"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)
In remembrance of Génesis, Geraldine, Anthony, Robert, Bassil, and the many others.
Civil society and the democratic opposition face a great challenge: Ensure all votes of Venezuelans are counted, and the results respected. This election in Venezuela is being held under a dictator who has said he will not hand over power, and is doing all he can to steal it.
The Venezuelan dictatorship has been trained by the worse thugs in Havana, Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing. They are experts in the use of violence and terror to hang on to power.
The best chance to defeat them is neither through appeasement or violence, but through strategic nonviolent resistance. I have been witnessing it over the past weeks, and hope to see it continued today, and in the days to come, when Maduro attempts to hang on to power.
My hope is informed by the late Czech dissident Vaclav Havel's definition of the word that is not equated with success but rather the
certainty that what one is doing is both good and coherent. In 1990 in
the book, Disturbing the Peace, Havel explained how he viewed hope.
“Hope, in
this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are
going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously
headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something
because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The
more unpromising the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper
that hope is. Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the
conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that
something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
My prayers, hope and solidarity with Venezuelans in the pro-democracy movement in their ongoing struggle for restoring democracy in Venezuela.
Eighty-five Argentinians, many but not all Jewish, were killed by
Hezbollah on July 18, 1994, in an act of international terrorism when the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires was blown up.
A siren sounded at the precise time a Hezbollah suicide bomber, Ibrahim Berro, drove a car laden with explosives in front of the AMIA, and pressed the detonator setting off the explosion on July 18, 1994 at 9:53am (1253 GMT) and reduced the seven-story Jewish-Argentine Mutual Association (AMIA) community center in Buenos Aires to rubble reported the BBC.
85 people were murdered
ranging in age from five years old to 67 years old and more than 300
hundred
wounded. 30 years later those responsible for this act of terrorism
remain at large.
The American Jewish Committee called it “the deadliest antisemitic attack outside Israel since the Holocaust.”
Leticia Martinez, head of
communications for Miguel Diaz-Canel posted a message celebrating a “Free Palestine” in the aftermath of the October 7th terrorist attacks on her social media.
The Cuban government, and their agents of influence did not limit themselves to cyberspace.
On October 8, 2023, one day after Hamas terrorist massacre in southern Israel, militant leftists organized a protest in Times Square
to celebrate the killings as an act of resistance and waved signs with
anti-Semitic slogans and images. The Center for a Free Cuba took notice of this protest at the time, and how official Cuban media was promoting it. On October 11, 2023, The People’s Forum (TPF) issued a statement defending their October 8th rally in Times Square, doubling down on their support for the terrorist attack.
Manolo de los Santos w/ Diaz-Canel Sept 2023. Santos on 10/8/23 celebrates Hamas terror
The
group’s co-executive director, Manolo De Los Santos, is a longtime
researcher at the Marxist Tricontinental: Institute for Social
Research and was “based out of Cuba for many years,” where he “worked toward building
international networks of people’s movements and organizations,”
according to his biography at the anti-Israel group Black Alliance for
Peace. In July 2022, Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, received De
los Santos and executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for
Social Research, Vijay Prashad with the aim of “elaborating a new
consensus, based on theory and according to the different experiences of
social movements and countries, on the path of socialism.”
On January 24, 2024 Manolo De Los Santos spoke the quiet part out loud
at The People’s Forum in New York City: “When we finally deal that
final blow to destroy Israel. When the state of Israel is finally
destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most
important blow we can give to destroying capitalism.”
Today, protesters carrying Hezbollah, and Hamas flags sprayed graffiti, burned American flags, and beat up police officers in Washington DC. One protester carried a poster with mushroom cloud over an Israeli flag that said "Allah is gathering all the Zionists for a final solution."
These Islamists and communists continue to spread a number of lies against the Jewish people. One of the most outrageous is to deny that Israelis are the indigenous people to the land they inhabit.
