Remembering Laura Pollán, Cuba's Lady in White thirteen years after her killing

 They can either kill us, put us in jail or release them. We will never stop marching no matter what happens." - Laura Inés Pollán Toledo (2010) 

Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, February 13, 1948 – October 14, 2011

 

Thirteen years ago today, Cuban opposition leader and human rights defender Laura Pollán died under circumstances that Cuban dissident and medical doctor Oscar Elias Biscet described as "death by purposeful medical neglect" in the custody of Cuban State Security at the Hospital Calixto García in Havana.

Today, on her death anniversary, she is remembered in Cuba by her compatriots, and around the world.  
Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, a courageous woman spoke truth to power and protested in the streets of Cuba demanding an amnesty for Cuban political prisoners. She had been a school teacher, before her husband was jailed for his independent journalism in 2003 along with more than 75 other civil society members. Laura was greatly admired both inside and outside of the island.
 

But when one opposes the regime in Cuba not only is their physical life in danger, but their reputation is systematically slandered. The dictatorship claimed that she was a stateless "traitor." She became ill and died within the space of a week under circumstances that raise the question of foul play by Castro's secret police.

Following her death the official media of the dictatorship began a slander campaign asserting that she was a common criminal.

Following brutal repression, in an effort to prevent them from marching through the streets of Havana in 2010, Laura Pollan directly and nonviolently challenged the regime declaring, "we will never give up our protest. The authorities have three options — free our husbands, imprison us or kill us."  

Unfortunately beginning in 2010 a new and deadlier pattern of oppression presented itself with the extrajudicial death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo. 

Laura Pollán's "criminal" behavior was to start the Ladies in White movement after the Black Cuban Spring of 2003 and nonviolently challenged the Castro regime in the streets of Havana at the beginning, and eventually across the island. Laura reached out to the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters of the 75 prisoners of conscience jailed in March of 2003 along with her husband and they carried out a sustained nonviolent campaign that after nine years obtained the freedom of their loved ones.

Just like she didn't break up the Ladies in White when her husband came home. Because she recognized that the laws had not changed, that political prisoners remained behind bars, and that she would continue her human rights activism, the Castro regime did away with her on October 14, 2011.

Today, the current leader of the Ladies in White, Berta Soler, honored the memory of her predecessor over Face Book and Twitter.

 

Berta Soler Fernandez: "October 14, 13th Anniversary of the assassination of our Leader Laura Pollan, ordered by Fidel and Raul Castro.
The Ladies in White pay tribute and homage to our unforgettable Laura
Forbidden to forget
Eternal Glory
#DamasdBlanco
Archive photos"

 

Let us remember that Laura put into action over eight years in Cuba nonviolent resistance to tyranny.

"They tried to silence 75 voices, but now there are more than 75 voices shouting to the world the injustices the government has committed." (2004) "We fight for the freedom of our husbands, the union of our families. We love our men." (2005)

"They can either kill us, put us in jail or release them. We will never stop marching no matter what happens." (2010) "We are going to continue. We are fighting for freedom and human rights.” (September 24, 2011)

"As long as this government is around there will be prisoners because while they've let some go, they've put others in jail. It is a never-ending story." (2011)

“If we must give our own lives in pursuit of the freedom of our Cuba that it be what God wants.” (September 24, 2011)

"We are not going to stop. If you have imprisoned our sisters thinking that we would give up, they are mistaken. We are very united (...) all the women's movements are very close." (October 2, 2011)

"My life has changed a lot, now I have learned to love the country much more, the prisoners, the humanity. That's how I have so much work, that I don't have much time to think about myself, what really satisfies me, in short, I owe myself to other more important tasks. Now I understand much more, before I could not understand these things, you have to live and feel them to be able to dedicate soul heart and life to this beautiful cause." (2011)

The regime in Cuba is the most misogynist government in all of Latin America. Women who speak out and exercise their fundamental rights are regularly slandered, physically assaulted and sometimes die under suspicious circumstances as Laura did thirteen years ago today.

 

Celebrating a Free China: Taiwan's 113th National Day

 For a free China!

