"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)
'Sir, I say that justice is truth in action. Truth should animate an
opposition, and I hope it does animate this opposition." - Benjamin
Disraeli, speech in the House of Commons (2 February 1851).
Artists rendering of the attack on February 24, 1996
23 years ago on Saturday, February 24, 1996
at 3:21 pm and 3:27 pm in international airspace two civilian aircraft
belonging to the humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue were
destroyed by air-to-air missiles fired by a Cuban MiG-29 killing Armando
Alejandre Jr. (age 45), Carlos Alberto Costa (29), Mario Manuel de la
Peña (24), and Pablo Morales (29). Author Matt Lawrence translated and
subtitled the audio of the Cuban MiG pilots who hunted and destroyed the
two planes. The planes had been engaged in a search and rescue mission
for Cuban rafters in the Florida Straits. Three planes set out only one
returned.
Cuban dictator, then General, Raul Castro ordered the shoot down of the two planes. A fact sheet prepared earlier today
provides additional information on the months long Castro regime
conspiracy to destroy Brothers to the Rescue, and murder their pilots in
an act of state terrorism. It also provides a breakdown of the legal actions and decisions that followed afterwards.
Murdered by the Castro regime on February 24, 1996
Last year on February 23, 2018 JusticeCuba,
an international commission composed of legal, civic, and political
leaders from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Syria, Venezuela,
Spain, Peru, China, Uruguay,and Costa Rica sent a letter to the White House
calling on the President to simply follow what is in U.S. law and that
is to bring the agents of the Castro Regime responsible for the Brothers
to the Rescue shoot down to an international tribunal to be held
accountable for this crime.
Both planes were shot down in international airspace (ICAO)
Please join me today from 3:21pm to 3:27pm wherever you are for a moment
of silence at the time when the planes were attacked and shot down
murdering Armando, Carlos, Marion, and Pablo. On Sunday, February 24,
2019 at 3:00pm sharp we will gather at the sidewalk in front of the Cuban Embassy located at 2630 16th St NW, Washington, DC to protest the crimes of the Castro regime against Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans. From 3:21pm to 3:27pm we will join hands together in a silent vigil for justice in their remembrance.
Justice is truth in action. Remembering, sharing the facts with others,
and continuing to demand accountability is truth in action which is
justice. Mohandas Gandhi, the Indian independence leader who practiced
non-violence understood that "full effort is full victory." Please join us in this effort.
Please share the videos in this blog entry over your social media. Below
one of the four survivors of the plane, Jose Basulto, explains what
happened and the context.
“There is no greater love than this: that a person would lay down his life for the sake of his friends.” – John 15:13
Murdered on Raul Castro's orders on February 24, 1996
February 24, 1996 shoot down was an act of state terrorism that blew two civilian aircraft
out of the sky with air to air missiles while in international airspace after regime planned
the act months beforehand with its espionage network in the United States. FACT 1: By definition: Terrorism is the calculated use of
violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to
attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature;
this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear) http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=terrorism
FACT 2: Cuba is responsible for violating the right to life (Article I of the American Declaration
of the Rights and Duties of Man) to the detriment of Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario De La
Peña, and Armando Alejandre, who died as a result of the direct actions of its agents on the
afternoon of 24 February 1996 while flying through international airspace.
FACT 3: Cuba is responsible for violating the right to a fair trial (Article XVIII of the American
Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man) to the detriment of the relatives of Carlos Costa,
Pablo Morales, Mario De La Peña, and Armando Alejandre, in that to date the Cuban authorities
have not conducted an exhaustive investigation with a view toward prosecuting and punishing
the perpetrators and have not indemnified those same relatives for the damage they suffered as a
result of those illicit acts.
FACT 4: In Alejandre v. Republic of Cuba, 996 F.Supp. 1239 (S.D.Fla. 1997), a federal district
court awarded the families of three of the four occupants of the “ Brothers to the Rescue” planes
shot down by Cuba in 1996 a total of $187.7 million in damages against Cuba.
