"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but
there must never be a time when we fail to protest." - Elie Wiesel, Nobel Lecture 1986
Fifteen years ago today in Tehran, in the midst of the Green Revolution an agent of the Iranian Islamic regime, a member of the Basij, shot and murdered Neda Agha-Soltan. She was just 26 years old an aspiring singer. Her death was captured on video
and went viral across the internet providing an image that
brought home the reality of the violent crackdown visited on the
nonviolent Green movement.
In Iran, the contested June 2009 election sparked an unprecedented wave of
state-sponsored violence and repression. Thousands of peaceful
protesters were beaten, arrested, tortured, and killed. One of them Neda
Agha-Soltan, age 27, was shot and killed on June 20, 2009 during protests denouncing election fraud.
Neda’s death was
captured on video and in those terrible moments reflected the great
crime committed by the Iranian government against the people of Iran.
Official numbers place the number of killed at 36 during the protests
but the opposition places the dead at 72. In 2009 at least 270 people
were hanged and in 2010 at least 12 so far. 4,000 have been arrested
including journalists and reformist politicians.
Fifteen years later
those responsible for this crime have yet to be brought to justice and
the regime that carried out this brutal crime along with many others
remains in power. It is precisely for these reasons that we must
remember and continue to protest wherever and whenever possible to demand justice.
"Although Neda has been murdered and
is dead, they are still afraid of her, they come to the graveyard and
want to kill her again. She's dead but her memory is getting brighter
and brighter every day." - Hajar Rostami (Neda's mother interviewed in The Guardian on June 11, 2010 )
A mass murdering racist, who dined with Mao as millions died of hunger is not someone to celebrate.
"All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." - Matthew 26, 26:52
Some wish to celebrate Ernesto Guevara's birthday today. If he and his comrades had their way the world would have been subjected to a nuclear holocaust in October 1962, and they were bitterly disappointed that it did not happen.
Thankfully, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev reached a peaceful outcome to the Cuban Missile Crisis, but
the Castro regime protested it and was unhappy with their Soviet
allies not launching their nuclear missiles.
"Here is the electrifying example
of a people prepared to suffer nuclear immolation so that its ashes may
serve as a foundation for new societies. When an agreement was reached
by which the atomic missiles were removed, without asking our people, we
were not relieved or thankful for the truce; instead we denounced the
move with our own voice."
In the same essay, the dead
Argentine served as a mouthpiece for Fidel Castro declaring: "We
do assert, however, that we must follow the road of liberation even
though it may cost millions of nuclear war victims." Castro and Che were so outraged that the regime reached out to Nazis to purchase arms and train the regime's security services.
Castro and Che were not alone in their criticism. Mao Zedong also criticized Khrushchev for backing down in the 1962 Cuban
Missile Crisis, and this was the last straw in a series of slights
between the two communist powers that set the stage for the Sino-Soviet split.
However Castro eventually backed off and returned to the Soviet camp whereas Che Guevara embraced the Maoists.
This should not have been a surprise.
Mao Zedong had already been in power in China for a decade when the Castro regime took power in Cuba in 1959. In September 1960 Havana diplomatically recognized the Peoples Republic of China. Between 1960 and 1964 the two communist dictatorships would collaborate closely together.
Mao's regime in 1958 embarked on the Great Leap Forward, a campaign to reorganize the Chinese populace to improve its agricultural and industrial production along communist ideological lines. The campaign was a disaster that led to mass famine and a death toll of at least 45 million.
In the midst of the famine Ernesto "Che" Guevara with a Cuban delegation visited Mainland China and met with
Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and other high ranking Chinese officials in
1960 to discuss conditions in Cuba and in Latin America, and the
prospects for communist revolution in the Western Hemisphere. As
millions starved in China the two revolutionaries dined through several
courses of traditional Chinese food.
Che and Mao dine in 1960 while millions starved in China.
