"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)
A 2017 declassified British diplomatic cable revealed that
"at least 10,000 people were killed. The Chinese Communist regime still defends committing this massacre, and is punishing those who seek to remember and observe the date.
To commemorate the 35th anniversary of June 4th, Yi Bao has specially translated five memoir articles by Mr. Zhou Duo, one of the four gentlemen of Tiananmen Square, into English for the convenience of English readers. Please feel free to share! Part 1https://t.co/2CjDKM99UIpic.twitter.com/3zrDLROg0y
George Orwell wrote in "As I Please" in the Tribune on February 4, 1944 that "[t]he
really frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits
'atrocities' but that it attacks the concept of objective truth; it
claims to control the past as well as the future."
On this day in 1989, the People’s Liberation Army opened fire on civilian protesters in Tiananmen Square. Revisit @JiayangFan’s remembrance of the event, which occurred when she was a a young child in Chongqing, China. https://t.co/fu2itksbZvpic.twitter.com/UyZIBdFwNw
We are witnessing this attempt to silence the victims, erase
and rewrite the history of the 1989 Tiananmen protests and the
crackdown and massacre that began on June 3, 1989 through social media
and in the real world. People are being arrested for engaging in silent,
nonviolent protests in remembrance of students and workers murdered by
the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) on orders of the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP). Making this known is the most effective method to combat
it.
June 2: a bunch of 🇨🇳 CCP tankies — Chinese Americans / 🇨🇳 nationals — ferociously yelling “long live the communist party!” and “bog off and go back to Taiwan!” offensively harassed people commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre in Flushing, NYC. pic.twitter.com/cHspFOMpxR
The Czech writer Milan Kundera wrote that "[t]he struggle of man against
power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." This is the
challenge presented by the Chinese Communist Party in its effort to
erase the mass protests, months long occupation and crackdown in
Tiananmen Square, and across China. It is also why we must remember and
honor courageous Chinese dissidents such as Liu Xiaobo martyred for his commitment to nonviolence and democracy.
Hong Kong Christian newspaper runs blank front page ahead of Tiananmen crackdown anniversary
'There
are those who think that we should be full of rancor and a thirst for
vengeance but I don't want revenge. I feel sorry for the people who
assassinated my family. I can never be compensated for my loss. I will
never be happy again with my family surrounding me. There will always be
a tinge of sadness but I do want there to be a trial so that this
situation can serve as a lesson and that these people or others like
them in other parts of the world, don't do this kind of thing again. Not
in Cuba. Not anywhere.''
Jorge A. Garcia who had 14 members of his family massacred by agents of the Cuban dictatorship on July 13, 1994 rejected revenge but demanded justice, truth, and memory has reportedly died. Cuban activist Ramon Saul Sanchez shared a statement from his son Jorge Félix García.
"My father Jorge García Más is resting after a painful illness that in recent months stole the peace of all those around him who cared for him. He accompanied me for 60 years in which at his side I learned everything I know and I am what I have become with his help. Today, June 2, 2024, the life of a human being who, full of pain, filled the lives of so many with love, ends. What does not go away is the tireless work of this man in favor of justice, which will remain there forever, as an example of personal sacrifice and at the same time as a perpetual tribute to those who he dedicated the last 30 years of his existence his battle for the victims of the sinking of the "13 de Marzo" Tugboat. The legacy of a man like my father undoubtedly creates commitment, and sets an example to follow for anyone that injustice has taken away what is just. Let us give thanks for what we experienced at his side, for what we learned along the way, for the hug, the helping hand. Jorge García Más (Jomás) is staying with us today, not leaving us."
First time I heard Jorge A. Garcia speak out about the July 13, 1994 massacre was on a television program on the eve of the arrival of Pope John Paul II to Cuba.
In the January 1998 Nightline interview
Jorge described how he
learned the news. “When I asked my daughter, ‘What about Juan Mario?’
‘Papa,
he's lost.’ ‘And Joel?’ ‘Papa, he's lost.’ ‘And Ernesto?’ ‘Papa, he's
lost.’