October 10th is observed in Taiwan as the National Day of the Republic of China. 2024 commemorates 113 years since the start of the Wuchang Uprising on October 10, 1911 which is known as the (10-10 or double ten) and the theme this year is "A Beautiful Taiwan Today. A Better Taiwan Tomorrow." 

This uprising led to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in China following a 268 year reign and the establishment of the Republic of China on January 1, 1912. Before this China had known imperial rule for 2,133 years beginning in 221 BC. The founding father of the Republic of China was Sun Yat-sen.

This Free China was driven out by the communists from the mainland in 1949, but has been maintained on the island of Taiwan, a beacon of freedom for all Chinese. The Republic of China remains today a living national symbol of what a free China would look like on the mainland. Below is the footage of the 100th anniversary celebrations in 2011 in Tapei.

Therefore all friends of freedom in China can raise a toast to the Republic of China on its national day in praise of all their accomplishments over the past century and pray for the day that all of China is free.

 

 

Note to His Admirers: Comandante Ernesto "Che" Guevara is still dead, and his ideals are toxic.

 "I'd like to confess, at that moment I discovered that I really like killing." Ernesto "Che" Guevara, in a letter to his father after executing an unarmed man.  

Che Guevara executed for trying to overthrow Bolivian govt on October 9, 1967

 

Ideas have consequences and those ideas are sometimes represented in iconic images. This is the case of the image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his toxic philosophy of political action that others seek to emulate.  He embraced hatred and dehumanization of the other as the means to carry out what he thought necessary actions.

“Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary.”

Hamas terrorists launched indiscriminate rocket attacks on October 7, 2023 across Israel then invaded the Jewish nation beating, killing innocent people, raping women, kidnapping civilians, and parading the naked, battered body of a young woman they had murdered through the streets and spitting on her. These are war crimes. Over 1200 Israelis were killed, and 251 civilian hostages taken in this act of terrorism.

Leticia Martinez, head of communications for Miguel Diaz-Canel posted a message celebrating a “Free Palestine” in the midst of the terrorist attacks on October 7th over her social media.

She was not alone.  

In the midst of this barbarism and evil, official Cuban journalist  Pedro Jorge Velázquez , who goes by the pseudonym  El Necio on X.cites Che Guevara's visit to Gaza in 1959 as an inflection point that turned Palestine into a world cause, and posts photos of the Argentine guerilla with Middle East leaders during a visit there at the start of the Cuban dictatorship. 

He lies about Israel calling it a "Zionist colonization" without recognizing Jewish people as indigenous to this their ancestral lands. He claims that Guevara is the inspiration for the "resistance" i.e. terrorist barbarism taking place today, and concludes his rant with "Che Lives."

The only truth to what El Necio argues in his social media post is the role that Che Guevara plays in inspiring barbarism and cruelty against the innocent that over 65 years later has failed to provide Palestinians their nation state, and left them in a worse state than in 1959.

Guevara's claim to fame was the role he played alongside Fidel and Raul Castro in installing a totalitarian communist dictatorship using violent means, including terrorism, in Cuba then attempting to spread this model using violent means to Africa and Latin America. His efforts failed.

Castro executed thousands of Cubans, locked up hundreds of thousands of Cubans, built a police state, with the assistance of the KGB and the East German Stasi, and imposed revolutionary terror to consolidate power. Credible and conservative estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll against Cuban nationals ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000. In the beginning executions were televised in Cuba to terrorize the populace. This is the model the Palestinian leadership chose to emulate. They chose poorly.

Che Guevara addressing the United Nations on December 11, 1964

 Che Guevara, speaking to the United Nations on December 11, 1964, did not mince words: "We must express here something that is a well-known truth and that we have constantly asserted before the entire world: executions? Yes, we have executed individuals; we are currently executing others, and we will continue to do so as long as required. We know what the outcome of a losing struggle would be, and the worms must know what the outcome is today in Cuba." 

 

In addition to the Hellscape in the Middle East, Ernesto "Che" Guevara laid the groundwork for much of the additional misery in Latin America today.

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

Guevara meets Mao Ze Dong in November 1960.