Finally, on the question of race and sexuality the Argentine
revolutionary had retrograde views that the woke today somehow continue
to ignore or excuse.
Unlike Mohandas Gandhi, who truly evolved in his views on race as a young man but is still attacked for them, Che Guevara seems to get a pass despite not showing an equivalent evolution. Politifact on April 17, 2013 quoted from The Motorcycle Diaries, a book based on diaries the Argentine kept while traveling through Latin America in the early 1950s.
"The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have
maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with
bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the
Portuguese. And the two ancient races have now begun a hard life
together, fraught with bickering and squabbles. Discrimination and
poverty unite them in the daily fight for survival but their different
ways of approaching life separate them completely: The black is indolent
and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the
European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as
far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even
independently of his own individual aspirations."
"The Establishment" writing in the publication AfroPunk
cited the above quote but dismissed it as something Guevara wrote when
"he was around 24 years old." He then goes on to say that he " went so
far as to fight with an all black army," but failed to cite his critical
quotes against the Africans he fought alongside.
Politifact in 2013 quoted this comment from Guevara’s writing on his time fighting with black revolutionaries in the Congo that included this line: "Given the prevailing lack of discipline, it
would have been impossible to use Congolese machine-gunners to defend
the base from air attack: they did not know how to handle their weapons
and did not want to learn."
It wasn't the Congolese, but Che's
failure to train them that led to defeat. The other side that defeated
Guevara's forces were also Congolese, but he tried to pass off his own
incompetence with a racist excuse.
However in another area Mr. Guevara has even more to answer for. In the same diary he refers to homosexuality in a negative context:
"The
episode upset us a little because the poor man, apart from being
homosexual and a first-rate bore, had been very nice to us, giving us 10
soles each, bringing our total to 479 for me and 163 1/2 to Alberto."
Fidel Castro in a March 13, 1963 speech was clear in his distaste for the "effeminate" were he openly attacked “long-haired
layabouts, the children of bourgeois families,” roaming the streets
wearing “trousers that are too tight,” carrying guitars to look like
Elvis Presley, who took “their licentious behavior to the extreme” of
organizing “effeminate shows” in public places. The Cuban dictator, and Guevara's comrade, warned:
“They should not confuse the Revolution’s serenity and tranquility with
weaknesses in the Revolution. Our society cannot accept these
degenerates.” Two years later in 1965, Fidel Castro spoke explicitly about the Cuban Revolution's views on homosexuals:
“We
would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the
conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider
him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of
that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant
communist should be.”
In 1964 the Cuban revolutionaries began rounding up Gays
and sending them to Military Units to Aid Production or UMAPs (Unidades
Militares de Ayuda a la Producción). These forced labor camps were for
those suspected of or found guilty of "improper conduct." Persons with
effeminate mannerisms: what the Cuban government called "extravagant
behavior" were taken to these camps.
Ernesto
"Che" Guevara was in the revolutionary leadership in Castro's Cuba
throughout this process and did not leave Cuba until 1965.
Castro put him in charge of La Cabaña prison and in the first half of 1959 presided over the executions of hundreds of Cubans, reported Andres Vargas Llosa in 2005.
Che Guevara addressing the United Nations on
December 11, 1964 did not mince words: "We must say here something that
is a well-known truth and that we have always asserted before the whole
world: executions? Yes, we have executed people; we are executing
people and shall continue to execute people as long as it is necessary.
Guevara bragged of the executions being carried out in Cuba.
Between
1959 and 1964 the numbers of Cubans executed was in the thousands. This
is nothing to celebrate. However the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) disagrees with this
assessment and celebrated the above speech with an excerpt that ends
with "Fatherland or Death!" This is why I protested the U.S. rejoining UNESCO in 2003, and celebrated leaving it again in 2017.
