and awareness that you are not in a normal country.

Holding the Castro regime accountable by bearing witness

"State crimes are never an issue exclusive to the families of the victims." - Rosa Maria Payá over twitter, July 10, 2014  

Remember and demand justice for them

Although July is the first full month of summer. For Cubans it is overshadowed by recent crimes that darken what should be a sunny and joyous time. The Castro dictatorship's long and bloody history stretches back from 56 years to the present. Two awful days will be observed this month: First, 21 years ago on July 13, 1994 Castro regime agents killed 37 Cubans trying to flee Cuba. Fifteen years later human rights champion Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas reflected on the significance of this crime:

Behind the Christ of Havana, about seven miles from the coast, "volunteers" of the Communist regime committed one of the most heinous crimes in the history of our city and of Cuba. In the morning, a group of seventy people in all, fled on a tugboat, led by the ship's own crew; none was kidnapped, or there against their will. They came out of the mouth of the Bay of Havana. They were pursued by other similar ships. When the runaway ship and its occupants stopped to surrender, the ships that had been chasing them started ramming to sink it. Meanwhile, on the deck, women with children in their arms begging for mercy, but the answer of their captors was to project high pressure water cannons against them. Some saw their children fall overboard under the murderous jets of water amid shrieks of horror. They behaved brutally until their perverse mission was fulfilled: Sink the fleeing ship and annihilate many of its occupants.

Second, three years ago on July 22, 2012 on a stretch of road in Eastern Cuba, State Security agents rammed the car Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante were traveling in. Both bodies appeared later.

 The Obama administration will announce later today that the United States and Cuba will re-establish normal diplomatic relations. Normalized relations with an abnormal regime are a contradiction. At the same time the U.S. State Department human rights report recognized the suspicious circumstances surrounding the deaths of Oswaldo and Harold:

By the end of the year, the government had not responded to calls for an international investigation into the 2012 deaths of opposition activists Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero. The government claimed that the two died in a car accident, although in October the driver of that car, Angel Carromero, publicly reiterated his allegation that the car crash that led to their deaths occurred because state security forces followed Paya’s vehicle too closely, struck the car, and forced it off the road.

By the end of the year, the government had not responded to calls for an international investigation into the 2012 deaths of opposition activists Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero. The government claimed that the two died in a car accident, although in October the driver of that car, Angel Carromero, publicly reiterated his allegation that the car crash that led to their deaths occurred because state security forces followed Paya’s vehicle too closely, struck the car, and forced it off the road. - See more at: http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm?year=2014&dlid=236680#wrapper

Despite the ongoing attempt at the normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States the level of violence and harassment of opposition activists have increased and there continue to be prisoners of conscience there.  The criminal nature of the dictatorship remains the same.

 The sinking of the "13 de Marzo" tugboat has been investigated and the crime documented but the case of Oswaldo and Harold still demands a transparent and international investigation. What plans do you have to honor the memory of these Cubans killed during July?

Oswaldo and Harold : A year and a month later truth and justice still needed

Half of the Cuban people believe that the leader of Christian Liberation Movement, Oswaldo Paya, was murdered. The other half know it. - William Cacer Diaz, over twitter August 22, 2013

Oswaldo and Harold: Murdered by Cuban State Security

397 days ago on a Sunday afternoon two decent and good men were killed. At the time the evidence and suspicions pointed to Cuban government involvement. There was speculation that a state security vehicle had crashed into the car in which Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante were traveling with two European visitors both members of political parties related by shared values to the Christian Liberation Movement killing them. However, over the past year the evidence that comes to light paints a more disturbing picture.

On June 2, 2012 an old American car struck Oswaldo's 1964 VW station wagon while he was driving it with his wife, Ofelia Acevedo in Havana, with such force that it knocked the vehicle onto its left side on the opposite side of the road. 

The Cuban government's attempt to manufacture a crash scene claiming that only one car was involved and that the driver had been speeding and hit a tree ran into some difficulties despite the show trial. The two Europeans who survived the crash on July 22, 2012 although detained and held incomunicado, drugged, and subjected to the tender mercies of Cuban state security had already send text messages abroad shortly after the crash indicating the involvement of another vehicle.

