Remembering Cuban dissident leaders, Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, both assassinated by the Cuban dictatorship on July 22, 2012.

We remember.

  

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.

Last year, following a ten year investigation, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights confirmed that the two human rights defenders were killed by Cuban government agents.

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.

Oswaldo was a consistent defender of human rights, but not the only one.

Harold Cepero  was 32 years old when he was extrajudicially executed alongside Oswaldo. He was from the town of Chambas in Ciego de Ávila.  Harold began studying at the University of Camaguey when he was 18 years old, and in 2002, he and other students signed the Varela Project. It was a legal measure inside the existing Cuban constitution sponsored 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 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.