For freedom in Venezuela and in Cuba: Non-violence is solidarity in action

"The tragedy was not the clamor of the bad people, but the silence of the good people." - Martin Luther King Jr.

On  8/5/94 Cubans marched for freedom in Cuba and were shot at by secret police

Twenty three years ago hundreds of Cubans took to the streets of Havana chanting freedom and called for the end of the Castro regime. The Clinton Administration had by that time begun to reach out to the Castro regime and push for a normalization of relations with Cuba. This was at a time when many thought the Cuban dictatorship was on its last legs. Despite the shoot down of two U.S. based planes over international airspace on February 24, 1996 killing three U.S. citizens and one resident by 2000 President Clinton had shaken hands with Fidel Castro and opened cash and carry trade with the Cuban dictatorship.

On 7/30/17 Venezuelans marched for freedom in Venezuela and were shot by snipers

Twenty three years later we gathered in Miami united for liberty in Venezuela. The Castro regime following years of engagement with President Clinton and President Obama has increased its influence throughout the Western Hemisphere. The OAS Secretary Luis Almagro testified that there are 15,000 Cubans in Venezuela acting as an occupying force.  Venezuela in 2017 faces the real possibility of completing its transformation into Cuba 2.0 thanks to the indifference and collaboration of its neighbors, including the United States under the previous Administration. Over a 100 Venezuelans have been shot and killed by the Maduro regime's repressive apparatus over the past four months of protests.

The time for petitions and conflict resolution are over in both Cuba and Venezuela.

The struggle in Cuba has been going on for more than 58 years and Venezuela's now for 18 years.  While reading Michael N. Nagler's book, "The Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide for Practical Action" read a passage that struck me with regards to the struggles now taking place in these two countries:

"Conflicts escalate when they are not resolved, and if they are left untended they can rapidly get out of control." From the nonviolence point of view, the intensity of a conflict is not necessarily a question of how many guns or how many people are involved (the same metric would work for a quarrel between lovers as between nations); it is primarily about how far dehumanization has proceeded. If someone no longer listens to you, is calling you names or is labeling you, it’s probably too late for petitions. In terms of knowing how to respond, we can conveniently think of this escalation in three stages that call for distinct sets of responses. Let’s call these three stages Conflict Resolution, Satyagraha (active nonviolent resistance), and—hopefully this is rare, but it helps to know it exists—Ultimate Sacrifice (see Figure)."

In both countries the regimes in power call those who oppose them: worms, and fascists. In the recent past sectors of the political opposition in Venezuela sat down to dialogue with a government whose leadership rejects the legitimacy of the opposition but used the process for tactical purposes to slow the imposition of international sanctions while they continue to engage in systematic human rights violations. In Cuba, the opposition is not only not recognized but is also illegal. In Venezuela the purpose of the Constituent Assembly that was brought into existence on July 30, 2017 with escalating repression, including government snipers shooting unarmed demonstrators in the head, and tampering with voting machines in a massive fraud is to make the opposition illegal. This will turn Venezuela into a second Cuba.

 
Conflict resolution works if when you register a complaint the other side listens to you and although not sympathetic to you, recognizes your shared humanity. The next stage, active nonviolent resistance, is necessary when one can not reach one's adversary through reason, and involves taking on suffering: civil disobedience, strikes, standing up to physical abuse, and the full gamut of nonviolent tactics. Powerful elements within the Venezuelan resistance understand this and have put it into practice. Over social media the work of Gene Sharp is summarized in 140 characters: "Civil disobedience is an attitude that must be taken personally. By reducing support to the factors of power, these weaken and fall" and translated to Spanish along with more detailed images.

La Desobediencia Civil es una actitud que se debe tomar personalmente.Al reducir el apoyo a los factores del poder estos se debilitan y caen pic.twitter.com/zm4Wk1aZGX

— RESIST ALTAMIRA 2014 (@Altamira_RAG14) August 3, 2017

Unfortunately, the time for conflict resolution in both countries has long passed and in the case of Venezuela the democratic resistance is engaged in Satyagraha via mass demonstrations and many young people are also risking their lives continuing to march and protest the abuses and failures of the Maduro regime. 

In Cuba there has been a nonviolent opposition that for decades has engaged in projects and campaigns: both constructive and resisting the regime paying a high price and risking all. These oppressive regimes thrive on violence and hatred and seek to provoke it in both their supporters and opponents in a spiral of dehumanization that entrenches an unjust and exploitative system with deep structural violence.

The failure of the international community to address these profound injustices effectively now threaten to engulf and destabilize the entire region.  Unfortunately this means that both in the Cuban and Venezuelan scenarios the conflict has escalated to the level of "ultimate sacrifice." We are witnessing nonviolent activists murdered by both regimes in an international environment that for too many years allowed them to do so with impunity. In Venezuela over the past

Nevertheless those of us living abroad must protest and show our solidarity for those who continue to carry on the struggle in Cuba, Venezuela and other countries going through this type of struggle. This is why we gathered today at the Torch of Friendship with our Venezuelan brothers and sisters engaged in an existential struggle for the future of their homeland. Our prayers are with them.