And then we knew that other members of the family were all lost, 14 in
all.”
His daughter, Maria Victoria Garcia, had survived but she lost her
brother, Joel García Suárez age 24; her husband, Ernesto Alfonso
Loureiro age 25; and her son, Juan Mario Gutiérrez García age 10.
Jorge García was detained and interrogated on several
occasions. His longest detention was for 15 days. His daughter, María Victoria
García, was one of three of his family who survived the massacre but was still in danger: "They tried on several
occasions to kill my daughter, because she was the first to speak out and
contradict the regime’s official narrative.”
Father and daughter had spoken on camera to Nightline from
Havana, Cuba about the July 13, 1994 attack on the “13 de Marzo” tugboat. A year later in 1999 they had to go into exile as political refugees fearing for their lives.
In 2009, Jorge Garcia, agreed to
address Florida International University students at a panel organized by the
Free Cuba Foundation on the fifteenth anniversary of the July 13, 1994 “13 de
Marzo” tugboat massacre. We meet beforehand, and I sat down with him and interviewed him in a series of short videos about the events surrounding this crime.
María Victoria
García passed away in early January 2024.
Jorge had been suffering from a serious illness for some time.
I learned he was desperately ill, and paid him a visit in hospice care on May 12, 2024. We spoke, and he remembered when we swapped t-shirts 15 years earlier at Florida International University. At the time I gave him my Free Cuba t-shirt and he in turn gave me a t-shirt that read "We will never forget" with the name Joel Garcia repeated in the back ground, and image of his murdered son Joel Garcia in the foreground.
Next month on July 13th, G-d-willing, I will be remembering the victims, demanding justice, and wearing the shirt given to me by Jorge A. Garcia, a truth teller who risked all to bear witness, and following his example.
Yesterday marked two years since the start of political show trials against Maykel Castillo Pérez and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, two nonviolent and internationally recognized artivists, which resulted in lengthy and unjust prison sentences for both.
Maykel Castillo and Luis Manuel in show trial footage.
Maykel
Castillo Pérez, musician, and
two-time Grammy winner, was imprisoned on May 18, 2021. He was put on "trial" after more than a year in prison, and today, despite
being innocent, has been locked up for over three years.
— Center for a Free Cuba (@cubacenter) June 1, 2024
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez
were unjustly sentenced to five and nine years in
prison, respectively on June 24, 2022. Both had remained jailed following their arrests on the dates mentioned above.
Jesse Scheckner writing in Florida Politics on the visit of Cuban officials to Miami International airport on May 20th provided important context: "The tour also happened just under five years after reportedly leaked Cuban intelligence showed that spies at MIA had stolen security codes and other confidential information."
Consider the following omitted by Mr. Padgett about the Cuban government currently in power.
The dictatorship in Cuba led by the Castro brothers came to power through a campaign of urban terrorism carried out by the July 26th Movement in the 1950s against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
One of nine bombs placed in Havana by Fidel
Castro's July 26 movement in El Collar store on Aguila St. in Aug 1957
Fidel Castro ordered the burning of Cuban sugar mills, warehouses, busses, and factories. He also ordered bombings of stores, theaters, nightclubs, and clinics around the island as part of the revolution against the Batista dictatorship. In 2015, the Office of Publications of Cuba's Council of State produced a four-volume chronology titled "We shall fight until the end" [Lucharemos Hasta el Final].
According to the 1958 volume, in
May of that year "electric transformers that provided electricity to
Santiago de Cuba, El Cobre and Contramaestre were blown up [by Castros'
forces] leaving important urban areas without electricity ...". In
Havana, a member of Castro's 26 of July Movement is killed when he was
"surprised setting up a bomb." In "Santiago de Cuba, two rebels fired
against a government soldier in the intersection of Trocha and Corona
streets. The soldier was seriously wounded."