After they were released from confinement in Cuba and got back to their home countries and were able to talk the picture that emerges is that Oswaldo and Harold survived the accident that the injuries the Spaniard sustained were after the accident and with the butt of a gun. The two Cuban human rights defenders were murdered in cold blood by agents of Cuban State Security.

After the killings when the families sought justice they too were threatened with death and after rising violence and a machete attack against a Christian Liberation Movement member the rest of the  Payá family left Cuban and became political refugees.

The fact that the international community with some noble exceptions has remained indifferent before this atrocity and that to the present date a serious, international and transparent investigation has not been undertaken into the deaths of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero is an outrage that must be remedied.

Truth and justice for Oswaldo and Harold. Please take action and sign the petition demanding an international investigation into their deaths. Their families continue to struggle for and demand justice, the least we can do is demonstrate our solidarity in a concrete way.

Paris court upholds ‘Carlos the Jackal’ life sentence

“I have fought all my life against terrorists. We are not terrorists, we are freedom fighters!”  - Carlos the Jackal

Illich Ramirez Sanchez a.k. Carlos the Jackal
1970s and after his capture in 1997

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez,better known as Carlos the Jackal, lost his appeal today in a French Court for his 2011 conviction for masterminding a string of bombings in France in the 1980s that killed 11 and wounded many more. His life sentence has been reaffirmed.

Back in 2011,  Carlos the Jackal, at the same time that his trial was underway in France , boasted in an interview with the daily El Nacional of committing more than 100 attacks that claimed up to 2,000 lives explaining that:

With the means that I have in jail I began to make a rough account and the dead do not reach 2,000. Less than 10% of innocents suffered for it.

Later in the same interview when questioned about the attacks and asked if mistakes were made Ramírez Sánchez gave a candidly brutal answer:

Reporter - But then you, personally, believe that you were not mistaken in anything?
Ramírez Sánchez- Errors one commits all the time. President Chavez makes mistakes and thats normal, it is not a serious problem. Fidel Castro made ​​terrible mistakes.

Reporter- But people were killed in your attacks.
Ramírez Sánchez - Yes, but Fidel killed more people than me.

This was not his first life sentence. On December 24, 1997 he was also convicted of murder by a French Court and sentenced to life in prison stated at his sentencing: "I am satisfied and I am proud I chose my cause when I was 14 and I have never strayed." According to the New York Times, "His real cause was anti-Americanism, adopted when he was a student in the 1960s looking for a way of defying U.S. domination and capitalist values the way Fidel Castro and Che Guevara had done for Cuba before him."

Ramírez Sánchez, Venezuelan by birth, described by the late Venezuelan "president" Hugo Chavez as a "revolutionary fighter" in November of 2009 is an ideological soul mate of Chavez, the heir apparent to Castroism-Guevarism ideology. According to French intelligence services Carlos the Jackal is responsible for more than 80 murders.


Carlos the Jackal's life story spawned a 2010 film that was five and a half hours long that glorified the acts of terrorism he carried out in the service of Marxism-Leninism.

Regime apologists downplay the significance of the Tricontinental meeting and its relationship to the upsurge of terrorism in the late 1960s and 1970s but there are artifiacts from that time that still remain in circulation: in 1970 the Cuban government published the "Mini Manual for Revolutionaries" in the official Latin American Solidarity Organization (LASO) publication Tricontinental, written by Brazilian urban terrorist Carlos Marighella, which gives precise instructions in terror tactics, kidnappings, etc. and translated into numerous languages which were distributed worldwide by the Cuban regime. 

According to Major David E. Smith USMC in his 1995 paper "The Training of Terrorist Organizations" the Cuban role in the explosion of terrorism in the 1960s and 1970s was systematic:

Although terrorism originated centuries ago, modern international terrorism orchestrated by the Soviet Union arguably began at the Tricontinental Conference conceived by Moscow and conducted in Havana, Cuba during January l966. The purpose of the conference was to devise a "global revolutionary strategy to counter the global strategy of American imperialism."[14] It resulted in the creation of an African, Asian, and Latin American Solidarity Organization based in Havana. ... Castro's terrorism schools were under the supervision of the Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI). Students were flown into the country from connecting airports, or arrived in Cuban harbors by boat. Upon debarkation in Havana, they were segregated by nationality and moved to their individual training locations. The guerrilla courses lasted from three to six months. Subject material included "tactics, weapons training, bomb making- particularly how to blow up oil pipelines, map reading, cryptography, photography, falsification of documents, and disguise."

