"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Amnesty International has urged the Cuban authorities to release immediately and unconditionally all prisoners of conscience, following the release of a human rights activist who refused to go to exile in Spain.
Guido Sigler Amaya was freed on Friday. He had been held since 2003 and was among 52 prisoners of conscience the authorities agreed to release last July as a result of talks between the Roman Catholic Church and Cuban President Raul Castro.
Since the releases were announced in July, 40 prisoners of conscience have been freed and gone into exile in Spain. Only Arnaldo Ramos Lauzerique, released in November 2010 has been allowed to stay in Cuba. Ten prisoners of conscience remain detained by the authorities.
"The release of Guido Sigler is great news. The Cuban authorities must now ensure that the ten remaining prisoners of conscience, arrested for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression and assembly, are released immediately," said Javier Zuñiga, special adviser at Amnesty International.
"Once they are free, these activists should be allowed to carry out their legitimate work without fear of reprisals."
Guido Sigler was among 75 people arrested in March 2003 as part of a mass government crackdown on opposition figures and activists.
Most were subjected to hasty and unfair trials in early April and quickly sentenced to long prison terms.
Guido Sigler was sentenced to 20 years in prison for "counter revolutionary activities", which included demanding the release of political prisoners.
Guido Sigler is a member of the opposition group the Alternative Option Movement (Movimiento Opción Alternativa) in Matanzas Province, north-west Cuba. He was arrested along with his brothers Ariel and Miguel. They were released in June 2010 and January 2005 respectively.
The ten remaining activists in prison are: Pedro Arguelles Moran; Oscar Elias Biscet Gonzalez; Eduardo Diaz Fleitas; Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia; Diosdado Gonzalez Marrero; Ivan Hernandez Carrillo; Librado Ricardo Linares Garcia; Hector Fernando Maseda Gutierrez; Angel Moya Acosta and Felix Navarro Rodriguez.
Later this month on February 23 and February 24 two anniversaries of innocent men extrajudicially executed by agents of the Cuban regime while trying to save the lives of others will be observed.
15 years ago on February 24, 1996 three Brothers to the Rescue planes searched the Florida Straits for Cuban rafters. Cuban MiGs provided information by Cuban spies that had infiltrated the group hunted them in international airspace and shot down two of the small civilian planes with air to air missiles leading to the deaths of Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario De La Peña, and Armando Alejandre Jr. Studies on Cuban rafters state that tens of thousands of rafters have died trying to reach freedom. Brothers to the Rescue came into existence in 1991 precisely to save lives and in the end saved thousands of refugees.
Mohandas Gandhi’s observation that “[t]he willing sacrifice of the innocent is the most powerful retort to insolent tyranny that has yet been conceived by God or man” has been proven right in the above mentioned events and in events unfolding in Cuba today.
On Friday, February 4, 2011 Angel Moya Acosta, an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience also imprisoned during the 2003 crackdown was told that he would be released from prison. Angel rejected the offer saying that prisoners of conscience Guido Sigler Amaya, Pedro Arguelles Moran, Librado Linares and Eduardo Díaz Fleitas all suffering from illness be released first.
The totalitarian dictatorship in Havana exposes itself as the evil and life destroying system it is, by slandering its victims in a systematic effort to spread the "big lie," and in doing so expose the profound spiritual corruption it suffers from and the need for the regime to end in favor of a free society where all Cubans have a right to say what they think and associate freely without fear and enjoy all their fundamental human rights as was done in most of Eastern Europe between 1989 and 1991.
It is important to raise awareness about Alejandrina, Diosdado, Pedro and Angel in their efforts to save lives and demand freedom for prisoners of conscience imprisoned since 2003 who should never have spent a day in jail much less 8 years. Their courageous stand needs to be recognized and honored and in doing so provide them with a measure of protection.