Two rebels set on
fire furniture store' La Caridad". In "Ramon de las Yaguas
neighborhood" in Oriente province "an activist from a government
political party (PURS) is murdered." A revolutionary died when a bomb he
was placing in front of a movie theater in Marianao (Havana province)
went off. And earlier this month a town near Santiago was left
without electricity due to sabotage carried by rebel forces.
These are some of the terrorist attacks carried out during the
month of May 1958. The number of such crimes which took place during
1955,1956,1957 and 1958 were chronicled in 2015 by the Office of
Publications of Cuba's Council of State. The many innocent victims and
millions of property loses demonstrate without a doubt the mendacity of
Fidel Castro's claim that "the Cuban revolution never engaged in
terrorism."
Once the Castro brothers took power, and consolidated their rule through a campaign of revolutionary terror that included mass executions, they turned their attention to international terrorism, and promoting it as a necessary tactic for revolutionaries.
TheCastro brothers created a terrorist international.
TheTricontinental Conferenceheld in Havana from January 3-16, 1966, and the creation of Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAL) sought to support terrorist groups worldwide. “Castro insisted that ‘bullets not ballots’ was the way to achieve power.” Hemaintained “‘conditions exist[ed] for an armed revolutionary struggle.’
Carlos the Jackal trained in Cuba.
Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (age 17) attended the 1966 Conference. Afterwards, Ilyichspent the summer at Camp Matanzas, a guerrilla warfare school run by the Cuban DGI. Following a string of terrorist attacks, he picked the alias “Carlos. France expelled three high‐ranking Cuban diplomatson July 10, 1975. ”The Cubans, according to the French Interior Ministry, were “constant visitors” to the Paris hideout of Carlos”
"In the Arab world some 3,000 [Cuban advisers could] be found in Libya and Algeria, among other things training terrorists" in 1988. Havana today collaborates with Hamas and other Middle East terrorists groups.
Concern about Cuban diplomats touring security facilities at an American airport is not an example of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but common sense.
Killing Americans in New York City.
Aftermath of bombing in Fraunces Tavern in 1975 that killed four.
The Puerto Rican terrorist group, Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional, (FALN) carried out more than 130 bombings. The FALN is responsible for:
A bombing spree in New York City in August 1977 that killed one, injured six, and forced the evacuation of 100,000 office workers;
and the purposeful targeting and maiming of four police officers.
FALN was started in the mid-1960s and received advanced training in Cuba.
Frank Connor killed in Frances Tauvern by Cuban trained terrorists
Samuel T. Frances in his 1979 essay “Latin American Terrorism: The Cuban Connection” published by The Heritage Foundation found that "[a]lmost every significant Latin American terrorist group of left-wing orientation has had or has today links with Cuba.”
The US State Department confirmed Havana was using a narcotics ring to funnel arms and cash to the Colombian terrorist group M-19. Three years later on November 6, 1985, M-19 members stormed Colombia’s Palace of Justice. This attack led to many hostages killed, including 11 of the Colombian supreme court’s 25 justices. It is a perverse irony that the election of former M-19 terrorist Gustavo Petro to the Colombian presidency, and his subsequent request to rescind extradition requests for ELN guerillas housed by Cuba for a 2019 terrorist attack is part of the reason that the State Department is now saying that Havana is fully cooperating in anti-terrorism efforts.
Mr. Padgett ends his column citing this act of terrorism as follows.
"Still, all those outraged Miami politicos who are sure TSA exposed
MIA to the DGI (Cuba’s spy service) might themselves remember Cuba also
has aviation security concerns. It has ever since Cuban exile terrorists
carried out the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger airliner that killed
all 73 people onboard. That, too, was an outrage."
Yes it is, but what both he and the Cuban dictatorship omit is that the two Cuban exiles credited for the terrorist attack had first engaged in terrorism for the Castro brothers as members of the July 26th Movement in their struggle against Batista, and turned against the Castros when they imposed a new dictatorship, betraying their promises of a democratic revolution.
Hopefully, the Biden Administration hasn't given FARC terrorists tours of airport and port security around the United States like they have Cuban officials. This is not a question of slighting an ethnic group, or PTSD, but a question of national security.
