Remember her: Milada Horakova martyred on this day in 1950 by communist government for her nonviolent defense of Czechoslovakian democracy

Remember her.

Milada Horakova at her show trial in 1950.

Milada Horakova was hanged with three others in Prague’s Pankrac Prison as a spy and traitor to the Communist Czechoslovakian government on June 27, 1950. She was a  lawyer, social democrat, and a prominent feminist in the interwar and postwar periods. 

Milada had been a member of the Czech resistance to the Nazi occupation of her homeland and survived a Nazi prison. After Czechoslovakia was liberated from the Nazis in 1945 by the Soviets she became a member of parliament in 1946 but resigned her seat after the Communist coup of 1948. 

However she refused to abandon her country.  She was arrested at her office on September 27, 1949 "on charges of conspiracy and espionage against the state." 

Milada was subjected to a show trial. 

Oxford Languages defines a show trial as "a judicial trial held in public with the intention of influencing or satisfying public opinion, rather than of ensuring justice." 

Vladimir Lenin called them "model trials", but they would eventually become known as show trials under Josef Stalin with hundreds of thousands executed and millions sent to work camps in Siberia, and they would take place not only in the Soviet Union, but in the East Bloc including Czechoslovakia, and as far away as Cuba. The Nazis also copied the practice, and so have other repressive regimes. 

Seventy three years after Milada Horakova addressed the court in the final day of her show trial on June 8, 1950 her words ring true and strong:

"I have declared to the State Police that I remain faithful to my convictions, and that the reason I remain faithful to them is because I adhere to the ideas, the opinions and the beliefs of those who are figures of authority to me. And among them are two people who remain the most important figures to me, two people who made an enormous impression on me throughout my life. Those people are Tomas Garrigue Masaryk and Eduard Benes. And I want to say something to those who were also inspired by those two men when forming their own convictions and their own ideas. I want to say this: no-one in this country should be made to die for their beliefs. And no-one should go to prison for them."

Her life story was brought to big screen in 2017and on January 12, 2018 was available on Netflix, and is now available on Amazon. Below is an English trailer for this important film.

 Adam D. E. Watkins in his 2010 paper "The Show Trial of J U Dr. Milada Horáková: The Catalyst for Social Revolution in Communist Czechoslovakia, 1950" explains the importance of the show trial in gutting democratic traditions and replacing them with Stalinism:

The study deconstructs the show trial’s influence on inducing a country to foster the Communist movement against decades of democratic traditions. The research reveals the impact of the show trial of Dr. Milada Horáková in 1950 and how it was instrumental in reforming a society, marked the beginning of Stalinism, and ushered forth a perverted system of justice leading to a cultural transformation after the Communist putsch. Furthermore, the revolution truncated intellectual thought and signified the end of many social movements – including the women’s rights movement

According to D. E. Watkings Horáková was seen by the public as a symbol of  the First Republic and of democracy. Unlike others who did break under the relentless psychological and physical torture she never did. The communists tried to edit her testimony for propaganda purposes but as Radio Prague in their 2005 report on the discovery of the unedited tapes of her trial:

[S]he faced her show trial with calm and defiance, refusing to be broken. Audio recordings - intended to be used by the Communists for propaganda purposes - were mostly never aired, for the large part because for the Party's purposes, they were unusable.

Because she refused to cooperate with the Stalinists her punishment was particularly severe, even for the death penalty. In 2007 her prosecutor Ludmila Brozova-Polednova who in 1950 had helped to condemn Horakova to death, now 86, was tried as an accomplice to murder. During the trial Radio Prague reported that a note written by an anonymous eye-witness to Milada Horakova's execution quoted the young prosecutor recommending: "Don't break her neck on the noose, Suffocate the bitch - and the others too." Milada Horáková  was executed in Pankrác Prison on 27 June 1950 by a particularly torturous method: "intentionally slow strangulation, which according to historians took 15 minutes^. She was 48 years old." The urn with her ashes was never given to her family nor is it known what became of them.