Mao Ze Dong caused the deaths of an estimated 45 million Chinese people in his communist project through famine and mass executions.  He is the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century, and someone Guevara stayed allied to, even after the Castro regime cooled relations with Beijing siding with Moscow.

Months after the world came perilously close to a nuclear holocaust in October 1962, Che Guevara was disappointed. The Argentine declared in November 1962: "What we affirm is that we must proceed along the path of liberation even if this costs millions of atomic victims.”

Ernesto Guevara was executed  summarily on October 9, 1967 in La Higuera, Bolivia after he and his band of guerrillas were captured trying to overthrow the legitimate government there and install a Castro style dictatorship. His legacy at the time was already one of blood and terror that should be lamented not celebrated.

Comandante Ernesto "Che" Guevara is still dead, his ideals are still toxic, and need to be buried along with him. The barbarism visited upon the Israeli people by Hamas and Hezbollah, both receiving support from the Cuban dictatorship, demonstrates how the cult of violence and hate Guevara promoted are an obstacle to a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Remember and condemn the October 7th Hamas terror attacks on Israel, and those who back them

 #RememberOctober7 #CubansStandWithIsrael

 

 

On September 26, 2024 the Israeli military carried out an airstrike while Hezbollah leaders were meeting at their headquarters in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut. Killed in the attack was Hassan Nasrallah, the long time leader of the terrorist group.

 

Miguel Díaz-Canel, Raul Castro’s handpicked president, denounced Israel on X, “We condemn the cowardly targeted assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah, as a result of Israel’s attack on residential buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut, causing destruction and death of innocent civilians.” 

 

This is in sharp contrast to the Cuban government's response to Hamas' terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7.

 

One year ago, on October 7, 2023, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Iranian proxies, invaded and attacked Israel, killing over 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals (including 46 Americans ) and seizing 251 hostages. 

The United Nations' inquiry commission "verified information concerning the deliberate targeting of civilian women, including the killing, abduction and abuse of women, as well as the desecration of women's bodies, sexual violence and other gender-based crimes.This was the largest mass murder of unarmed Jewish civilians since the Holocaust. 

 

This terrorist attack sparked a Middle East war that began between Israel and Hamas, a terrorist organization based in Gaza. The war expanded into Lebanon when Hezbollah, another Iran proxy, on October 8, 2023 began launching rockets into northern Israel. 

Friends and allies of the Jewish people condemned the attack and mourned the victims. International communist networks, led by the Marxist-Leninist dictatorship in Cuba took a different approach.

 

Cuban official media spokespersons Leticia Martinez, chief of communications for Miguel Diaz-Canel, and "El Necio" took to social media to celebrate a "Free Palestine" and justify terrorist attacks. He retweeted the People's Forum's genocidal call on October 8, 2023 to abolish the Israeli state, which included the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!"

 

 

On October 8, 2023, one day after the terror attacks in southern Israel, militant leftists held a protest in Times Square to commemorate the killings as an act of resistance, chanting anti-Semitic slogans, waving banners and posters. The Center for a Free Cuba was aware of the protest at the time, as well as the promotion of it by official Cuban media. 

 

 On October 8, 2023, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations published a statement criticizing Israel's "impunity," describing the Jewish state as an occupying force and the United States as historically complicit. 

 

Dictator Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Dictator Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua , President and former M-19 terrorist Gustavo Petro in Colombia refused to condemn the terrorist attacks on Israel, while calling for the end of the “illegal occupation of Palestine” on October 7, 2023.

On October 11, 2023, The People’s Forum (TPF) issued a statement defending their October 8th rally in Times Square, doubling down on their support for the terrorist attack.

The group’s co-executive director, Manolo De Los Santos, is a longtime researcher at the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and was “based out of Cuba for many years,” where he “worked toward building international networks of people’s movements and organizations,” according to his biography at the anti-Israel group Black Alliance for Peace.

On November 23, 2023, the Cuban dictatorship organized a 100,000-person pro-Hamas march with prefabricated banners, and posters featuring photos of Hamas militants such as Abu Obaida carried by Cuban youth. 