One hundred and twenty two years ago today at noon the flag of the United
States was brought down and the Cuban flag raised over Havana as Cuba
became an independent republic. However, when looking at Cuba one should
look back over the first 467 years [1492 - 1959] and where it is situated today to
gain greater understanding of the unfolding tragedy.
Cuba is just 90 miles south of the United States with a population of
approximately 11 million people. It is 780 miles long and has a land
area of 40,369 square miles and is the largest island in the Caribbean
and 17th-largest island in the world by land area.
Cubans engaged in two protracted wars of independence. The first was the 10 Years War that took place between 1868 and 1878 and the second took place between 1895 and 1898 ending with U.S. intervention and a 4-year
occupation that ended on May 20, 1902. Cuba's first president was a Cuban exile named Tomas Estrada de Palma.
Future first Cuban president Tomas Estrada de Palma travels to Havana
There are many important figures and entities that emerge in the 19th century but for
the sake of brevity will mention Father Felix Varela, Jose Marti,
Antonio Maceo, Maximo Gomez and the Bacardi family.
Father Varela was a catholic priest who is said to “have taught the
Cubans how to think” and entertained ideas of independence that led to
his exile to the United States.
Antonio Maceo and Maximo Gomez were
Cuban generals that played important roles in both wars of independence.
Antonio Maceo was of a mixed racial background: part Spanish and part
African.
Maximo Gomez, was an experienced military man of Dominican origin who
oversaw the overall military campaign in the second war of independence
and of the three previously mentioned was the only one who survived the
war to see the arrival of the Republic.
José Martí and Antonio Maceo
Jose Marti was a journalist, poet and revolutionary who organized and
advocated for the 1895 war of independence and spent most of his adult
life exiled in the United States in New York City.
The Bacardi family, began their world famous Rum business in Santiago de Cuba. Don Facundo Bacardí Massó and Don Emilio Bacardi founded Bacardi Limited
on February 4, 1862.
Emilio Bacardi Lay, son of one of the two founders of Bacardi, Don Emilio
Bacardi, "was a field officer for Gen. Antonio Maceo in 1895 during the
invasion of Cuba by independence forces, and reached the rank of colonel
by the age of 22," according to his obituary in The New York Times on October 16, 1972 when he died at the age of 95 in exile in Miami.
The family would also play an important role in
civic life in Cuba, especially Santiago over the 20th century, and were
constant opponents of dictatorship, political corruption and remained
ardent Cuban nationalists over several generations.
The beginning of the Cuban republic on May 20, 1902 had an asterisk –
The Platt Amendment: which allowed the United States to intervene in
Cuban affairs if U.S. interests were threatened. This Amendment was
gotten rid of in 1933 but left a bad taste in the mouth of Cuban
nationalists.
Between 1902 and 1952 Cuba progressed socially and economically but
faced challenges on the political front. For example in the late 1920s
Gerardo Machado, the democratically elected president did not want to
leave power becoming a dictator. He was driven from office and into exile in 1933 by a general strike.
This was followed by a
revolution led by university students and enlisted men in what became
known as the sergeants revolt.
During this period labor unions made great strides for worker's
rights in Cuba, especially after the ousting of President Gerardo
Machado in 1933.
Created the Ministry of Labor, since there was no body specifically in charge of labor matters.
Established employer liability for accidents; he suspended the
evictions of tenants and canceled 50% of the taxes and contributions not
paid in due time.
Established the eight-hour work day and the right to unionize. He
promulgated the Labor Nationalization Law that established the
obligation that 50% of the workers and employees had to be native
Cubans.
Creation of the Central of Workers of Cuba Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC in Spanish)
In 1940 all the political tendencies in Cuba met to draft what became
known as the 1940 Constitution and a presidential election was held and
Fulgencio Batista elected. He served out his term as president from 1940
to 1944. Due to a clause in the new Constitution he was unable to run
for re-election. Cuba's 1940 Constitution further enshrined workers’ rights into law with 26 articles which included:
A maximum work day of no more than 8 hours and a maximum working week
of 44 hours equivalent to 48 in wages (Article 66); The right to paid
vacation of one month for each 11 months of work in each calendar year
(Article 67); The right of unionization (Article 69); The right to
strike (Article 71); The system of collective labor contracts (Article
72); a non-discriminatory practice in the distribution of opportunities
to work ( Article 74).