On June 22, 1963 in a speech in Detroit, Michigan Martin Luther King Jr said that “If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.” All of these men and women have not only demonstrated that they are fit to live but that they are moral exemplars that all can learn from.
An international call has been made to all people of good will to join in a 24-hour water only fast starting at 3pm on February 23, 2011 the day and time that Orlando Zapata Tamayo died on hunger strike followed by a silent vigil the following day from 3:21pm to 3:28pm to correspond with the times Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario De La Peña and Armando Alejandre Jr. were shot down on February 24. They all demonstrated with the lives they led and by how they died that the Bible passage, John 15:13 is as relevant as ever: No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.
Armando Alejandre Jr, Carlos Costa, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Mario De La Peña and Pablo Morales live on in the lives they saved and in the memories of all who know them. In rejecting hatred and vengeance while embracing love and justice they are honored.
They were supposed to have been freed by November 7, 2010 following the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo and negotiations with the Ladies in White with the Cuban Catholic Church as mediator.
The pair, who began a hunger strike Tuesday, has turned down the offer to move to Spain and is demanding to be released in Cuba.
Gonzalez and Arguelles's protest is in solidarity with Gonzalez's wife Alejandrina Garcia, who has only been drinking water since Friday.
"I will not stop this hunger strike until he is released," Garcia told AFP in a phone call from her home in central Cuba.
"The government has made a mockery of these 11 men."
Laura Pollan, leader of the Ladies in White -- a group of relatives of the jailed dissidents -- visited Garcia, a 44 year-old agronomist, on Wednesday. She said she failed to dissuade her from continuing the hunger strike.
"The government has raised false expectations, because it said that everyone in the group would be released, including those who reject leaving the country, but that has all been a lie," said Pollan.
Pollan's husband Hector Maseda is one of the jailed dissidents.
On February 2, 2011 Yoani Sanchez was able to upload a video recorded on Tuesday, February 1, 2011 in which Lady in White Alejandrina García de la Riva describes her physical state on the fifth day of her water only hunger strike.
Alejandrina Garcia on hunger strike since January 28
The Free Cuba Foundation, a student movement founded at Florida International University in 1993 has issued an international call for all people of good will to join in a 24-hour water only fast starting at 3pm on February 23, 2011 the time one year to the day that Orlando Zapata Tamayo died on hunger strike. The following day from 3:21pm to 3:28pm to hold a silent vigil to correspond with the times when two Brothers to the Rescue planes were shot down killing Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario De La Peña and Armando Alejandre Jr. pictured below.
Orlando, Carlos, Pablo, Mario and Armando paid the ultimate price in trying to save the lives of others and merit both remembrance and honor for their sacrifice. At the same time all people of good will should try to raise awareness about Alejandrina, Diosdado and Pedro in an effort to save their lives and demand the freedom of eleven prisoners of conscience imprisoned since 2003 that should never have spent a day in jail much less 8 years.
Tweet yesterday from @yoanisanchez#cuba#GY Alejandrina, Lady in White with friends & colleagues with link to above picture http://twitpic.com/3vu7yf
"Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak." - Mohandas K. Gandhi
I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. [...]As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason." - Martin Luther King Jr.
Today, received the following message from an activist in Egypt and am relaying it here via this blog at their request:
Subject: Urgent Call TO All Human Rights Defenders all over the World...
An Urgent call from the Egyptian demonstrators who are defending their country and for their right to live a free respectable life.
We appeal to all human rights organizations and to all the defenders of freedoms and human rights and all the free honourable media inside and outside Egypt to interfere immediately and support our peaceful demonstrations from the savage attack of the security against the demonstrators using all kinds of weapons, knives, gas bombs and Molotov bombs electric sticks to spread fear among the demonstrators and this is illegal in any place in the world and against all human rights concepts.
The victims till now today are 230 victims, killed and injured... and the security is protecting those criminals.
It's worth mentioning that the government has closed the internet and the mobile phone networks and many headquarters of different channels to ensure that our voice won't reach the media and people....