On this day in 1928 the mass murderer Che Guevara was born. Shamefully, institutions like @UNESCO, not only pay homage to this brutal, racist and homophobic mass executioner. They also spread his toxic and murderous ideas. #ChesDeadpic.twitter.com/flgs1SOpqh
"Through non-violence, courage displaces fear; love transforms hate.
Acceptance dissipates prejudice; hope ends despair. Peace dominates war; faith
reconciles doubt. Mutual regard cancels enmity. Justice for all overthrows
injustice. The redemptive community supersedes systems of gross social
immorality.”
~ James Lawson, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
James Lawson in Nashville, Tennessee. 2005 Photo by Joon Powell
Reverend James Morris Lawson Jr. has passed, but his nonviolent legacy lives on, and will live on for a long time to come. Paul Valentine in The Washington Post described him as the "architect of civil rights nonviolence."
Reverend James Lawson, a contemporary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s who trained the Nashville Student movement
in nonviolent direct action was still engaged in forming activists well into his 90s and had a life time of experience to share.
“We would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the
conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider
him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of
that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant
communist should be.” - Fidel Castro, 1965
Film poster for the 1984 film Improper Conduct
Forty years ago on March 21, 1984 in France the film "Mauvaise Conduite" was released. The film was made by Néstor Almendros (1930-1992) and Orlando Jiménez Leal.
The title of the film in English is Improper Conduct and it examines
the "moral purges" of the Cuban Revolution that began in 1964 with the creation of Military
Units to Aid Production or UMAPs (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la
Producción).
These forced labor camps were for those suspected of or
found guilty of "improper conduct." Persons with effeminate mannerisms:
what the Cuban government called "extravagant behavior" were taken to these camps.
This systematic repression of homosexuals had an ideological component
that first impacted policies in Communist China and the Soviet Union.
In
the USSR homosexuality was criminalized on March 7, 1934, "punishable by prison and hard labor, and Stalinist anti-gay policies persisted throughout the 1960s and 1970s." The Soviet anti-homosexual laws were on the books until 1993, two years after its dissolution.
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia which claimed to be "the first Marxist–Leninist general-purpose encyclopedia" offered the following information on homosexuality in 1930.
"Soviet legislation does not recognize so-called crimes against morality.
Our laws proceed from the principle of protection of society and
therefore countenance punishment only in those instances when juveniles
and minors are the objects of homosexual interest ... while recognizing
the incorrectness of homosexual development ... our society combines
prophylactic and other therapeutic measures with all the necessary
conditions for making the conflicts that afflict homosexuals as painless
as possible and for resolving their typical estrangement from society
within the collective."
"In March 1934, a new article criminalizing homosexuality was introduced
to the 1926 Criminal Code of the RSFSR. Two months later, the USSR’s
most celebrated writer at the time, Maxim Gorky, ardently supported the
innovation with a slogan published in Izvestia newspaper:
“Destroy homosexuality, and fascism will disappear!” Article 121 of the
1960 Criminal Code of the RSFSR also upheld criminal liability for
homosexuality, and remained in effect until 1993."
Amy Villarejo in her book, Lesbian Rule: Cultural Criticism and the Value of Desire in the notes section on page 222 provided the following excerpt on how Beijing solved their "homosexual problem."
"In Improper Conduct, the writer Guillermo Cabrera
Infante tells an apocryphal story linking post-revolution Cuba to
Shanghai: [Cuban leaders] were all obsessed with homosexuality when
visiting Communist bloc countries. Ramiro Valdes, Minister of the
Interior, went to China and asked to meet the Mayor of Shanghai. Why did
Valdes want to meet him? Shanghai had always had a large homosexual
population, dating back to Imperial China. It had very few morals, it
was the capital of Westernized China, as opposed to Peking, the
cloistered capital. So he met the Mayor of Shanghai and asked how they
had solved their homosexual problem. The mayor replied through an
interpreter, 'There are no homosexuals here.' 'You no longer have a
homosexual problem here?' 'No, we took advantage of a traditional
holiday where homosexuals gathered in a park in Shanghai on the banks of
a river. Party officials went there carrying clubs to eliminate the
problem once and for all.' They clubbed them and threw them in the
water. The bodies were carried downstream as a grim warning! It was the
end of homosexuality in Shanghai."