In July 2022, Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, received De los Santos and executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Vijay Prashad with the aim of “elaborating a new consensus, based on theory and according to the different experiences of social movements and countries, on the path of socialism.”

Official Cuban journalist Pedro Jorge Velázquez, who goes by the pseudonym El Necio on X with over 157,000 followers has been graphically repackaging antisemitic tropes out of the "Protocols of the Elder of Zion" and spreading blood libels against the Jewish people far and wide in threads on X since the Hamas terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023 which he described as "Palestinian resistance launches unprecedented offensive in Israeli territory."

  Independent voices in Cuba that sympathize with the Israeli people threatened and silenced.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide in their 2024 Annual Report on Cuba informed that "In the final months of [2023] numerous Protestant pastors from both registered and unregistered religious denominations across the island were summoned for interrogation in regard to comments they had made about Israel. In each case, the pastors were told that that expressing any kind of support for Israel was unacceptable, they were ordered to stop praying for Israel or, in one case, for the ‘peace of Jerusalem’ and told that any commentary on the situation must be in line with the position of ‘the Revolution and the CCP’ [ Cuban Communist Party].

Advancing antisemitic tropes, and the destruction of Israel

“When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel. When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism.”

-Manolo De Los Santos speaking at The People’s Forum in NYC. pic.twitter.com/TxGcaVK62j

— Jason Curtis Anderson (@JCAndersonNYC) January 15, 2024

On January 24, 2024 Manolo De Los Santos spoke the quiet part out loud at The People’s Forum in New York City: “When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel. When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism.”

De Los Santos is echoing Karl Marx’s early formulation of communism which is antisemitic and offers a “solution” to the “Jewish Problem.”

“Money is the Jealous God of Israel, beside which no other God may exist. Money abases all the gods of mankind and changes them into commodities. The god of the Jews has been secularized and has become the god of the world. In emancipating itself from hucksterism and money, and thus from real and practical Judaism, our age would emancipate itself…by destroying the empirical essence of Judaism, the Jew will become impossible.” Source Karl Marx-Engels Collected Works (London 1975ff),vol. iii, pp146-74

“The People’s Forum” (TPF) is funded through Goldman Sachs and linked to the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). Both its executive directors Manolo De Los Santos and Claudia De La Cruz are PSL members, and active supporters of the Cuban communist dictatorship. TPF put out an advertisement in The New York Times in October 2022 that repeated numerous propaganda claims by the Cuban dictatorship, and was rebutted by the Center for a Free Cuba. 

Prior to another Pro-Hamas March in Havana on March 2, 2024, Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel in a video tweet on X accused Israel of a new genocide and operating an "extermination camp" in Gaza in which he said that five months ago, “humanity witnessed with horror a new holocaust.” 

Remembering when Fidel and Raul Castro allied with Arab states, and militarily attacked Israel

Castro severed diplomatic ties with Israel on September 10, 1973, just days before the Yom Kippur War began, fifty one years ago, on October 6th. There were no outstanding bilateral issues between Cuba and Israel. During that war, 3,000 Cuban soldiers participated in the attack on Israel, alongside forces from Egypt and Syria, and expeditionary forces from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco, and North Korea. Soldiers left Cuba bound for Syria, dressed in civilian clothes, with forged passports identifying them as university students. Soviet military equipment, including T-62 tanks and SAM rocket artillery, were provided to them. Cuban tank crews fought alongside Syrian troops in their war of aggression. According to Foreign Report, 180 Cubans were killed and 250 were injured in that conflict.

Cuban combat troops remained in Syria until 1975. 

Below is the documentary in Spanish by Abraham Rivera from 2020 on the Yom Kippur War.

This hostility towards Israel did not end when Cubans left Syria in 1975, but the Havana regime continued to aid and train terrorists in the Middle East, and allowed Hezbollah to set up a base in Cuba. 

Today, the Cuban dictatorship, both directly and through Venezuela, continues to provide support to Hamas, and Hezbollah as it has for decades. Cuba is a state supporter of terrorism all throughout the world, including in the Middle East, where it has long harbored animosity for Israel.