The glorification of mass killers such as Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Carlos the Jackal, downplaying the carnage carried out, while at the same time celebrating it is a recipe for more unnecessary violence and terror.

Carromero talks

"What if the Soviet Union had murdered Sakharov, or Czechoslovakia Havel? That is what seems to have happened in Cuba." - Jackson Diehl, twitter



Ángel Carromero

Ángel Carromero on the crash that killed Cuba’s Oswaldo Payá

The Washington Post, Tuesday, March 5, 3:32 PM

Ángel Carromero, a leader of Spain’s ruling party, was visiting Cuba last July when a car he was driving crashed, killing Cuban dissidents Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero. Mr. Carromero was convicted of vehicular homicide; in December, he was released to Spain to serve out his term. This week he agreed to be interviewed by The Washington Post about the crash. Mr. Carromero, 27, holds a law degree and has taken a business course at Fordham University in New York.

What happened that day?

Oswaldo Payá asked me to take him to visit some friends, since he didn’t have the means to travel around the island. There were four of us in the car: Oswaldo and Harold Cepero in the back, [Jens] Aron Modig [of Sweden] in front, and me driving. They were following us from the beginning. In fact, as we left Havana, a tweet from someone close to the Cuban government announced our departure: “Payá is on the road to Varadero.” Oswaldo told me that, unfortunately, this was normal.
But I really became uneasy when we stopped to get gas, because the car following us stopped, waited in full view until we were finished and then continued following. When we passed provincial borders, the shadowing vehicle would change. Eventually it was an old, red Lada.

And then another, newer car appeared and began to harass us, getting very close. Oswaldo and Harold told me it must be from “la Comunista” because it had a blue license plate, which they said is what the government uses. Every so often I looked at it through the rearview mirror and could see both occupants of the car staring at us aggressively. I was afraid, but Oswaldo told me not to stop if they did not signal or force us to do so. I drove carefully, giving them no reason to stop us. The last time I looked in the mirror, I realized that the car had gotten too close — and suddenly I felt a thunderous impact from behind.

I lost control of the car, and also consciousness — or that is what I believe, because from that point my memories are unclear, perhaps from the medications they gave me. When I recovered consciousness, I was being put into a modern van. I don’t know how it had gotten there, but neither

Oswaldo nor Harold nor Aron was inside. I thought it was strange that it was only me, and I figured that the rest of them didn’t need to go to the hospital.

I began to yell at the people driving the van. Who were they? Where were they taking me? What were they doing with us? Then, woozy, I again lost consciousness.

What happened after that?
The next time I awakened, I was on a stretcher, being carried into a hospital room. The first person who talked to me was a uniformed officer of the Ministry of the Interior. I told her a car had hit our vehicle from behind, causing me to lose control.
She took notes and, at the end, gave me my statement to sign. The hospital, which was civilian, had suddenly been militarized. I was surrounded by uniformed soldiers. A nurse told me they would put in an IV line to take blood and sedate me. I remember that they kept taking blood from me and changing the line all the time, which really worried me. I still have the marks from this. I passed the next few weeks half-sedated and without knowing exactly what they were putting in me.

Some text messages were sent from the scene, and there have been reports of others, not yet disclosed. Do you know about them?
They took away my mobile phone when they took me out of the car. I was only able to use Aron’s mobile phone the time we were together in the hospital. I didn’t remember the messages until I arrived in Spain and I read them, asking for help and saying that our car was hit from behind.