 

In a letter to her 16 year old teenage daughter Milada explained why she had refused to compromise with evil. Her daughter received the letter 40 years later after the end of communist rule:

The reason was not that I loved you little; I love you just as purely and fervently as other mothers love their children. But I understood that my task here in the world was to do you good … by seeing to it that life becomes better, and that all children can live well. … Don’t be frightened and sad because I am not coming back any more. Learn, my child, to look at life early as a serious matter. Life is hard, it does not pamper anybody, and for every time it strokes you it gives you ten blows. Become accustomed to that soon, but don’t let it defeat you. Decide to fight.

Hours prior to her execution she reaffirmed her position to her family:

I go with my head held high. One also has to know how to lose. That is no disgrace. An enemy also does not lose honor if he is truthful and honorable. One falls in battle; what is life other than struggle? (Both quotes excerpts taken from here)

Ms. Brožová-Polednová, the prosecutor,  was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison in 2008 but was given a presidential pardon by Vaclav Klaus on humanitarian grounds one year and six months into her sentence and released in 2010. The former prosecutor defended her actions claiming that what she did was legal and that she was "following orders." She tried to appeal her conviction at the Strasbourg Court in 2011 and lost.

S Evou jsme u Pomníku obětem komunismu vyjádřili úctu všem obětem komunistické totality. Mezi nimi i Miladě Horákové a dalším zavražděným ve vykonstruovaném procesu přesně před 73 lety. Vážím si všech, kteří měli k totalitnímu režimu vždy jasný postoj a odvahu se mu postavit. pic.twitter.com/7X6K5Wiqrc

— Petr Pavel (@prezidentpavel) June 27, 2023

Today, June 27, the day of Milada Horakova's execution is now recognized in the Czech Republic as  “Commemoration day for the victims of the Communist regime.”

 

Biopic of the life of Milada Horáková (2017)

#FreeLuisManuelandMakyel: Amnesty International calls for release of Cuban prisoners of conscience unjustly sentenced to five and nine years in prison one year ago today

#FreeLuisManuel #FreeMaykel  

From L to R: Anamely Ramos, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara & Maykel Castillo Pérez

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez were unjustly sentenced to five and nine years in prison, respectively following a political show trial on June 24, 2022 in Cuba. Last year before their prison sentences were announced, the human rights organization, Freedom House, produced a video about these two prisoners of conscience and artists. There are over one thousand other prisoners of conscience today in Cuba's prisons.

 

Below is the statement released yesterday by Amnesty International:

Cuba: Authorities must release prisoners of conscience wrongly convicted a year ago

Photo: Anamely Ramos

June 23, 2023
 

The Cuban authorities must release artists Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez immediately and unconditionally, Amnesty International said today, one year since they were unjustly sentenced to five and nine years in prison, respectively, in a legal process that did not respect the guarantees of fair trial.

“The continued arbitrary detention of Luis Manuel and Maykel is part of a pattern of repression based on imprisoning at all cost those who disagree with the authorities. These detentions are intended to have a chilling effect on activism and to silence freedom of expression in Cuba,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

“These convictions are a sign of the cruelty that President Díaz-Canel’s government is willing to inflict on anyone who criticizes the Cuban authorities. The authorities must stop using the criminal justice system to repress the population and take the necessary measures to guarantee the independence of the judiciary and the Attorney General’s Office.”

Maykel Castillo Pérez, known as “Osorbo”, is a musician and human rights activist. He is co-writer of the song “Patria y vida”, which criticizes the Cuban government and has been adopted as a protest anthem. He was detained at his home on 18 May 2021 by security officials and has been in prison ever since.

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is a member of the artistic collective Movimiento San Isidro, which has opposed a law that censors artists. He was arrested on 11 July 2021 in Havana after announcing in a video that he would join the protests that same day, along with thousands of others who demonstrated peacefully and spontaneously in dozens of cities to demand a change in living conditions in Cuba.

During the protests, thousands of people criticized the shortage of food and medicine, the inadequate electricity system and the restrictive measures taken in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Authorities responded with a wave of widespread repression across the country. During the protests and in the following weeks, hundreds of people were arbitrarily and violently detained; many of them were charged and prosecuted for various crimes. According to the organization Justice 11J, as of 7 June 2023, 773 people detained during the 2021 protests were still deprived of their liberty.

In 2021, Amnesty International documented the details and context of the detention of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez and named both artists prisoners of conscience, as they have been deprived of their liberty solely for peacefully exercising their human rights.