Cuba is a state sponsor of terrorism around the world, including in the Middle East, with a decades long hostility against the state of Israel. The Cuban dictatorship has a problem with Jewish people.

They repeat old Soviet lies about the state of Israel, and refuse to recognize that the Jewish people are the original inhabitants of what is today Israel.

Free Cubans on the other hand recognize the historical facts, and today join with our Jewish brother, and sisters in remembering the atrocities committed on October 7, 2023, and call for the hostages to be freed, and the Islamic Regime of Iran, and their terrorist proxies to end their war against Israel.

6:29AM

October 7, 2023.

The moment time stopped.

Beeri. Nahal Oz. Nir Oz. Reim. The Nova Festival. Kfar Aza. Sderot. Ofakim. Nirim. Holit. Zikim. Ashkelon.

We remember the victims.

We pray for the return of the hostages. #RememberOctober7 pic.twitter.com/DuTL9ml8kI

— Israel ישראל (@Israel) October 7, 2024

International Day of Nonviolence: Mohandas Gandhi born 155 years ago today on October 2, 1869

 "Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies." - Mohandas Gandhi

 

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, 155 years ago today, and his legacy continues to be passionately debated in India. The Economic Times, based in India, in 2021 published an editorial titled "Continuing relevance of Mohandas Gandhi" that highlights the challenges to Gandhian nonviolence today in his home country. 

“Gandhi is remembered for Ahimsa, non-violence. However, Gandhi’s Ahimsa was not passive acceptance of violence, but its active resistance by the force of moral purpose and mobilization of public opinion. Today, we have elected representatives who venerate Gandhi’s assassin, but few supporters who follow his example of opposing violence.”

This debate is not limited to India. The September 29, 2019 story in NPR "Gandhi Is 'An Object Of Intense Debate': A Biographer Reflects On The Indian Leader" contrasts the debate around Gandhi with how the Chinese don't debate Mao Zedong, or the Vietnamese don't debate Ho Chi Minh or the Pakistanis don't debate Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Perhaps part of the reason for the lack of debate is that China and Vietnam are totalitarian dictatorships where such debate is forbidden, and Pakistan has been divided between periods of democratic and military rule in questioning the founder could prove unhealthy. India on the other hand has been a democracy through out its period of independence.

Gandhi liberated an entire subcontinent from imperial rule without firing a shot. The United Nations, beginning in 2007, has designated his birthday, October 2nd, as the International Day of Nonviolence. Nevertheless,  he did not win the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized by the Nobel Committee as the "Missing Laureate."

 

In 2009 the United Nations released a one-dollar postal stamp of Mohandas Gandhi to commemorate his 140th birth anniversary. The stamp was designed by Miami-based artist Ferdie Pacheco.

 

He wasn't a rich man. He never held formal political office. He wasn't a saint or divine figure. He was just a man. An attorney who had taken a vow of poverty and celibacy. His full name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.   

 

Gandhi transformed himself into a principled strategic non-violent activist in South Africa at the end of the 19th century struggling against racist laws and policies of the colonial authorities. An important theoretical result of his South African campaign was the development of Satyagraha. 

 

Gandhi announced on September 11, 1906 in his newspaper Indian Opinion a contest to submit names to describe this movement. The final name was the fusion of two words as explained by Gandhi: “Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force…the Force which is born of Truth and love or nonviolence.”

 

He was the antithesis of Mao Zedong who took power and killed tens of millions to impose his political ideology on the Chinese. Marxist-Leninists view "truth" as something malleable and in the service of achieving power. 

Gandhi's explicit rejection of Marxist class struggle as hateful, his embrace of truth and love,
 and his critique that socialists and communists did nothing to solve problems are powerful:

The socialists and communists say, they can do nothing to bring about economic equality today. They will just carry on propaganda in its favor and to that end they believe in generating and accentuating hatred. They say, when they get control over the State, they will enforce equality. Under my plan the State will be there to carry out the will of the people, not to dictate to them or force them to do its will. I shall bring about economic equality through non-violence, by converting people to my point of view by harnessing the forces of love as against hatred. I will not wait till I have converted the whole society to my view but will straight away make a beginning with myself. It goes without saying that I cannot hope to bring about economic equality of my conception, if I am the owner of fifty motor-cars or even of ten bighas of land. For that I have to reduce myself to the level of the poorest of the poor.