FACT 5: WASP spy network was involved. One of the “illegal officers” (Gerardo Hernandez)
was convicted of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder based on his role in the February 24,
1996, shoot-down of two unarmed civilian aircraft in international airspace by Cuban Air Force
jet fighters, which resulted in the deaths of four people, three of them U.S. citizens.
FACT 6: Brothers to the Rescue had spotted and saved thousands of rafters in the Florida Straits
and was engaged in such a mission on that day. The one plane that skirted the boundary briefly
was the only one to return. The other two were shotdown miles away from Cuba’s boundary
having never entered or touched it on that day and the planes had been in contact with the Cuban
tower throughout the flight.
FACT 7: On July 26, 1996 the United Nations Security Council: "Noting that the unlawful
downing of two civil aircraft on 24 February by the Cuban Air Force violated the principle that
States must refrain from using weapons against airborne civil aircraft, the Security Council this
afternoon condemned such use as being incompatible with the rules of customary international
law "
FACT 8: Ana Belen Montes, the US intelligence community's top analyst on Cuban affairs had
throughout a sixteen-year career at the Defense Intelligence Agency sent the Cuba intelligence
service sensitive and secret information and helped to shape US opinion on Cuba. Investigation
against her was triggered by her odd behavior before and after the Brothers to the Rescue shoot
down. On September 21 2001 Ana Belen Montes was arrested and subsequently charged with
Conspiracy to Commit Espionage for the government of Cuba. Montes eventually pleaded guilty
to spying, and in October, 2002, she was sentenced to a 25-year prison term followed by 5 years
of probation.
FACT 9: On December 27, 2010 and again in a January 19, 2011 clarification the defense of
Cuban spy-master Gerardo Hernandez acknowledged that "there was overwhelming evidence
that the 1996 shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes occurred in international
airspace, not Cuban territory."
FACT 10: On December 17, 2014 President Barack Obama commuted Gerardo Hernandez’s two life
sentences and returned him along with two other spies jailed for crimes in the United States to
Cuba where they were received with a hero’s welcome in what is an immense propaganda victory for the Castro regime.
Nicolas Maduro, the former president of Venezuela, is ordering troops to burn humanitarian aid. The usurper claims that humanitarian assistance is an existential threat and provocation to his regime. This claim is also backed by the Castro regime. However, they are not being honest about the real nature of the threat.
Venezuelan Jean Pierre Planchart, a year old, weighs 11 pounds.
Maduro, along with the Castro regime, are attempting to install a communist dictatorship in Venezuela. One of the instruments that communist regimes have used to subjugate populations is famine and rationing food to those who are loyal and denying it to those who are not.
Famine is a tool communists have traditionally used to remake societies.
The deadliest famines in the 20th century were not in Africa but in Europe (Ukraine) and China.
Social science research has demonstrated that famines "happen only with some degree of human complicity." Human decisions "determine whether a crisis
deteriorates into a full-blown famine."
Jean Pierre Planchart malnourished inVenezuela.
Pic:
Dr. Livia Machado
In the case of Venezuela, Chávez and Maduro destroyed the market in food by imposing price controls "that resulted in underproduction when the official prices did not
meet costs of production. Their governments expropriated farms,
ranches, and even food distributors such as butchers. There’s very
little if anything produced on these expropriated territories." Rhoda Howard-Hassmann's article "Famine in Venezuela" published on August 21, 2018 in the World Peace Foundation reports:
"By 2017 malnutrition was
confirmed in Venezuela, precipitating the political unrest now roiling
the country. According to Antulio Rosales (“Weaponizing Hunger is a New Low for the Venezuelan President,” Globe and Mail, March 12, 2018, p.A11) and Enrique Krauze (“Hell of a Fiesta,” New York Review of Books,
March 8, 2018, pp. 4-7), by early 2018 more than half of all
Venezuelans had lost between 19 and 24 pounds, and 90 per cent said they
do not have enough money for food."