On March 13, 1963 Fidel Castro gave a speech were he openly attacked “long-haired
layabouts, the children of bourgeois families,” roaming the streets
wearing “trousers that are too tight,” carrying guitars to look like
Elvis Presley, who took “their licentious behavior to the extreme” of organizing “effeminate shows” in public places. The Cuban dictator warned: “They should not
confuse the Revolution’s serenity and tranquility with weaknesses in
the Revolution. Our society cannot accept these degeneracies.”
Fidel Castro went further in 1965 declaring: “We would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the
conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider
him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of
that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant
communist should be.
In 1964 the Castro regime began rounding up Gays and sending them to Military Units to Aid
Production or UMAPs (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción). These
forced labor camps were for those suspected of or found guilty of
"improper conduct." Persons with "effeminate mannerisms",
what the Cuban government called "extravagant behavior" were taken to
these camps.
This history should be taken into
account when considering other policies that negatively impacted members of the LGBTQI community in Cuba.
For example the quarantine of HIV positive Cubans
from 1986 to 1997 through mandatory testing, and isolation. In the early days of the AIDS epidemic it was
associated with the Gay community.
Cuban biologist, environmental activist, and a Gay man, Dr. Ariel
Ruiz Urquiola, documented his case to the International Society for
Human Rights (ISHR)
in Frankfurt, Germany in 2018, where he denounced how agents of the Cuban government purposefully infected him with HIV.
After a staged assault of two policemen Ariel Ruiz Urquiola was
arrested on May 3rd, 2018 and sentenced to prison for twelve months by a
kangaroo tribunal. He was remanded in jail on May 8th, 2018 and
protested from June 16th to July 2nd with a successful hunger strike
which led to an early release from prison on July 3rd, 2018. On June
16th, 2019 he got informed that he is HIV positive. He eliminates a
natural infection strictly. He believes that he had been infected with
the HI virus on purpose in prison.
According to a statement of Dr. Ruiz Urquiola the doctor’s reports
show that he got infected during his imprisonment. The lab results also
confirm an infection on purpose. That’s how the short time between
hospitalization and illness with a high inoculum (infective material or
one as an antigen acting part of a germ), e.g. from a lab virus, can be
explained.
Mariela Castro, General Raul Castro's daughter, led efforts to Pinkwash the Castro dictatorship. Saul Landau, a Castro apologist who passed away in 2013, worked on a project that highlighted her efforts, Mariela Castro's March: Cuba's LGBT Revolution. In light of what happened in 2019, the documentary screened by HBO in 2016 has aged badly. Bottom line what Mariela Castro, the dictator's daughter says goes, but if she decides there will not be a Gay Pride march there will not be one. At least not one without government repression.
Gay rights activists condemned the cancellation and then organized their own demonstration. More than 100 demonstrators took to the streets of Havana. After setting out on
Havana's Paseo del Prado, the
marchers came up against a large number of police and state security
forces. Beatings, detentions and several arrests ensued.
This assault by Cuban government authorities against Cuba's LGBTQI community took place on the 35th anniversary of the release of Improper Conduct,
the film that revealed how Gays and Lesbians are treated in Cuba, and
documents what happened during the first 30 years of the Castro regime.
In a 2019 interview published in the Spanish publication, Faro y VigoJiménez Leal explained how a restored version for a 35th anniversary screening at that time came to be:
It was restructured, the titles were changed, the colors were fixed;It is a shorter version now because they were edited out about twenty minutes.We
left it at an hour and a half but it is still a feature film, "said
Jiménez Leal in an interview with Efe. "A filmmaker friend, Eliecer
Jiménez, and I discovered a master that was here in my office in good
condition;We
saw that (the discovery) coincided with the 35th anniversary and
decided to make a restored version of the film," details the Cuban
filmmaker of 77 years, of which, he said, he has spent 57 exiled."