Both artists were charged with the crimes of “contempt” and “public disorder”, crimes that the Cuban government commonly uses to criminalize activists and political opponents. The definitions of these crimes in the Criminal Code are ambiguous and they are used arbitrarily to justify imprisoning people for acts that should not be considered crimes, such as criticizing or insulting an authority. The new Cuban Penal Code, which came into force in December 2022, not only kept these provisions in force, but increased the minimum penalties applicable for these crimes. 

In addition, Luis Manuel was accused of “insulting national symbols” and Maykel of “defaming institutions, organizations, heroes and martyrs”. Both are crimes that unduly restrict the right to freedom of expression guaranteed in international human rights law.

Amnesty International has also criticized the Cuban courts’ lack of genuine independence, particularly in politically motivated cases where they display undeniable deference to the Attorney General’s Office and where convictions of political dissidents are virtually guaranteed.

Judicial authorities systematically conduct these trials in closed sessions, without public access. A family member of the accused may attend, but no human rights defenders, journalists or diplomatic representatives are admitted. Amnesty International has repeatedly requested access to various trials of activists or political dissidents, without receiving a response from the authorities.

Among the actions of Luis Manuel and Maykel that the court considered criminal are the posting of texts and images of political protest on social media, such as a meme referring to the authorities, photographs on the beach with the Cuban flag, participating in demonstrations and singing a protest song in the street.

In this and other cases documented by Amnesty International, the courts take into consideration inconsequential aspects of the life of the accused that should have no relevance in criminal matters. For example, the court has used as evidence their jobs or trades, relationships with other people and their participation in guild associations linked to the government. In the case of these two prisoners of conscience, the court noted that Luis Manuel Otero “met with antisocial elements with low moral standards” and that Maykel Castillo “met with antisocial elements”.

Amnesty International considers that the criminal proceedings and the sentences in which they culminated were a farce, devoid of any respect for the minimum guarantees of a fair trial. The sentences must be quashed and those affected immediately and unconditionally released. The government must also ensure that neither they, nor their families or associates, suffer repression for asking for justice in these cases.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/06/cuba-must-release-prisoners-of-conscience/

 They both appeared in the 2021 music video "Patria y Vida" that embraced life, and rejected the Castro regime's death cult. Maykel Castillo was also a co-writer, and rapper in the song itself. 

 

Fête de la Musique - World Music Day: Reflection on music in Cuba

 

June 21st is Fête de la Musique or World Music Day that encourages people of good will to honor musicians and singers. It is also a day to encourage young and inexperienced musicians to perform live in front of an audience.

This annual observance began in France in 1982. World Music Day was launched by Maurice Fleuret, director of the French Ministry of Culture’s Department of Music and Dance, and Jack Lang, then-French Minister of Culture and is now a day to support musicians around the world. 

Including those who are prisoners of conscience.

Cuban rapper Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez has been unjustly imprisoned in Cuba since May 18, 2021. Amnesty International has recognized him a prisoner of conscience. His crime is writing songs that speak truth to power in Cuba, and defending with his art human rights.

Over the past two years Maykel has twice been featured in Rolling Stone magazine.

Rolling Stone on January 6, 2023 published "Two Years After ‘Patria Y Vida,’ Cuban Rapper Maykel Osorbo Remains in Jail" an article by Julyssa Lopez in which she explained that the "2021 protest anthem he worked on lit up the country and won two Latin Grammys. His supporters don't want the world to move on."

Rolling Stone on March 25, 2022 published "From Cuba to Russia, Rappers Are Being Targeted in Record Numbers" an article by Stacey Anderson in which she reports, "Cuban rappers are now some of the most persecuted rap artists in the world, according to Freemuse, an international NGO that advocates for artists’ rights and freedom of expression." ... "In Freemuse’s new findings, Cuba topped the list of countries with documented incidents constituting violations of artistic freedom, followed by Russia." 

Back in 2018 Cuban rapper Denis Solís González posted a music video titled Sociedad Condenada (Condemned Society) on his Youtube account in which he sang about repression in Cuba and predicted his future with the lyrics "it maybe that they put me into a prison cell for the weight of my voice, but I needed the courage to say the truth."