The Jewish people are indigenous
to the land they live on today, and also lands inhabited by Palestinians,
such as Gaza and the West Bank. Three thousand years ago the state of
Israel was dominated by a Jewish community, until they were conquered
by the Roman Empire in 63 BC. Over the next two thousand years, empires would rule over Israel, to be replaced by another until the British Empire in the 20th century when the Jewish people reclaimed their homeland, and were recognized by the United Nations in 1948.
Numbers do not lie, but the Communists and their Islamic allies do.
Today I am in Jerusalem and not eating or drinking for the 17th of Tammuz, a fast day commemorating the Roman breach of the walls in the siege of 70 CE before they destroyed the Jewish Temple. After 2,000 years, Jerusalem is Jewish again and Israel lives. https://t.co/dtmsYW5Woapic.twitter.com/KEYOHZa6zN
The Palestinian population under 75 years of Israeli
“occupation” has grown five fold, and the total world population has
grown. This is the antithesis of what happened to Jewish people during
the Nazi regime both in Europe, and worldwide.
In Washington, D.C. protesters burn the American flag and say “Hamas is coming.”
In Iran, Iranians refuse to desecrate the American flag and across the world they hold the true Iranian flag alongside the Israeli flag in the aftermath of October 7th.
The Cuban dictatorship imprisons, forcibly exiles, or kills those who
nonviolently advocate for human rights reforms within the existing constitutional
framework. The Castro dynasty has also engaged in and sponsored terrorism for 65 years, but before spreading terror around the world, the Castros took power in Cuba through a campaign of terrorism that included bombings, killings, kidnappings, and hijackings in the 1950s.
On July 22, 2012, Havana's secret police murdered Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante, two heroes for democracy in the Americas. The Cuban dictatorship, and its agents of influence have continued to attempt to cover up this crime.
Oswaldo Payá was sixty years old when he was assassinated by Castro regime agents on this day 12 years ago.
Oswaldo 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 El Cerro neighborhood, and over
the next 23 years would carry out important campaigns to support human
rights and a democratic transition in Cuba.
He
would speak out against human rights breaches and demand victims'
dignity, even if it meant denouncing the United States for mistreating
Al Qaeda prisoners at the Guantanamo Naval Base prison in 2002.
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 warning that "those who steal the rights of others steal
from themselves. Those who remove and crush freedom are the true
slaves."
Expelled from university for signing the Varela Project with fellow students. He enrolled in a seminary and began studying for the priesthood before leaving to join the Christian Liberation Movement, embracing a new vocation as a human rights defender.
Why did the Cuban dictatorship seek revenge on Oswaldo and Harold? The Varela Project proved to the world that thousands of Cubans were dissatisfied with the status quo and wanted human rights and multiparty democracy restored in Cuba. This contradicted the official narrative.
On
May 10, 2002, Oswaldo, along with Regis Iglesias and Tony Diaz Sanchez
of the Christian Liberation Movement, turned in 11,020 Varela Project petitions, and news of the petition drive was reported worldwide.
Regis
Iglesias and Tony Diaz Sanchez were sentenced to long prison sentences
in March 2003 following show trials, along with 73 other Cuban
dissidents. Many of them had taken part in the Varela Project and,
nearly eight years later, were forced into exile as an alternative to
completing their prison sentences.
In spite of the crackdown, Oswaldo would turn in another 14,384 petition signatures with Freddy Martini on October 5, 2003.
He would spend the next eight years campaigning for the release of his
imprisoned compatriots and continuing campaigns to achieve a democratic
transition in Cuba.
Ten
years, two months and twelve days after turning in the first Varela
Project petitions while traveling with two international visitors in
Eastern Cuba on a Sunday afternoon on July 22, 2012, Oswaldo and Harold were killed. Cuban state security bumped into the car they were driving,
and when the vehicles stopped, with everyone still alive in the car,
they approached the driver, striking him in the temple with the butt of a
pistol. Within hours, the lifeless bodies of both men would appear.
Cuba currently has around 1,100 political prisoners, with many more imprisoned under the Orwellian statute known as "precrime." The dictatorship will lock you up simply because you have the potential to become a threat in the future.
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."
In the midst of the darkness, it is critical to recall the beams of light that illuminate the path to freedom and the full enjoyment of human rights in Cuba and around the world.