Orlando Jiménez Leal explained the continuing importance of this documentary, "It's a film against intolerance. Intolerance will always exist, and therefore, Improper Conduct will always be relevant."
This documentary came into being out of an event that first inspired the filmmakers to make a fictional comedy. Ten
dancers of the National Ballet of Cuba defected in 1966 during a tour stop in
Paris. The filmmakers started to interview the ballet dancers, and the
people who had helped them to develop the script. The interviews were so
powerful that they decided to make this documentary instead.
Below is the original full version of the documentary. There is a better viewing quality version for the 35th anniversary out there.
"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." - Pico Iyer
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.
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/
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 27, 1989 soldiers try to stop students entering Tiananmen Square.
On April 26, 1989, the People's Dailypublished 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.
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 4.
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.
At least 10,000 killed during the Tiananmen Square massacre.
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."
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.
Bodies at Shuili hospital mortuary. All died from bullet wounds. Credit Jian Liu
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."
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.
Between June 3 and June 5, 1989 other tank drivers ran over protester
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.
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.
A 2017 declassified British diplomatic cable revealed that
"at least 10,000 people were killed. The Chinese Communist regime still defends committing this massacre, and is punishing those who seek to remember and observe the date.
To commemorate the 35th anniversary of June 4th, Yi Bao has specially translated five memoir articles by Mr. Zhou Duo, one of the four gentlemen of Tiananmen Square, into English for the convenience of English readers. Please feel free to share! Part 1https://t.co/2CjDKM99UIpic.twitter.com/3zrDLROg0y
George Orwell wrote in "As I Please" in the Tribune on February 4, 1944 that "[t]he
really frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits
'atrocities' but that it attacks the concept of objective truth; it
claims to control the past as well as the future."
On this day in 1989, the People’s Liberation Army opened fire on civilian protesters in Tiananmen Square. Revisit @JiayangFan’s remembrance of the event, which occurred when she was a a young child in Chongqing, China. https://t.co/fu2itksbZvpic.twitter.com/UyZIBdFwNw
We are witnessing this attempt to silence the victims, erase
and rewrite the history of the 1989 Tiananmen protests and the
crackdown and massacre that began on June 3, 1989 through social media
and in the real world. People are being arrested for engaging in silent,
nonviolent protests in remembrance of students and workers murdered by
the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) on orders of the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP). Making this known is the most effective method to combat
it.
June 2: a bunch of 🇨🇳 CCP tankies — Chinese Americans / 🇨🇳 nationals — ferociously yelling “long live the communist party!” and “bog off and go back to Taiwan!” offensively harassed people commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre in Flushing, NYC. pic.twitter.com/cHspFOMpxR
The Czech writer Milan Kundera wrote that "[t]he struggle of man against
power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." This is the
challenge presented by the Chinese Communist Party in its effort to
erase the mass protests, months long occupation and crackdown in
Tiananmen Square, and across China. It is also why we must remember and
honor courageous Chinese dissidents such as Liu Xiaobo martyred for his commitment to nonviolence and democracy.
Hong Kong Christian newspaper runs blank front page ahead of Tiananmen crackdown anniversary
'There
are those who think that we should be full of rancor and a thirst for
vengeance but I don't want revenge. I feel sorry for the people who
assassinated my family. I can never be compensated for my loss. I will
never be happy again with my family surrounding me. There will always be
a tinge of sadness but I do want there to be a trial so that this
situation can serve as a lesson and that these people or others like
them in other parts of the world, don't do this kind of thing again. Not
in Cuba. Not anywhere.''