Cuban rappers Rodolfo Ramirez, known by his rapping name as El Primario brutally beaten by regime agents and Angel Yunier Remon Arzuaga, known best as “El Critico” imprisoned and brutalized from March 2013 and was  was released on January 9, 2015. 21 days later another rapper, El Dkano, took his place in prison when he was sentenced on January 28 to a year in prison for "precriminal dangerousness."  

Punk rockers have also been targeted.

Freemuse also documented the plight of punk rocker Gorki Águila imprisoned for two years and threatened with new trials for his anti-government lyrics.

 Many other Cuban musicians and singers have suffered repression, and censorship of their music by the communist dictatorship in Cuba, and it stretches back to the early years of the dictatorship. Independent black society clubs, such as the Buena Vista Social Club, that had existed throughout the Cuban Republic (1902-1959) were ended by the Castro regime in the 1960s.

The impact of the Castro regime on music in Cuba goes beyond jailing musicians and instances of censorship, but includes systemic censorship that threatens the island's musical legacy. This process has been described as a  Cuban cultural genocide that has deprived generations of Cubans their musical heritage. 

In November 2009 My Latino Voice published "Nostalgia Corner: Why the Bolero was censored in Cuba" describing how the Castro regime's revolutionary offensive in 1968 targeted an entire of genre of music and Cuban nightlife:

"First, jukeboxes were confiscated from corner bars and nightclubs (there were as many as 20,000 jukeboxes in Havana in the 1950s). Then, in 1961, at the First Congress of Writers and Artists, music was defined as an organ of integration into the new Revolutionary society. The bolero came to be seen as a reactionary genre, in bad taste, and ultimately, banned. Cuba's world-class composers and performers, many of whom had brought the genre to its golden age, were abruptly silenced. Finally, in 1968, in the Ofensiva Revolucionaria -- the Cuban equivalent of China's Cultural Revolution -- most of the 1,200 cabarets and dance halls for which Havana was known were shut down (with only a couple of exceptions, including the notable Tropicana). Bolero lovers and performers were left with no viable venues. An entire generation was traumatized by loss of the very words and music that had defined the key moments of their lives -- coming of age, first loves, stolen kisses, secret romances."

One of the best ways to honor and support these Cuban musicians and singers erased by the communist dictatorship is to identify them and share their work.

A partial listing of Cuban musicians oficially censored is a who's who of Cuban music: Israel Cachao López, Ramón "Mongo" Santamaría,Miguelito Valdés, Mario Bauza, Olga Guillot, Celia Cruz, Paquito D’Rivera, Arturo Sandoval, Gloria Estefan, Bobby Jimenez and Bibiana Borroto. Others who remained in Cuba were and are also subject to censorship to lesser and greater degrees among them: Pedro Luis Ferrer, Porno Para Ricardo, Los Aldeanos, Carlos Varela and Frank Delgado.  

This censorship was not limited to Cubans. The Beatles and later on John Lennon's solo music were also officially banned for decades, along with most rock music was considered subversive by the Castro regime.

In 2000 John Lennon was "politically rehabilitated" on the 20th anniversary of his death by no less than Fidel Castro who unveiled a statue and by regime spokesmen who would try to claim him as an ideological fellow traveler. 

Below is a brief sampling that spans over six decades of banned musicians and singers in Cuba under the communist dictatorship.

Celia Cruz

Because Celia Cruz refused to bow to the Fidel Castro, and wanted to continue to live the life of a free artist, she was forced to leave Cuba. However, when her mom was ill, she tried to return to see her in 1962, but was barred from entering the country by Castro. When her mother died Celia was again blocked by the dictatorship from attending her funeral. Because she was not an active supporter of the regime, her music was banned in Cuba. She died in 2003 in exile.

On August 21, 2012 that Tony Pinelli, a well known musician and radio producer, distributed an e-mail in which Rolando Álvarez, the national director of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión (ICRT) confirmed that the music of the late Celia Cruz would continue to be banned.

Olga Guillot

Olga Guillot was born on October 9, 1922 in Santiago de Cuba. She died on July 12, 2010 in exile in Miami, Florida. She was a Cuban singer, known to be the queen of the bolero. In 1954, she recorded her song "Mienteme" ("Lie to Me"), which became a hit across Latin America, and earned her three consecutive awards in Cuba. 