In the election of 1944 the opposition candidate,
Ramon Grau San Martin, won and served a term as president from
1944-1948 and in the election of 1948, Batista’s political party again
lost at the general elections and Carlos Prios Socarras was elected president.
Cuba's republic during this democratic period played an important role in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations and the establishment of the UN Human Rights Commission.
This democratic renaissance was brought to an end within days of the
1952 presidential elections, when on March 10th Fulgencio Batista
organized a coup against the last democratically elected president.
A little over a year later on July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro organized an
armed assault on the Moncada Military barracks that was a military
disaster but a public relations success. Although most of the men
involved with Fidel Castro in the assault were killed, Fidel Castro
became a national figure at his trial for organizing the attack. At the trial he
portrayed himself as a democrat that wanted to restore the previous
democratic order and attacked the Batista dictatorship for its
usurpation of the democratic order.
How the totalitarian darkness arrived in Cuba
Upon Batista’s departure from Cuba on January 1, 1959 Fidel Castro
began his triumphal trek across Cuba to Havana where he began to
consolidate power while continuing publicly to claim that he was a
democrat but privately began to infiltrate his movement with communists,
alienating many who had fought with him.
On January 22, 1959 the CTC was replaced by the CTC-Revolucionaria.
In the X Congress, held in November 1959, the Secretary General, David
Salvador Manso,"said that the workers had not gone to the event to raise
economic demands but to support the revolution." And in the XI
Congress, November 1961, the delegates renounced almost all the
achievements of the labor movement, including "the nine days of leave
for sickness, the supplementary Christmas bonus, the weekly shift of 44 x
48 hours, the right to strike and an increase of 9.09%, among many
others. Workers were required to do "voluntary work" that was actually mandatory.
Ramiro Valdez oversaw the installation of the totalitarian communist apparatus in Cuba beginning in 1959. He is now probably doing the same thing in Venezuela. It was on his watch that the East German Stasi, and KGB created and trained Cuban State Security.
This is how the darkness of totalitarianism took over Cuba and 64 years
later remains entrenched there. Cuba gained its independence on May 20,
1902 after centuries of Spanish colonial rule and four years of U.S.
occupation following the Spanish American war.
José Julián Martí Pérez: January 28, 1853 - May 19, 1895
José Martí was killed in battle against Spanish troops at the Battle of Dos Ríos, near the confluence of the rivers Contramaestre and Cauto,
on May 19, 1895. He is buried in the Santa
Efigenia Cemetery in Santiago de Cuba.
Cubans the world over honor his memory and Cuban independence follows a
day later. Seven years and one day after Martí's death Cuba formally
obtained its independence on May 20, 1902.
Cubans across the ideological divide claim José Martí as their own. The
claims of the dictatorship led by the Castro brothers that Martí is the
intellectual author of their political project is ironic considering
that the life and writings of this Cuban patriot is the antithesis of
the Castro regime.
José Martí believed that "Peace demands of Nature the recognition of
human rights." A 64 year old dictatorship that rejects fundamental human
rights is the antithesis of what the Cuban independence leader fought and died for.
Furthermore, José Martí proclaimed the idea that: "One just principle from the
depths of a cave is more powerful than an army."
A principle shared not
only by dissidents in Cuba today but also echoed by Vaclav Havel, one of the
dissidents who had an important role in ending Communism in Eastern
Europe in 1989 said: "I really do inhabit a system in which words are
capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can
prove mightier than ten military divisions."
On this Cuban
Independence Day we observe that Cubans have lived without democracy for
72 years, and rededicate ourselves to the struggle for a free Cuba.
May 20, 1902 the Cuban flag is raised and the Republic born
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