19th Forum 2000 Conference: Democracy and Education

“Democracy is no genetic information. It is not a mere social system. We need to learn democracy.” - Jakub Klepal, Forum 2000

19th Forum 2000 opening ceremony

English philosopher Roger Scruton addressing the opening panel of the 19th gathering of Forum 2000 titled "Are we naturally un-democratic" and addressed the question of democracy and education:

When we ask questions like this, are we naturally democratic? And what is the place of the democratic ethos in education? We realize that we are pulled between two competing forces. “Competition it seems to me has two different forms, one the natural form, the other the artificial form that we are all hoping for. The natural form of competition is that in which one person strives to dominate the rest and that person, if he succeeds, will then impose upon the rest his view of things.

However, we hope for another form of competition, a non-natural form of competition in which the person who succeeds doesn’t want to dominate but simply to be heard. That you compete in politics for example in order that your voice should be heard and then you make room for the voices of others, that it seems to me is what the democratic instinct is.

I don’t think it is a natural thing. It is something that is acquired by civilization. That the instinct not just to succeed, but having succeeded to allow a voice to those who didn’t. Now that is a very difficult state of mind to achieve and I think it is one that we have to learn in the classroom, but we are never going to learn it if we think that competition is inherently a bad thing. It’s not its inherently neutral, but it is something we need to use so that the voice of the other can be heard in our decision making. 

19th Forum 2000 Conference
September 13–16, 2015, Prague and other Central European cities

There is a growing sense that democracy has entered a period of discontent and is facing new and serious challenges. Has democracy exhausted itself? Are authoritarian regimes gaining an upper hand? Or, could it be that liberal democracy runs counter to human nature and its preservation requires constant effort? Can education help us meet the challenge of maintaining and expanding democracy? The discussion was held amongst a number of distinguished guests from around the world. The conference took place between September 13–16, 2015 in Prague and other Central European cities. A portion of these conversations were filmed and are available on youtube in the playlist above.

Wife of jailed Venezuelan opposition leader reads his letter to the Venezuelan people

Lillian Tintori reads Leopoldo's letter to the Venezuelan people 

Lilian at a rally September 11, 2015 at the Plaza Martí in Chacaíto

Translation taken from Free Leopoldo

Leopoldo's Letter to the Venezuelan People

What follows is the English translation of a letter from Leopoldo to the people of Venezuela. The letter was read by his wife Lilian at a rally today at the Plaza Martí in Chacaíto, where Leopoldo was arrested in February 2014.

He who tires, loses and I will never tire of fighting for a free Venezuela!

More than a year ago, the corrupt elite that governs Venezuela ordered my arrest in the vain hope that I would flee the country.  I chose to step forward, and present myself to the dictatorship in full view of the world.  I made this decision without hesitation.  I was prepared to confront the full weight of the dictatorship’s abuses.  I was fully aware of what I was facing and the likely consequences.  I was, and am, at peace with that.

Today, those consequences are a reality.  I have been convicted by an elite that has demonstrated openly and brazenly that there is no level of dishonesty it won’t stoop to in order to preserve its power and privileges.  But even now I do not regret in the least the decision I took.  I am at peace, for a simple and powerful reason:  great causes deserve great sacrifices.

I am more convinced than ever of the righteousness of our cause, which is none other than the liberation of an entire people who suffer the painful consequences of a model that has failed economically, politically and socially;  a fair and democratic cause seeking Venezuela's peace, well-being and progress; a human cause that wants all rights for all people, without exclusions or privileges; above all a moral cause, one that compels us to always be on the side of the victims and never on the side of the predators.

In issuing this judgment, Venezuela’s governing elite hopes to utterly demoralize all those who strive for a better country.   They want to kill our hopes and make us believe this noble cause is not worth the suffering.  They want us to surrender to their abuses without further resistance.

But sisters and brothers, this judgment can only make us stronger in our convictions.  We cannot allow ourselves to be overcome, we cannot tire, on the contrary, we must rise again and again to achieve peacefully and democratically the change that our country so badly needs.  This is what I'm going to do and it is also what I, from the bottom of my heart, urge you to do.

For Venezuela to move forward we must change the system, which can only happen by standing up to the corrupt elite that holds our country prisoner. On December 6, we have an excellent opportunity to move in that direction, and secure change that will allow us to open the door to a better future for ourselves and our children.

In these difficult times, I recall the words of the pacifist leader Mahatma Gandhi who said: "You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.”

Today they have Venezuela in chains but we have the strength, the endurance and the faith to make our country free again.

Lastly, to my beloved Lilian, give to our children a very special message: they will hear from some people that their father is guilty and that he will be imprisoned for many years.  That is not true.  Today your father is freer than ever.  My soul, my ideas and my love for you flies high, very high, in the sky above our beautiful Venezuela.  I am here and I am not going anywhere.  They will not be able to tear us apart and I promise that we will soon all live together in the Best Venezuela, where we will laugh, play and sing without feeling fear.