‘Venezuela no está sola’, es el mensaje de activistas y políticos desde Miami https://t.co/0lBAJX6Qr8 @catalinaruiz pic.twitter.com/sRBtsfuspx

— el Nuevo Herald (@elnuevoherald) August 5, 2017

In Solidarity: Tibetan National Uprising Day

On the 54th anniversary of Tibet's National Uprising Day in in Dharamshala, India the Tibetan parliament issued an important statement. The full statement is available online and the following is an excerpt:

Given the fact that this year's 10th March anniversary coincides with the change of leadership in the People's Republic of China, we would like to propose the following mutually beneficial suggestions for consideration by the new leaders of China:

1. Accept that the Sino-Tibetan dispute deserves to be, needs to be, and can be solved and begin at once peaceful negotiations on the basis of the mutually beneficial middle way approach.

2. Concerning the critical situation in Tibet today in general and, especially, in order to save the Tibetan people whose precious lives are still being lost in self-immolations, the government of China should carry out an investigation on the basis of seeking truth from facts and with impartiality. Besides, people from the international media as well as from governments and non-governmental organizations should be allowed to visit Tibet.
3. The government of China should change the hardline, violent, and oppressive policies it is currently pursuing in Tibet, for if it fails to do so, there is no doubt that the hostility between it and the Tibetan people will increase. Hence, China must forthwith end its policies of violence and repression against the Tibetan people.
4. On the basis of a clear understanding of the gravity of the highly critical situation in Tibet today, the government of China should protect the Tibetan people's human rights, their religion and culture, their linguistic heritage, and their natural environment. It should end the ethnic discrimination, violent repression, torture, and other forms of ill-treatment against the Tibetan people. In this milieu, it should also release forthwith all the Tibetan political prisoners, including the young reincarnate Panchen Rinpoche.

The international community also should not maintain a distant view of the ongoing violent repression being carried out against the Tibetan people. Rather, leaders of nations and officials of governments should adopt a clear stand and intervene in whatever fruitful ways they are able to, for the time to act in this way is overdue and we would like to make an emphatic appeal in this regard.

Within the Tibetan people ourselves, efforts should be directed at seeking to achieve a just solution to the Tibet issue, acting with a sense of fraternity and unity. With this end in view, the Tibetan people should pool whatever capabilities they may have for the purpose of achieving the common goal. They should not resort to speaking, writing articles, and propagating information through the various communication channels without any sense of responsibility. Rather, we emphatically appeal that everyone stand together, turn in the same direction, and direct their efforts at achieving the common desires of the Tibetan people both in Tibet and in exile.

Cubans and Tibetans share two things in common despite our profoundly different histories and religious traditions that bring us together in shared misery. We both have suffered under tyranny since the early 1950s and over a half century later continue to struggle for the restoration of our freedom. China became a communist regime in 1949 and immediately began asserting territorial designs on Tibet. Communist China invaded and occupied Tibet in 1950. Cuba was a free and independent republic with a constitutional democracy until March 10, 1952 when Fulgencio Batista overthrew the democracy in a coup d'état against the last democratically elected president Carlos Prio Socarras.

Both Cubans and Tibetans looked to 1959 as an opportunity for democratic restoration and liberation. Instead tyranny entrenched itself. The Cuban nightmare began amidst the hope on January 1, 1959 that the departure of Fulgencio Batista into exile would mean a democratic restoration and an end to authoritarian tyranny instead it was the beginning of a new totalitarian communist tyranny headed by Fidel Castro. Cloaking itself in the legitimacy of nationalism and anti-Americanism it justified the systematic denial of human rights in the rhetoric of anti-imperialism and the “Yankee threat.”

Tibetan hopes that a national uprising that erupted in Lhasa on March 10, 1959 would drive the Chinese occupiers out of their homeland. Instead His Holiness the Dalai Lama had to flee to India to avoid imprisonment or assassination as the Chinese communists crushed the uprising.

However, as first witnessed with the regime’s support of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and later its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 their so-called anti-imperialism demonstrated ideological exceptions. The same holds true for Tibet. Fidel Castro in his March 31, 2008 “reflection” titled “The Chinese Victory” denies that Tibet was ever independent justifying and defending the Chinese occupation of that small country. It is a shameful rewriting of history.

It is time to hold both Fidel Castro and the Chinese communists accountable to the truth.

On February 24, 2011, Students for a Free Tibet at Florida International University co-sponsored with the Free Cuba Foundation the 15th anniversary silent vigil of the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down. One year later on March 10, 2012 in London we participated in a march from White Hall 10 Downing Street to the Chinese Embassy protesting 62 years of Chinese occupation and repression.