She was recognized as Cuba's best female singer. In 1958  she toured Europe for the first time, including stops in Italy, France, Spain and Germany.  She sang alongside  Édith Piaf during a concert held in Cannes. Guillot opposed Fidel Castro's new regime, and, in 1961, she decided to leave Cuba for good and initially established herself in Venezuela, and eventually made Mexico her only permanent residence country.

Israel López Valdés "Cachao"

Israel López Valdés known just as "Cachao." Cachao was a Cuban mambo musician, bassist and composer, who has helped bring mambo music to popularity in the United States in the early 1950s. 

He was born in Havana, Cuba. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, won several Grammy Awards, and has been described as "the inventor of the mambo."

He is considered a master of descarga (Latin jam sessions). Cachao left Cuba in 1962. He spent two years in Spain, then came to New York City, where he performed with mambo bands led by Tito Rodríguez, José Fajardo and Eddie Palmieri. For decades, he worked almost entirely as a sideman.

Ramón "Mongo" Santamaría Rodríguez

He is most famous for being the composer of the jazz standard "Afro Blue," recorded by John Coltrane among others. In 1950 he moved to New York where he played with Perez Prado, Tito Puente, Cal Tjader, Fania All Stars, etc.  

 He was an integral figure in the fusion of Afro-Cuban rhythms with R&B and soul, paving the way for the boogaloo era of the late 1960s. His 1963 hit rendition of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.

With the cover of "Watermelon Man," Santamaria found himself garnering the acclaim of his former mentors. He would even visit the pop charts once again - a feat that, among his mentors, only Prado ever accomplished - in 1969 with "Cloud Nine." And he recorded prolifically through the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, before slowing down in the 1990s. 

Paquito D’Rivera

Paquito was a child prodigy. He started learning music at the age of 5 with his father Tito Rivera, a well-known classical saxophonist and conductor in Cuba. D'Rivera grew up in Cuba, playing both saxophone and clarinet and performing with the Cuban National Symphony Orchestra at a young age.When he was seven, became the youngest artist ever to endorse a musical instrument, when he signed on with the music company Selmer. 

 

By 1980, D'Rivera was dissatisfied about the constraints placed on his music in Cuba for many years, and had always longed to come to the United States. In early 1981, while on tour in Spain, he sought asylum with the American Embassy, and left his homeland, wife and child behind in search of a better life with a promise to get them out.

Upon his arrival in the United States, D'Rivera found help from many people for him and his family. His mother Maura and his sister Rosario had left Cuba in 1968 and had become US citizens. Many notables who reached out to help Paquito were Dizzy Gillespie, David Amram, Mario Bauza and Bruce Lundvall, who gave him his first solo recording date.

Oslo Freedom Forum at XV: Speaking truth to power for 15 years

"Human rights are universal and indivisible. Human freedom is also indivisible: if it is denied to anyone in the world, it is therefore denied, indirectly, to all people. This is why we cannot remain silent in the face of evil or violence; silence merely encourages them." - Vaclav Havel 

Since 2011 this blog has followed the Oslo Freedom Forum and the different human rights themes over the past decade, and  celebrated in 2012 when the Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent was inaugurated. This year marks 15 years of this important human rights forum.  

 Cuban speakers Abraham Jiménez Enoa and Rosa María Payá were present at this 15th edition Oslo Freedom Forum. It coincided with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) making public on June 12, 2023  its “Report on Admissibility and Merits No. 83/23 of Case 14,196” in which it held the Cuban government responsible for the deaths of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero.

Eight years earlier on July 22, 2015, Javier El-Hage and Roberto González of the Human Rights Foundation released a 147-page report titled The Case of Oswaldo Payá that concluded Harold and Oswaldo’s deaths on July 22, 2012 were "the result of a car crash directly caused by agents of the State, acting (1) with the intent to kill Oswaldo Payá and the passengers in the vehicle he was riding, (2) with the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm to them, or (3) with reckless or depraved indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to the life of the most prominent Cuban activist in the last twenty-five years and the passengers riding with him in the car."

It was a powerful moment today at the Oslo Freedom Forum where Rosa María Payá and Roberto González discussed the case of Oswaldo Payá, and the failure of many human rights organizations to report on this assassination. Human Rights Foundation wrote the first independent, international report of the attack that killed Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero in what is now known to have been a political assassination. The report is available online for free.