Jorge A. Garcia who had 14 members of his family massacred by agents of the Cuban dictatorship on July 13, 1994 rejected revenge but demanded justice, truth, and memory has reportedly died. Cuban activist Ramon Saul Sanchez shared a statement from his son Jorge Félix García.
"My father Jorge García Más is resting after a painful illness that in recent months stole the peace of all those around him who cared for him. He accompanied me for 60 years in which at his side I learned everything I know and I am what I have become with his help. Today, June 2, 2024, the life of a human being who, full of pain, filled the lives of so many with love, ends. What does not go away is the tireless work of this man in favor of justice, which will remain there forever, as an example of personal sacrifice and at the same time as a perpetual tribute to those who he dedicated the last 30 years of his existence his battle for the victims of the sinking of the "13 de Marzo" Tugboat. The legacy of a man like my father undoubtedly creates commitment, and sets an example to follow for anyone that injustice has taken away what is just. Let us give thanks for what we experienced at his side, for what we learned along the way, for the hug, the helping hand. Jorge García Más (Jomás) is staying with us today, not leaving us."
First time I heard Jorge A. Garcia speak out about the July 13, 1994 massacre was on a television program on the eve of the arrival of Pope John Paul II to Cuba.
In the January 1998 Nightline interview
Jorge described how he
learned the news. “When I asked my daughter, ‘What about Juan Mario?’
‘Papa,
he's lost.’ ‘And Joel?’ ‘Papa, he's lost.’ ‘And Ernesto?’ ‘Papa, he's
lost.’
And then we knew that other members of the family were all lost, 14 in
all.”
His daughter, Maria Victoria Garcia, had survived but she lost her
brother, Joel García Suárez age 24; her husband, Ernesto Alfonso
Loureiro age 25; and her son, Juan Mario Gutiérrez García age 10.
Jorge García was detained and interrogated on several
occasions. His longest detention was for 15 days. His daughter, María Victoria
García, was one of three of his family who survived the massacre but was still in danger: "They tried on several
occasions to kill my daughter, because she was the first to speak out and
contradict the regime’s official narrative.”
Father and daughter had spoken on camera to Nightline from
Havana, Cuba about the July 13, 1994 attack on the “13 de Marzo” tugboat. A year later in 1999 they had to go into exile as political refugees fearing for their lives.
In 2009, Jorge Garcia, agreed to
address Florida International University students at a panel organized by the
Free Cuba Foundation on the fifteenth anniversary of the July 13, 1994 “13 de
Marzo” tugboat massacre. We meet beforehand, and I sat down with him and interviewed him in a series of short videos about the events surrounding this crime.
María Victoria
García passed away in early January 2024.
Jorge had been suffering from a serious illness for some time.
I learned he was desperately ill, and paid him a visit in hospice care on May 12, 2024. We spoke, and he remembered when we swapped t-shirts 15 years earlier at Florida International University. At the time I gave him my Free Cuba t-shirt and he in turn gave me a t-shirt that read "We will never forget" with the name Joel Garcia repeated in the back ground, and image of his murdered son Joel Garcia in the foreground.
Next month on July 13th, G-d-willing, I will be remembering the victims, demanding justice, and wearing the shirt given to me by Jorge A. Garcia, a truth teller who risked all to bear witness, and following his example.
Yesterday marked two years since the start of political show trials against Maykel Castillo Pérez and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, two nonviolent and internationally recognized artivists, which resulted in lengthy and unjust prison sentences for both.
Maykel Castillo and Luis Manuel in show trial footage.
Maykel
Castillo Pérez, musician, and
two-time Grammy winner, was imprisoned on May 18, 2021. He was put on "trial" after more than a year in prison, and today, despite
being innocent, has been locked up for over three years.
— Center for a Free Cuba (@cubacenter) June 1, 2024
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez
were unjustly sentenced to five and nine years in
prison, respectively on June 24, 2022. Both had remained jailed following their arrests on the dates mentioned above.
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