In a World of Conflict, UNESCO Celebrates Che Guevara, Ignores Oswaldo Payá
“Already many Cubans have discovered and soon all of them will discover
that this oppression, that this imposed lie, can be overcome recognizing
ourselves as brothers to conquer our rights peacefully. So there is
hope.”
~ Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Somos Liberación Havana, Cuba, July 2012.
 |
| Oswaldo Payá returning home to Cuba in February of 2003 |
Originally posted on The Canal Blog of the Panamerican Post
The Cuban government spends lots of time and money on propaganda
offensives at the United Nations, in addition to doing concrete harm
undermining
international freedom of expression standards, and some of what
it spends is US taxpayer money. On June 18, 2013, for example, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (
UNESCO) decided to add “
The Life and Works of Che Guevara” to the
World Registrar, and the Cuban dictatorship held a ceremony on
July 19, 2013, to “celebrate” with
members of Che Guevara’s family.
The current head of the Cuban National
Commission is Juan Antonio Fernandez Palacios, who was formerly the
Cuban delegate at the United Nations Human Rights Council where he
succeeded in attacking freedom of expression. He has now delivered on
getting hard currency for the Cuban government from UNESCO to preserve
Che Guevara’s papers, in addition to promoting the Cuban communist ideology which is found in Che’s writings and
advocates guerrilla warfare and
terrorism as legitimate methods of struggle against an enemy.
Che Guevara’s legacy is
one of bloodshed that led to the rise of right wing paramilitary dictatorships
throughout the Americas to confront the communist guerrilla threat Che
promoted. He did so across the world, and they were all crushed, with
the exception of Cuba, where he took part in
implanting a totalitarian dictatorship and organizing firing squads.
In a world that has been torn apart by war, who offers more hope for
the future, a disciple of Mao Ze Dong or Martin Luther King Jr.?
In contrast, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas
was a disciple of King, who corresponded with both
Lech Walesa and
Vaclav Havel.
Unlike the Argentine revolutionary, Oswaldo’s nonviolent resistance
required much more creativity and courage to confront an all powerful
totalitarian state, and he offered a moral and ethical path to
liberation.
Perhaps democrats and nonviolent activists should look into having the writings of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas
added to the World Registrar, set up by UNESCO. In the meantime, your
signature on a petition circulated by the Payá family demanding an international investigation
into the circumstances surrounding his untimely 2012 death would be much appreciated. There are
plenty of articles on the
suspicious nature
of how Oswaldo and Harold Cepero died on July 22, 2012, but there is
not that much about Oswaldo’s life in English. I hope this post will
remedy that somewhat.
The regime in Cuba has claimed, and continues to claim, that it is a
democracy, arguing that anyone can run for office as long as he obtains
the support of enough voters. Oswaldo Payá proved that this was not true
in 1992 and several times afterwards. Upping the ante ten years later,
Oswaldo demonstrated that the Cuban opposition had a popular base of
support in the population that wanted the Cuban government to change its
laws so that human rights would be respected and electoral laws
reformed to allow for free and competitive elections. Thousands of
signatures by Cuban citizens shook the Cuban dictatorship and may have
placed Oswaldo on a kill list.
Below are highlights of Oswaldo’s activism following
the founding of the Christian Liberation Movement in September of 1988.
Exposing Cuba’s Anti-Democratic Nature With the Regime’s Own Rules and Regulations
In 1992, for the first time, Oswaldo Payá made public his intention
to run for the seat of deputy to the National Assembly of People’s
Power, a rubber stamp organ of the Cuban government. If he were to win,
he would have a national platform to speak from and be a dissenting
voice in an otherwise unanimous chamber.
The response of State Security was to impede and prevent Payá from
exercising his constitutional right to “be elected.” Two days before the
so-called Nomination Assembly, the police detained him at home and took
him into custody, parading him through the whole neighborhood to
intimidate the neighbors. They took Oswaldo to a center of the
“Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.” There waiting for him
were police members of the Cuban Communist Party who threatened him that
“blood will flow if you appear in an assembly.” The Cuban Communist
Party carried out the assembly under police control, only for a few
minutes and with only with their followers.
