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.