Gandhi's description of the nature of a regime that sought to use violence to crush capitalism offers an excellent description of what has taken place in Marxist Leninist states that promised paradise but delivered the opposite:

It is my firm conviction that if the State suppressed capitalism by violence, it will be caught in the coils of violence itself, and will fail to develop non-violence at any time. The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. [...] It can be easily demonstrated that destruction of the capitalist must mean destruction in the end of the worker and as no human being is so bad as to be beyond redemption, no human being is so perfect as to warrant his destroying him whom he wrongly considers to be wholly evil.

This explains in large part the hostility from communists to Mohandas Gandhi's social political agenda, and many on the Left who share the Marxist belief in class struggle. However the legacies between those who advocate class struggle and those who advocate nonviolent resistance could not be more stark.

 

The heirs of Mao Zedong, who were inspired by his violent revolutionary tradition generated great suffering: Ernesto "Che"Guevara in Cuba,  the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Black Panther Party in the United States and Shining Path guerillas in Peru are but just four of many bloody examples.

Contrast these with the heirs of Mohandas Gandhi, who were inspired by his non-violent resistance to injustice and the good they achieved:  Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States,  Steve Biko in South Africa, Abdul Ghaffar Khan in Pakistan, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in Cuba, Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia, Lech Walesa in Poland, and Corazon Aquino in the Philippines are but just seven of many inspirational examples.

Mohandas Gandhi changed political protests and empowered millions with Satyagraha and the use of strategic nonviolence to battle powerful and violent regimes and great injustices in an effective manner that frustrates those who want to preserve or change the status quo using violence.

Today, as we witness Cubans nonviolently defying the communist dictatorship in Cuba, the legacy of Gandhi continues to shake the foundations of tyrannies around the world.  

Nonviolent resistance does not mean the absence of violence. It is a courageous decision to challenge the oppressors using nonviolent means. Telling the truth and resisting a violent adversary with nonviolent means is not without risk, but it has a greater chance of success than violent resistance. Oswaldo Payá spoke truth to power on July 20, 2012, denouncing the fraudulent change of the dictatorship and offering a vision of real change in Cuba.

"The Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) and the opposition do not kill, sabotage or exclude, everyone knows that. Our motto is Liberty and Life. We do not want power for ourselves; we want peace and civil rights for all, because where there are no rights there is no justice. We seek only the power of the people, popular sovereignty, as Martin Luther King did, remember? Power to the people!... We denounce institutionalized corruption. Those who have power declare us enemies and do not compete with the opposition but rather sentence it, stigmatize it and annihilate it." ... "The peaceful, logical and fair solution that can lead to change and genuine dialogue is to recognize these rights. Enough of reactionary justifications that say that the people are not ready, that they do not want change. Do you think that fifty-four years without freedom and without rights are not enough? Others say that the people do not want rights, what an insult! Others may say that many Cubans want this government. I do not believe it, but in any case no Cuban can decide what they want in this environment. With these laws and with this system, Cubans cannot choose who they want to govern them, what system to have. We demand rights for all, without hatred or offense, with justice. Everyone knows that not even the National People's Assembly can decide freely, it also receives orders. This will change only when they are elected by the people, only then will they obey the people. That is our demand. We continue to call on all Cubans, no matter how they think or where they come from, to be part of the solution and the changes. Only the people can do that. Why say no to our rights? Why elitism? Philosophies and theologies? What oppresses us is fear, intolerance and the determination of a group to maintain absolute power. Let us abandon pretense! Let us take the path of the people, which is the path of democracy."

This vision is still relevant today, and the price Payá had to pay for speaking the truth to power and acting accordingly cost him his life and Harold Cepero two days later, on July 22, 2012, when both were murdered by agents of the Cuban dictatorship. They were killed because with their truth telling and their non-violent resistance they threatened the continuity of the dictatorship.

Nonviolence and it's culture of life is a force more powerful, and it offers an alternative to war that threatens humanity's existence with its culture of death.