This blog entry thus far is Cuba-centric, but the Oslo Freedom Forum spans the world, and the human rights crises across the globe. 

Oswaldo Payá when awarded the Sakharov prize for Freedom of Thought on December 17, 2002 spoke prophetically when he said: “The cause of human rights is a single cause, just as the people of the world are a single people. The talk today is of globalization, but we must state that unless there is global solidarity, not only human rights but also the right to remain human will be jeopardized.”

Too often many Cubans, for justifiable reasons, are focused on the troubles in Cuba, but fail to see what is happening elsewhere.  Too many believe that we are alone, and that no one is watching our plight.

This is a mistake, and it is also not true.

Martin Luther King Jr. in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" explained why.  “In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be... This is the inter-related structure of reality.”

Just as what happened in Cuba affected what is happening in Venezuela, and Nicaragua, so is what happening in China and Russia affecting Cuba. Therefore we owe it to ourselves what is happening around the world, and to be in solidarity with human rights defenders, and friends of freedom everywhere.

Please take the time to watch the  Oslo Freedom Forum in its entirety, and raise your awareness, and take nonviolent action in solidarity with others.

 

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights holds Cuban government responsible for extrajudicial killings of pro-democracy leaders Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) today made public its “Report on Admissibility and Merits No. 83/23 of Case 14,196” in which it held the State of Cuba responsible for the deaths of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero. This has been a 10 year struggle for truth and justice for the Payá and Cepero families.

Many questions remain unanswered that demand a thorough investigation. The Washington Post editorial published today with the title “The case of Oswaldo Payá’s death in Cuba is not closed” is right. There are too many questions that still need to be answered.

“Cuba has never lifted a finger to properly investigate Payá’s death. Payá’s wife, Ofelia Acevedo Maura, has repeatedly requested the autopsy report but never got one. Many unanswered questions remain about the deaths. One of the most important — not answered by the commission — is: Who were the Cuban agents in that car that rammed Payá? Who sent them?”

Over 10 years ago on March 16, 2013 UN Watch issued an appeal for an international inquiry into the deaths of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero that was addressed to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, and Ambassadors of all Member States. On March 22, 2013 the UN Secretary General's spokesman acknowledged the appeal during a briefing.  

Less than a month later on April 15, 2013, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) received a petition filed by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights to investigate if the Cuban government was responsible for the deaths of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, on July 22, 2012.

On July 22, 2015, Javier El-Hage and Roberto González of the Human Rights Foundation released a 147-page report titled The Case of Oswaldo Payá that concluded Harold and Oswaldo’s deaths were "the result of a car crash directly caused by agents of the State, acting (1) with the intent to kill Oswaldo Payá and the passengers in the vehicle he was riding, (2) with the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm to them, or (3) with reckless or depraved indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to the life of the most prominent Cuban activist in the last twenty-five years and the passengers riding with him in the car."

On December 14, 2021 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights held an audience with family members of the two victims, and one of the surviving victims.

Ten years later after the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights delivered their petition to the IACHR, the 28 page decision was published today in Spanish and in English on their website.

Based on the findings of fact and law, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights concludes that the State of Cuba is responsible for the violation of the rights established in Articles I, IV, V, VIII, IX, X, XVIII, XXII, XXIV and XXV of the American Declaration to the detriment of Oswaldo Paýa; also is responsible for the violations of the rights established in Articles I, IV, V, XXII, XVIII and XXIV to the detriment of Harold Cepero; also is responsible for the violation of the rights established in Articles I, XXVI y XXV to the detriment of Ángel Carromero; and responsible for the violation of the rights established in articles VIII, IX and X in detriment of the relatives of Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero.

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights celebrated the decision published today by the IACHR, and Kerry Kennedy, president of the organization said in a video statement: “It has been our honor to represent the Payá and Cepero families in their pursuit of justice and accountability, and it is my sincere hope that this long-awaited verdict brings them some degree of peace and healing.”

Today @RFKHumanRights we’re celebrating an important victory that’s over TEN YEARS in the making. Thank you to the @CIDH, our international team for their determination and resolution in this case, and Oswaldo Paya’s courageous family. https://t.co/KY8ZMCikRJ pic.twitter.com/YvSs0t5ynq

— Kerry Kennedy (@KerryKennedyRFK) June 12, 2023

Today, let us also remember Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, and how they lived.