It is an example of how powerful nonviolent resistance can be when
combined with sound strategy. The Cuban government’s options were either
to live up to their own rules and accept an opposition candidate on the
ballot, ending the communist party monopoly, or ignore their own laws
and deny the candidacy — exposing the arbitrary and tyrannical nature of
the government.
With this one action, Oswaldo exposed the reality that the Cuban
government does not follow its own electoral laws, and he underscored
that Cuba was and is a lawless dictatorship.
Setting Out a Vision For a Democratic Transition in Cuba
Payá,
beginning in 1992, wrote the Transitional Program,
which proposed a way to transform Cuban society peacefully. In 1993, he
and supporters began collecting signatures for a referendum on the
Transitional Program. The July 13, 1994,
13 de Marzo tugboat massacre and the August 5, 1994,
Maleconazo uprising, which stimulated an exodus in the summer of 1994, however, halted the petition drive.
In 1995, Oswaldo was one of the first to call on the United States to
lift the embargo on foods and medicines without conditions and for a
review of their policy towards Cuba. That year, he was also one of the
five organizers of the
Cuban Council, drafting the only document of unity that embodied the positions of its members.
State Security detained him and threatened him, asking him to
discourage the meeting. Oswaldo refused, and they surrounded his home
with state security agents until the Council was unable to be held due
to repressions and the
shooting down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes in international airspace.
In 1997, Oswaldo, together with 10 other members of the Christian
Liberation Movement, collected hundreds of signatures in support of
their candidacies for deputies in the National Assembly. It was the
first time that citizens presented themselves as candidates with popular
support and without being of the government. The electoral commissions
did not accept the nominations, once again demonstrating how the regime
fails to abide by its own laws.
In 1997, Payá presented a claim to the National Assembly of People’s
Power demonstrating that the electoral law was unconstitutional and
anti-sovereign and demanded its repeal and change for another democratic
law.
The official press in Cuba sought to slander and defame him in order
to stimulate provocations and create a cover for government attacks
against him. An example of this took place just days after the September
11, 2001, attacks in New York City; a group of agents and provocateurs
screamed at Oswaldo on the street as he walked with his wife and two
children: “They too need to be finished off with a bomb.” Nevertheless,
when Oswaldo was killed in 2012, hundreds turned out for his funeral to
pay their respects, despite state security harassing and detaining
people.
The Varela Project
From 1996 to 1997, Oswaldo drafted
the Varela Project,
a campaign to reform the Cuban legal system. During the Pope’s visit to
Cuba in 1998, he was closely watched and guarded by state security —
but that same year he and the Christian Liberation Movement still
publicly launched the Varela Project and started collecting signatures
for a referendum.
In 1999, he drafted the ”All United” manifesto and proposed the first
meeting of the opposition, held under strong repression, which resulted
in a movement of unity. Oswaldo was appointed coordinator of the
“Rapporteur Committee for All United,” and in March, 2001, All United
re-launched the call to collect 10,000 signatures for the referendum on
the Varela Project.
On May 10, 2002, representatives of All United, led by Oswaldo,
turned 11,020 signatures of electors into the National Assembly of
Popular Power, in that way turning Project Varela into a bill under the
prevailing Cuban Constitution. This obliged the Assembly of Popular
Power to publicly discuss the Varela Project and to vote in favor or
against it. Furthermore, the government was obliged to promote a public
discussion of
Project Varela in the mass media that it controlled (and still does).
Once again, instead of following its own rules as laid out in the
Cuban government’s own laws and regulations, the regime’s response was
to organize its own petition drive to make the “socialist” aspect of the
current Constitution untouchable. This supposed law was presented and
approved by the Assembly in violation of its own regulations, since the
Varela Project by precedence should have been considered first. Then on
July 5, 2002, the Assembly “indefinitely” suspended its ordinary session
to avoid discussing the Varela Project. The regime also responded with
acts of repression and intransigence against members of the civic,
nonviolent movement — but project Varela organizers continued to collect
signatures and the civic movement grew.
The thousands of signatures gathered catches the attention of the
international community, because it demonstrates that the Cuban civic
opposition has a popular base of support.