How was your statement obtained?
They began to videotape me all the time, and they kept doing so until the last day I was jailed in Cuba. When they questioned me about what happened, I repeated what I told the officer who originally took my statement. They got angry. They warned me that I was their enemy, and that I was very young to lose my life. One of them told me that what I had told them had not happened and that I should be careful, that depending on what I said things could go very well or very badly for me.
Then came a gentleman who identified himself as a government expert and who gave me the official version of what had happened. If I went along with it, nothing would happen to me. At the time I was heavily drugged, and it was hard for me to understand the details of the supposed accident that they were telling me to repeat. They gave me another statement to sign — one that in no way resembled the truth. It mentioned gravel, an embankment, a tree — I did not remember any of these things.
The hit from the back when we left the road didn’t need to be hard, because I remember that there was no curb or incline. The pavement was wide, with no traffic. I especially did not agree with the statement that we were traveling at an excessive speed, because Oswaldo was very cautious. The last speed I saw on the speedometer was approximately 70 kilometers per hour [about 45 miles per hour]. The air bags did not even deploy during the crash, nor did the windows shatter, and both I and the front-seat passenger got out unhurt.

A video of you describing the accident was shown to journalists by Cuban authorities. Under what circumstances was it made?
Once I left the hospital, they took me to a jail in Bayamo. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever lived through. I was held incommunicado, never seeing the light of day. We walked among cockroaches until they put me in the infirmary cell, along with another Cuban prisoner. The conditions were deplorable. A stream of water fell from the roof once a day, the toilet didn’t have a tank, and you could use it only when you had a bucket of water that you could throw afterward into the bowl. The cell was full of insects that woke me up when they fell on my body. Although I remember almost nothing specific from those days, images come to me — and I only wish they were nightmares, and not memories.
The video that the authorities made public was recorded under these conditions. As viewers can see, my face and my left eye are very swollen and I speak like I am drugged. When an officer gave me a notebook in which the official Cuban government account was laid out, I limited myself to reading statements from that notebook. In fact, you can see me reading Cuban expressions I didn’t know, like “transit accident” (in Spain it’s “traffic accident”) , and you can see me direct my gaze to the right corner, which is where the officer stood who held the notes. I hoped that no one would think that the video was freely recorded, or that what I said there corresponded to what really happened.

Who sent you to Cuba? Why did you travel there?
Nobody sent me to Cuba, and I didn’t even tell my boss about my trip. I traveled there during my summer vacation, like so many other supportive people — because I admire the peaceful defenders of liberty and democracy like Oswaldo, who is very well known in Spain.

What do you think about the trial in Bayamo?
The trial in Bayamo was a farce, to make me the scapegoat, but I had to accept the verdict without appeal in order to have the minimal possibility to get out of that hell. However, I decided at the last minute to not declare myself guilty, thinking of Alan Gross [an American contractor sentenced to 15 years in prison for bringing communications equipment into Cuba illegally].
As for the Spanish authorities, I can only thank them for managing to repatriate me. I don’t want to cause any more problems. I want to get my previous life back. I even understand that, even though I am innocent, I have to continue with my liberty restricted due to the bilateral accord between Cuba and Spain. I only hope that this unjust situation will not last for long.
Despite the accusations to which I am daily subjected by the press and by the defenders of the Castro dictatorship, it’s not my intention to go on talking about this traumatic experience. I’ve received death threats in Spain, and I have had to testify before a notary so that at least the truth would be known if something happened to me.

Why are you speaking out now?
The most important thing for me is that the Payá family always has defended my innocence, when they are the most injured by this tragedy. That’s why, when I met Rosa Maria [Payá’s daughter] this week, I could not hide the truth any more. I am not only innocent — I am another victim, who might also be dead now. I know that this decision could result in more brutal media attacks against me from Cuba, but I don’t deserve to be considered guilty of involuntary homicide, and, above all, I could not live, being complicit through my silence.
I don’t know what they gave me in the intravenous line, but I continue to have large memory lapses. What they didn’t manage to make me forget is that Oswaldo is one of the people who most impressed me in my life. He is the true protagonist of this nightmare. He was an exceptional person, and I will never forget him.

The interview has been translated from Spanish.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/angel-carromero-speaks-out-on-cuba-crash-that-killed-oswaldo-paya/2013/03/05/1080077a-85b6-11e2-98a3-b3db6b9ac586_story_2.html