Oswaldo Payá was sixty years old when he was murdered by Castro regime agents. He was a family man and lay Catholic from Havana, an engineer, who in September 1988 founded the Christian Liberation Movement with fellow Catholics in the neighborhood of El Cerro. Over the next 23 years he carried out important campaigns to support human rights and a transition to democracy in Cuba. He spoke out against human rights violations and demand dignity for victims, even if it meant criticizing the US for the mistreatment of Al Qaeda prisoners at the Guantanamo Naval Base prison in 2002. Oswaldo was a consistent defender of human rights. He was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament in 2002.

Harold Cepero was 32 years old when he was killed along with Oswaldo. He was from the town of Chambas in Ciego de Ávila. At age 18, he began to study at the University of Camaguey, and in 2002, together with other students, Harold signed the Varela Project. It was an initiative that was legal within the existing Cuban constitution that had been authored by the Christian Liberation Movement. Despite this, Harold and other students were expelled from the university for signing it and sharing it with others. The secret police would organize a mob to "judge", scream at, insult, threaten and expel the students who had signed the Varela Project. Following his expulsion on November 13, 2002, Harold wrote a letter in which he cautioned that "Those who steal the rights of others steal from themselves. Those who remove and crush freedom are the true slaves."

 

#Tiananmen34: Remembering the Tank Men

“We persist in our three demands as always: truth, compensation, and accountability — on the 34th anniversary of the June Fourth Massacre.” - Tiananmen Mothers, May 27, 2023

Nonviolent moment: Tank Men face off in Beijing on June 5, 1989

On June 5, 1989 in Beijing, following the Chinese Communist Party's massive and bloody crackdown  on thousands of Chinese students and workers on June 3rd and 4th after six weeks of protests that began in Tiananmen Square and spread across 400 cities in China something remarkable happened in the midst of all the horror and terror. 

A man risked all to protest what had taken place. Wearing a white t-shirt, black trousers, and carrying what appeared to be a shopping bag he walked out on the north edge of Tiananmen Square, along Chang'an Avenue and faced down a column of Type-59 tanks.

Wider perspective of the Tank Men protest with the full column of tanks

Jianli Yang, a Tiananmen Massacre survivor and former Chinese political prisoner and president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China in his important 2022 article in Newsweek provides the full significance and context of what happened.

"I was near Tiananmen Square in the early morning on June 4, just as gunfire began. At one point, I was so close to the soldiers that I shouted to them in their trucks and told them not to shoot. We even sang songs that every Chinese knows, trying to touch their hearts. But when they received the order, they just opened fire. I saw many killed, including 11 students who were chased and run over by tanks on that fateful day."

Photos appeared of what remained after a tank ran over a student, and this is what Tank Man was in danger of becoming.

Human body crushed to pieces by PLA's tanks.

In the video of the confrontation, the lead tank tried to drive around him, but the lone man repeatedly ran in front of the tank to prevent its passing. The tank driver turned off his engine and the rest of the column of tanks followed suit. 

The protester climbed on top of the tank and began to talk with him. Eventually he climbed back down and the tank driver turned the engines on but the protester once again blocked the tank column.

Jianli makes a powerful observation about this dynamic between the two men in the same OpEd in Newsweek.

"The Tank Man photo was taken the next day, on June 5, the morning after, when the massacre was still ongoing. By any measure, this image is one of heroism. But how many heroes do we see?

Nearly nine years after the picture was taken, the writer Pico Iyer said: "The heroes of the tank picture are two: the unknown figure who risked his life by standing in front of the juggernaut, and the driver who rose to the moral challenge by refusing to mow down his compatriot."

Not only did the driver refuse to kill, but he undoubtedly disobeyed orders and risked—and perhaps received—punishment in order to save a countryman's life."

We do not know the identities of either Tank Man, or what happened to them, but we do know that for one moment, in the midst of a blood bath perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party, humanity and dignity triumphed over repression in this particular case.