Oswaldo Payá, Harold Cepero, and others, both living and dead, laid the
framework for the nonviolent nature of the large nationwide protests
that began on July 11, 2021, which established a new before and after in
Cuban history.
AMIA cultural center bombed in Buenos Aires in 1994
In the span of a week in July 1994, two acts of terrorism killed over 122 Latin Americans. Thirty-seven Cubans were murdered by by Cuban government agents on July 13, 1994, in what amounted to an act of state terrorism, and eighty-five Argentinians, many but not all Jewish, were killed by Hezbollah five days later, on July 18, 1994, in an act of international terrorism.
Exactly 30 years ago, on July 18, 1994, terrorists bombed the @InfoAMIA building in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people.
WJC is here in Argentina to commemorate with the Jewish community.
30 years later, we will not forget the AMIA victims and continue to demand justice. pic.twitter.com/8rC3twKSNo
— World Jewish Congress (@WorldJewishCong) July 18, 2024
Much has been written about the victims of the "13 de Marzo" massacre in the last week, but today, marking thirty years since the bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires, the reality that justice has yet to be served demands that we speak up.
Havana has permitted the terrorist organization Hezbollah to establish "an operational base in Cuba, designed to support terrorist attacks throughout Latin America," according to emails hacked from then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. The Cuban dictatorship has a decades long relationship with this terrorist movement, and has a serious problem with Jews.
It's the 30th anniversary of Hezbollah's terror attack against Argentina's Jewish community.
On July 18 1994, a suicide bomber in a truck struck AMIA, a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, k*lling 85 people & injuring 300+
What happened thirty years ago today in Buenos Aires? A siren sounded at the precise time the bomb exploded on July 18, 1994 at 9:53am (1253 GMT) and reduced the seven-story Jewish-Argentine Mutual Association (AMIA) community centre in Buenos Aires to rubble reported the BBC.
85 people were murdered
ranging in age from five years old to 67 years old and more than 300
hundred
wounded. 30 years later those responsible for this act of terrorism
remain at large. A movement to pay homage to the victims of this crime
continues to remember and demand justice three decades later.
Silvana Alguea de Rodríguez, Jorge Antúnez, Moisés Gabriel Arazi,
Carlos Avendaño Bobadilla, Yanina Averbuch, Naum Band, Sebastián
Barreiros, David Barriga, Hugo Norberto Basiglio, Rebeca Violeta Behar
de Jurín, Dora Belgorosky, Favio Enrique Bermúdez, Romina Ambar Luján
Boland, Emiliano Gastón Brikman, Gabriel Buttini, Viviana Adela Casabé,
Paola Sara Czyzewski, Jacobo Chemauel, Cristian Adrián Degtiar, Diego De
Pirro, Ramón Nolberto Díaz, Norberto Ariel Dubin, Faiwel Dyjament,
Mónica Feldman de Goldfeder, Alberto Fernández, Martín Figueroa, Ingrid
Finkelchtein, Leonor Gutman de Finkelchtein, Fabián Marcelo Furman,
Guillermo Benigno Galarraga, Erwin García Tenorio, José Enrique Ginsberg
(Kuky), Cynthia Verónica Goldenberg, Andrea Judith Guterman, Silvia
Leonor Hersalis, Carlos Hilú, Emilia Jakubiec de Lewczuk, María Luisa
Jaworski, Analía Verónica Josch, Carla Andrea Josch, Elena Sofía
Kastika, Esther Klin, León Gregorio Knorpel, Berta Kozuk de Losz, Luis
Fernando Kupchik, Agustín Diego Lew, Jesús María Lourdes, Andrés Gustavo
Malamud, Gregorio Melman, Ileana Mercovich, Naón Bernardo Mirochnik
(Buby), Mónica Nudel, Elías Alberto Palti, Germán Parsons, Rosa
Perelmuter, Fernando Roberto Pérez, Abraham Jaime Plaksin, Silvia Inés
Portnoy, Olegario Ramírez, Noemí Graciela Reisfeld, Félix Roberto
Roisman, Marisa Raquel Said, Ricardo Said, Rimar Salazar Mendoza, Fabián
Schalit, Pablo Schalit, Mauricio Schiber, Néstor Américo Serena, Mirta
Strier, Liliana Edith Szwimer, Naum Javier Tenenbaum, Juan Carlos
Terranova, Emilia Graciela Berelejis de Toer, Mariela Toer, Marta
Treibman, Angel Claudio Ubfal, Eugenio Vela Ramos, Juan Vela Ramos,
Gustavo Daniel Velázquez, Isabel Victoria Núñez de Velázquez, Danilo
Villaverde, Julia Susana Wolinski de Kreiman, Rita Worona, Adehemar
Zárate Loayza.