 

¡Strength and Faith!
 Leopoldo López
September 11, 2015
 Ramo Verde Military Prison
 Sentenced to 13 years and 9 months in prison

Castro Regime's Prisoners Pardon:The Devil is not only in the details

Some of the names not on the list

Innocent but imprisoned Cuban artists not on the list of pardoned prisoners

 The Castro regime announced on September 11th that "it plans to pardon 3,522 prisoners over the next 72 hours as a 'humanitarian' gesture." However, a number of factors point to a public relations maneuver with the dictatorship's nature remaining unchanged.

• First, Capitol Hill Cubans pointed out the timing of the sentencing of Leopoldo López Mendoza on September 10th by Havana's puppet regime in Caracas and the September 11th announcement. This is a coordinated, diversionary tactic.
• Secondly, Cuban dissident Antonio Rodiles observed over twitter that "the Cuban regime equates rapists and pedophiles with free thinking, civically engaged people" and concludes asking: "Where are the changes?" This pattern of seeking to slander nonviolent dissidents stretches back decades in Cuba and presently it can be seen in action in Venezuela. 
• Third, the Cuban dictatorship published a list of the 3,522 prisoners to be pardoned and no political prisoners are present, including those only charged with "dangerousness." 

 However, although not on the list, Andres Frometa Cuenca jailed on May 12, 1992, when he was 15 years old, for trying to "illegally leave" Cuba and being disrespectful of the regime appears to have been released.  Andres's name is not found in the June 2015 list of 71 political prisoners identified by the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation

A Denmark based NGO that focuses on artists imprisoned for their work has weighed in on the plight of two Cuban prisoners of conscience. Less than a month ago on August 28, 2015 the Denmark based nongovernmental organization, Free Muse, called for the release of two Cuban artists imprisoned for practicing their craft.

The Cuban graffiti artist and activist Danilo Maldonado Machado, best known as El Sexto, was arrested on 25 December 2014 while he was on his way to put on a performance art piece called ‘Rebelión en la Granja’ – the title in Spanish of George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm – which included two pigs decorated with the names Fidel and Raúl.

[...]

On 28 January 2015, the rapper Maikel Oksobo ‘El Dkano’ (real name: Maikel Castillo Pérez) was sentenced to a year in prison in Havana. It is generally believed he was targeted for having used music to express his dissenting political opinions. El Dkano was sentenced under a charge known as ‘peligrosidad predelictiva’ (‘dangerousness that is likely leading to a crime’)

Unfortunately, the drive to legitimize the Castro regime by the John Kerry State Department as part of the drive for normalization of relations has led to a focus by the international media on state to state relations while under reporting grassroots opposition initiatives.

For example on January 15, 2015 with the support of over 200 activists from throughout Cuba, the Forum for Rights and Freedoms (The Forum) came into existence.  15 opposition groups, various independent journalists, artists and activists founded this initiative. One of the main campaigns of The Forum is an Amnesty Law for Cuba’s political prisoners. They have followed up on this by exercising their right to demonstrate peacefully with regular protests demanding amnesty. The repression has been violent and at times brutal.

Members of The Forum are engaged in gathering signatures for a letter to Pope Francis to intercede on behalf of the artist Danilo Maldonado, mentioned above. In pursuit of their campaign for a amnesty law for political prisoners they will once again be out marching this Sunday. Please follow them on social media by the hashtag #TodosMarchamos (We All March).

The Leopoldo López Case: How to Conduct a Show Trial

The crisis in Venezuela

Show trial: n (Law) a trial conducted primarily to make a particular impression on the public or on other nations, esp one that demonstrates the power of the state over the individual. A trial (as of political opponents) in which the verdict is rigged and a public confession is often extracted.  Before the trial even started today outside of the courthouse, a dynamic familiar to Cuban dissidents on the island played out. Opposition activists gathered to show their solidarity with Leopoldo López with a heavy police presence monitoring them. At the same time a large number of pro-regime people showed up and verbally and physically assaulted the opposition activists trying to provoke them. 60 opposition activists were hurt and one man died of a heart attack provoked by the mob. A woman six months pregnant was beaten up by the pro-regime mob that tried to knock her down as she tried to leave the demonstration.