International Solidarity
Moving into the 2000s, several organizations recognized Oswaldo Payá
as a fighter for democracy and the rights of citizens. The National
Democratic Institute of the United States, for example, in 2002 awarded
him the Averell Harriman prize in the Organization of American States in
Washington, DC, in recognition of his work with the Varela Project.
Czech President Vaclav Havel launched a campaign to support Oswaldo’s
nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent efforts towards
freedom and democracy in Cuba. Oswaldo was nominated on four occasions.
In October 2002, the European Parliament awarded him the
Andrei Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
Members of the European Union, led by Havel and Aznar pressured the
Cuban government into allowing Oswaldo to travel to Europe to collect
the Sakharov Prize. In December of 2002, they granted him permission to
travel to the ceremonies in Strasbourg, France, but not before attacking
his home and leaving death threats there.
Oswaldo did travel to Strasbourg, and on December 17, 2002, he accepted the Sakharov Prize. In the course of
a twenty minute speech, he outlined his nonviolent political philosophy.
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 traveled across Europe, the United States, and Latin America
meeting world leaders and representing the nonviolent civic movement in
Cuba. He received an audience with His Holiness Pope John Paul II,
President Aznar in Spain, and Havel in the Czech Republic, along with
the Prime Minister of Slovakia and the Secretary of State of the United
States, Colin Powell, in Washington, DC. He visited Mexico and met with
President Fox, and in his final stop was the Dominican Republic, where
he was received by President Mejías.
He returned home to a warm welcome in February of 2003 with a large
crowd of families, friends, and international media waiting for him at
the airport.
Black Spring Crackdown
The Castro regime responded on March 18, 2003, with the beginning of the
Black Cuban Spring.
Over a 100 activists were detained and seventy-five were sentenced to
prison in show trials with sentences ranging from twelve years up to
twenty-eight years in prison. More than forty of the imprisoned
activists had worked on the Varela Project.
The Cuban government announced, at the time, that the dissident
movement had been destroyed. However, the remaining activists who were
still free continued to gather signatures, and Oswaldo turned in another
14,384 petition signatures on October 5, 2003. Furthermore, the wives,
sisters, and daughters of the activists who had been detained and
imprisoned organized themselves into the
Ladies in White.
A movement that sought the freedom of their loved ones and organized
regular marches through the streets of Cuba, despite regime organized
violence upon them.
Oswaldo would refocus his efforts on campaigning for the freedom of
these prisoners of conscience. It took over eight years, but the last of
the group of the 75 were eventually released. Many were driven into
exile but a core group remains in Cuba and are still defiant. Others
lost their lives defending human rights and dignity by gathering
signatures for the Varela Project, such as
Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died on hunger strike on February 23, 2010.
Oswaldo continued defending human rights with well thought out projects demanding specific rights like
the Heredia Project — it campaigned for Cubans to have the freedom to travel inside and outside of Cuba — and
The People’s Path in 2011, which sought to lay the framework for a nonviolent democratic transition.
At the same time, Oswaldo in
April 2012 denounced the campaign to
marginalize the democratic opposition and the Cuban government’s efforts, along with unscrupulous allies, to carry out a
fraudulent change at the expense of the freedom of the Cuban people.
Suspicious Deaths
On July 22, 2012, while heading to Santiago de Cuba in a car with
Harold Cepero and two international youth leaders, on a solidarity
visit, another car struck theirs. The end result was that both Harold
and Oswaldo died in Bayamo, Cuba.
The Cuban government attempted to engage in a cover up and invented a
story that did not line up with the known facts. It is for that reason
that the victims’ families are
demanding an international investigation to learn the truth of what happened.
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas was 60 years old at the time of his death. He
had spent his entire adult life in Cuba in a struggle for Cuba’s
freedom. Oswaldo’s life is an example of Mohandas Gandhi’s epigram:
“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is
full victory.”
The People’s path remains to be taken, but the surviving members of
the Christian Liberation Movement have reorganized and are building upon
the groundwork laid by Oswaldo for the path to a nonviolent transition
in Cuba.