Over the past thirty years much has been written about this crime and today the 30th anniversary interviews, articles and events were carried out to recall that terrible day on July 18, 1994 and the need for truth and justice. Below is a playlist a compilation of news footage related to the July 18, 1994 AMIA terror attacks.
Please share this blog entry with others and join in remembering and demanding truth and justice for these victims of terrorism.
On the 7th anniversary of Nodel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo’s death in prison, we are honored to announce that the second memorial bust sculpture of Liu Xiaobo will be erected at the University of Galway in Ireland in September this year, jointly sponsored by @hrichina Human Rights… https://t.co/TCGH9p3cr3pic.twitter.com/0SmLr887WG
Liu Xiaobo
was one of the authors of Charter 08 and signed it along with more than
three hundred Chinese citizens. The Charter is a manifesto that was
released on December 10, 2008, the 60th anniversary of the adoption of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It calls for more freedom of
expression, human rights, more democratic elections, the privatization
of state enterprises and economic liberalization and would collect over
10,000 signatures.
Charter 08 is reminiscent of the Varela Project that was initially
signed by 11,020 Cubans in May of 2002 calling on the Cuban government
to respect international human rights norms and engage in the same kind
of reforms. Both were inspired by Vaclav Havel and Charter 77. Lamentably, the author of the Varela Project, Oswaldo
Payá Sardiñas, founding leader of the Christian Liberation Movement and
a youth leader of the same movement, Harold Cepero Escalante were both
extrajudicially executed twelve years ago on July 22, 2012 in a crash engineered by the Cuban dictatorship's agents.
The demand for justice remains unfulfilled in all these cases, but we must not despair.
We bear witness embracing truth and memory in defiance of the attempt to whitewash and forget. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel explained the importance of doing this in his 1986 Nobel Lecture on why it is important to remember:
"To
forget the victims means to kill them a second time. So I couldn't
prevent the first death. I surely must be capable of saving them from a
second death." ... "There may be times when we are powerless to prevent
injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."
In 2017, I was present at a candlelight vigil
in Washington, DC on July 17th organized by the Victims of
Communism Memorial Foundation to pay my respects for Liu Xiaobo and
demonstrate my solidarity with Chinese human rights defenders.
On Wednesday, July 10, 2024 I was in front of the Cuban embassy in a
vigil in solidarity with Cubans jailed for taking to
the streets in over 50 towns and cities across Cuba, in remembrance of Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, and Christian Barrera Díaz during the 11J protests, for the37
victims of the July 13, 1994 "13 de
Marzo" tugboat massacre and in remembrance of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and
Harold Cepero Escalante both killed by the secret police on July 22,
2012. Together with a dozen others we said prayers for these victims of
communism, their loved ones, and for justice.
We continue to remember, and demand justice.
Today, July 13 at 6:00pm at the Main Fountain at @FIU we held a 13 minute silent vigil to mark the day 30 years ago when agents of the Cuban dictatorship sank the "13 de Marzo" tugboat killing 37 men, women and children. #Truth#Memory#Cubapic.twitter.com/5K3mFX3zgU
— Human Rights Violations in Cuba (@freecubafndtn) July 14, 2024
July 11, 2022 Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, Age: 36 Christian Barrera Díaz, Age: 24
July 13, 2017
Liu Xiaobo, Age: 61
July 22, 2012
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Age: 60
Harold Cepero Escalante, Age: 32
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