For more information visit:

Standoff At Tiananmen
How Chinese Students Shocked the World with a Magnificent Movement for Democracy and Liberty that Ended in the Tragic Tiananmen Massacre in 1989
http://www.standoffattiananmen.com/

Virtual Museum of China '89
http://museums.cnd.org/China89/

http://www.cnd.org/June4th/

Screams for help at China's secret 'black jails' - 27 Apr 09 AlJazeera
https://youtu.be/NsN4-A1G5zc

Seeking Justice, Chinese Land in Secret Jails / NY Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/world/asia/09jails.html

A piece of red cloth by Cui Jian (music video - song sang by him in the Square)
https://youtu.be/l8UPST1ZKSw

Frontline Documentary Tankman
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/

 

Lessons from Tiananmen Square

How it started, and how it ended.

Chinese students march under a banner of late Chinese reformer Hu Yaobang

When Chinese reformer Hu Yaobang died suddenly of a heart attack on April 15, 1989, students responded angrily, with the majority of them assuming that his death was related to his forced resignation. On the day of this reformer's sudden death, small, spontaneous gatherings to mourn Hu began around Tiananmen Square's Monument to the People's Heroes.   

The death of Hu gave the motivation for students to congregate in large numbers. Posters sprouted on university campuses eulogizing him and demanding for Hu's legacy to be honored. Within a few days, the majority of posters addressed bigger political themes such as corruption, democracy, and press freedom, and the protests continued.

On April 26, 1989, the People's Daily published an editorial aimed at scaring students into submission, but it had the opposite effect, enraging them and rallying thousands more to demonstrate in Tiananmen Square.  It was a strategic error of the first order committed by the Chinese Communist regime's highest echelons.

On April 27, 1989 soldiers fail to stop students entering Tiananmen Square.

Imagine for a moment that for 51 days of demonstrations beginning on April 15, 1989 thousands of students gathered nonviolently to protest and demand reforms. Protests had taken place before in China in 1986, but had not been sustained.  This time, in part due to the regime's demonizing of the student demonstrators, the protests grew and did not dissolve. 

At the height of the student movement in China, over one million people marched in the streets of Beijing. This movement ended with the government's crackdown and the Beijing massacre of June 4th.

Below is the documentary, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, that captures the days of protest leading up to the crackdown and the massacre.

Nonviolent resisters should learn as much as they can about this important movement. Finally, the struggle for a free China continues to the present day and needs our solidarity.

It is also important to challenge the official narrative that nothing happened, or worse that it was a "vaccination." Thousands were killed, and it was not just students, but also workers in solidarity with student protesters.

Chinese Communist Defense Minister Wei Fenghe on June 2, 2019 at a regional forum defended the Tiananmen Square massacre claiming "[t]hat incident was a political turbulence and the central government took measures to stop the turbulence, which is a correct policy." 

At least 10,000 killed during the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The official newspaper, The Global Times, doubled down claiming that the mass killings and crackdown were "[a]s a vaccination for the Chinese society, the Tiananmen incident will greatly increase China's immunity against any major political turmoil in the future." The message is clear the Communist Chinese regime in China is willing to kill large numbers of Chinese to remain in power.

A 2017 declassified British diplomatic cable revealed that "at least 10,000 people were killed in the Chinese army's crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989."

Bodies at Shuili hospital mortuary. All died from bullet wounds. Credit Jian Liu

The Pro-Democracy Movement that had taken to the streets in April of 1989 was violently crushed by the Chinese communist dictatorship beginning on the evening of June 3, 1989. 

By dawn on June 4, 1989 scores of demonstrators had been shot and killed or run over and crushed by tanks of the so-called People's Liberation Army.

Between June 3 and June 5, 1989 other tank drivers ran over protester

On June 5, 1989 in Beijing, following the massive and bloody crackdown after six weeks of protests that began in Tiananmen Square and spread across 400 cities in China, a man risked all to protest what had taken place.

Wearing a white t-shirt, black trouser, and carrying what appeared to be a shopping bag he walked out on the north edge of Tiananmen Square, along Chang'an Avenue and faced down a column of Type-59 tanks.

We must also remember the courage of the late Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo who saved the lives of many young Chinese in Tiananmen Square in June of 1989 obtaining safe passage for them and persuaded these students to leave before the massacre unfolded.  This courageous and nonviolent human rights defender was jailed in 2008 and died on July 13, 2017. Below is one of his last interviews prior to being unjustly imprisoned.