We need the help and support of all human rights organizations and all defenders of freedom all over the world to stop this massacre..
What's happening in Egypt now is a crime against humanity
As a human rights defender one at least cannot remain silent when injustices are being committed but at the same time one must educate oneself as best as possible as to what is taking place. This is not the first time on this blog where Egypt has been mentioned but no claim to expert status here. The background to the demonstrations in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East require some reading but all appearances are that in Egypt this is a grassroots pro-democracy movement and by and large a nonviolent movement. The interview with the pro-democracy activist below is a good representative of the grassroots:
Now that does not mean that a democratic transition is guaranteed but it does mean that it is possible. Some analysts have placed the chance of an Islamic authoritarian regime (Iran style) taking hold as being as high as around 50%. There are voices among the demonstrators that would support such an outcome and they are vocal about their opinions:
Such outbursts indicate that there is a long way to go for peace in the Middle East and that an armed peace with an authoritarian regime is not a permanent one. Let me underline that what follows is speculation from someone much more familiar with Latin America and Cuba specifically. However, since reading a good comparative peace on events in Tunisia from a Cuban perspective inspired the following notes and observations.
When confronting an entrenched dictatorship with powerful interests and repressive capabilities one must have a great deal of courage which Egyptians have demonstrated during these protests.
The protesters accused Mubarak's regime of unleashing a force of paid thugs and plainclothes police to crush their unprecedented, 9-day-old movement demanding his ouster, a day after the 82-year-old president refused to step down. They showed off police ID badges they said were wrested from their attackers. Some government workers said their employers ordered them into the streets.
Opposition democrats have had their home surrounded by these regime organized mobs bussed in to harass and assault non-violent activists. The video below was taken in 2010 at the home of Sara Marta Fonseca.
In both cases the regimes use provocateurs and rent-a-mobs to generate violence to justify security forces and the army cracking down. The description offered by the journalist below complete with a rescue by the military sounds a lot like an operation conducted by the security services. The Cuban regime has done this to both diplomats and journalists in Cuba.
The challenge to the civic movement is to maintain non-violent discipline during the struggle. If this is accomplished then the violence perpetrated by the regime and its agents boomerangs against the regime speeding up its loss of legitimacy and eventually power. On the other hand if non-violent demonstrators outraged by the atrocities resort to violence then all bets are off and the regime paradoxically has better odds of survival.
Comparative 2008 study by Maria J Stephan & Erica Chenoweth found that between 1900-2006 violent resistance succeeded 26% versus nonviolent resistance that succeeded 53% and the same study demonstrated that terrorism had only succeeded 7% of the time. Regime's like Castro's and Mubarak's know this and try to manipulate the situation to drive the opposition towards embracing violence because it will reduce the likelihood of success.
Food for thought for activists confronting profound injustices:
The video above by nonviolent expert Michael Nagler about Iranian uprising in 2009 is applicable to Egypt. Offers concrete recommendations for long term action.
Epigrams from Gandhi: A successful bloody revolution can only mean further misery for the masses. - Mohandas Gandhi
The function of violence is to obtain reform by external means, the function of nonviolent resistance, that is, soul-force, is to obtain it by growth from within, which, in its turn, is obtained by self-suffering, self-purification. - Mohandas Gandhi
The reaction that a ruthless dictator sets up in us either that of awe or pity is according respectively as to how we react to him violently or nonviolently. - Mohandas Gandhi
The bomb-throwers have discredited the cause of freedom, in whose name they threw the bombs. - Mohandas Gandhi
To answer brutality with brutality is to admit one's moral and intellectual bankruptcy, and it can only start a vicious circle. - Mohandas Gandhi
Armed conspiracies against something satanic is like matching Satans against Satan. - Mohandas Gandhi
Please offer comments and opinions below. I especially welcome Egyptians to offer their opinions and hold me to account.
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