Human Rights Foundation issued a press release condemning the 13- year prison sentence against Leopoldo López. Below is an excerpt that outlines some of the irregularities and places it within a comparative international context:

The criminal proceedings against López were riddled with due process violations. The trial consisted of 70 hearings and took place behind closed doors in violation of the right to a public trial. The media, human rights defenders, and international observers were strictly banned from the courthouse. Out of 700 hours of trial, López’s legal team only had three hours to argue in his defense. In another ostensible display of disproportionality, bias, and unfair treatment in court, Judge Barreiros allowed 108 witnesses and 30 exhibits presented by the prosecution. In contrast, of the 60 witnesses proposed by the defense Barreiros allowed only two, and declared that the bulk of the documentary evidence presented by López’s legal team was inadmissible. Public statements by high-ranking government officials were made declaring López’s culpability in violation of the right to presumption of innocence.

As the criminal proceeding against him was taking place, López was held in the Ramo Verde military prison in Los Teques, Venezuela, where he was subject to torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. López’s imprisonment in Ramo Verde was characterized by the violation of international standards on the protection of the human dignity of persons deprived of liberty. Apart from the appalling conditions of captivity and excessive isolation—López has spent at least a third of his time in prison in solitary confinement, having been denied the right to receive visitors, including, at times, his wife and children, and his lawyers—there have been numerous violent searches, and the confidentiality of his communications has been violated.

“Terms like ‘kangaroo court’ or ‘sham trial’ do not begin to describe what happened to López. A teenager with rudimentary knowledge of a fair legal system would have found the charges brought against him absurd. López wouldn’t be in jail if Venezuela were a democratic nation,” said Javier El-Hage, chief legal officer of HRF. “Lopez now joins the group of prominent prodemocracy activists under dictatorial regimes worldwide who have been convicted to serve dozens of years in prison for advocating basic human rights. In 2009, the Chinese dictatorship jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo on charges of ‘inciting subversion of state power’ after he wrote a democracy manifesto, while in 2012 Kazakhstan’s authoritarian regime convicted the leader of the democratic opposition, Vladimir Kozlov, of ‘inciting social hatred.’ Kozlov, whose case is very similar to that of López, was also convicted for ‘creating and managing an organized criminal group,’ which is the label the regime gave to Kozlov’s political party, in a move very similar to the one Venezuela pursued against López’s party, Voluntad Popular,” said El-Hage.  

López’s unjust arrest and incarceration were condemned by multiple institutions worldwide, including Amnesty International, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the European Parliament. HRF was the first organization to declare López a political prisoner and a prisoner of conscience, after determining that the opposition leader had been persecuted, arrested, and imprisoned exclusively for having exercised his right to freedom of expression.

Show trial in Venezuela sentences Leopoldo Lopez to 13 years and 9 months in prison

 All With Leopoldo!

Learned tonight that Leopoldo López Mendoza was sentenced to 13 years and 9 months in prison.The four student protesters charged alongside Lopez had all been released on probation. The show trial has concluded. The injustice continues. The struggle to free Leopoldo Lopez and the many others prisoners of conscience in Venezuela continues. Condemned by this judicial farce is the Maduro regime that now stands revealed as a dictatorship that imprisons its nonviolent, democratic opposition leaders. This also means that the South American country is a satellite of Cuba.



There is no independent judiciary in Venezuela. That was made painfully evident in the case of Judge María Lourdes Afiuni  who freed a man Chavez wanted jailed in 2009 and that the United Nations Human Rights Council had declared arbitrarily detained. Because this judge carried out her duties from the bench she was imprisoned on Chavez's orders and repeatedly raped by prison officials. She is still battling the unfounded charges against her in the courts. The presiding judge in the case of Leopoldo Lopez, Susana Barrientos, knew what the consequences would be if she did not follow her orders.

Today in the streets of Caracas the Maduro regime sent out mobs of thugs that engaged in acts of repudiation against Leopoldo's supporters who had gathered to show their support. The Maduro regime following the Cuban playbook had its agents in plain clothes throw bottles at and attack those who came to show their solidarity. Meanwhile the police "tried" to maintain order in the face of the indignant "pro-Maduro" thugs. The only ones injured today were opposition activists and one of them was killed.  A pregnant activist, who tried to leave when things got violent, was attacked and knocked to the ground by the pro-Maduro mob.

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International on the verdict said: 

“The charges against Leopoldo López were never adequately substantiated and the prison sentence against him is clearly politically motivated. His only ‘crime’ was being leader of an opposition party in Venezuela.”

This means that the freedom of Venezuela and Leopoldo will not be decided at the ballot box or in Maduro's courts, justice was forced out of those precincts more than six years ago but it will return nonviolently in the streets of Venezuela with committed citizens, combined with international solidarity campaigns for Venezuela's and Leopoldo's freedom.

Leopoldo sent a message through his wife Lillian Tintori calling on Venezuelans to maintain calm with dignity saying that he is at peace because the handcuffs the Maduro regime have placed on him will be removed not by a judge or a court but by the people of Venezuela.

Lillian Tintori addressing the people of Venezuela tonight