"The World Health Organisation says, a country with 10% of its children with malnutrition is at risk, at 12% it's considered famine. In Venezuela, a recent study conducted in five different states shows that we're at 14.8%," says Huniades Urbina, President of Venezuela's Childcare and Pediatrics Society.
Despite this reality, on February 4, 2018 Maduro shipped 100 tons of aid to Cuba and on February 6, 2018 Maduro,
once again, ordered humanitarian shipments of aid to be blocked from
entering Venezuela. Maduro continues to double down and block aid, or actually destroy it when it enters Venezuela.
Maduro blocks aide to Venezuela while sending it to Cuba as Venezuelans go hungry
This is not incompetence, but a sinister political and military strategy that has been successfully played out elsewhere. Maduro's regime issued ration cards for food in a country were mass hunger is an ever present reality and it is understood by many that following regime instructions, such as going to vote in the last sham election, was necessary to be eligible for rations. The electoral calculus was clear: "Everyone who has this card must vote," said Nicolas Maduro and continued, "I give and you give."
This is a very old playbook.
According to Felix Wemheuer, professor of Modern China Studies at the University of Cologne, in his book Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union," during the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union."
"In fact, with the exception of the 1943 Bengal famine with its approximately two million victims, all of the other major famines of the twentieth century are directly connected to socialist "experiments": in 1921 and 1922 in Russia and Ukraine ( 1million - 1.5 million deaths); in 1931, 1932, and 1933 in the USSR (6.5 million - 7.5 million deaths, of which 4 million were in Ukraine and 1.3 million - 1.5 million in Kazakhstan); in 1946 and 1947 in the USSR (1 million - 1.5 million deaths); from 1958 to 1962 in China (30 million - 45 million deaths); from 1983 to 1985 in Ethiopia (0.5 million - 1.0 million deaths); and from 1994 to 1998 in North Korea ( estimates vary from a few hundred thousand to more than 2 million deaths)."
This was not due to poor central planning and socialist inefficiencies, but a deliberate policy of genocide against targeted population to consolidate political control by eliminating those who do not support their regime. The percentage of victims in the USSR and China relative to their respective overall populations were the same (5%). In the case of the USSR that meant around 7 million deaths out of a population of 160 million and in the case of China estimates between 30 million and 45 million deaths out of a population of 600 million.
According to Graziosi and Sysyn, "most of Ukraine's four million deaths - more than sixty percent of all the famine victims in the USSR - were concentrated in the few weeks between the beginning of April and the the end of June 1933. This points to a political decision to use famine as a weapon to solve a specific "national" problem.
Starving mom holds her child at height of Holodomor. USSR.1933.
Furthermore, according to Andreas Graziosi in her 2016 monograph Stalin and Mao's Famines: Similarities and Differences, outlines the role played by "ideology; planning; the dynamics of the famines; the relationship among harvest, state procurements and peasant behaviour; the role of local cadres; life and death in the villages; the situation in the cities vis-à-vis the countryside, and the production of an official lie for the outside world."
Maduro, and his Cuban allies issued denials about the extent of the problem of hunger in Venezuela. The rejection and destruction of humanitarian assistance combined with images of tons of humanitarian assistance shipped from Venezuela to Cuba appears bizarre, but it needs to be placed in the context of previous episodes involving other communist regimes.
Both the USSR and China used Western journalists, such as Walter Duranty in Moscow and Edgar Snow in Beijing to deny that a famine was taking place and to defend the official lies of the regime. This practice continues today in Cuba, Venezuela and elsewhere.
Fidel Castro lounging with Mengistu Haile Mariam, in Ethiopia in 1977
In Ethiopia, Mengistu Haile Mariam's regime, reproduced Soviet and Chinese practices when he blacked out communications, and refused access to aid agencies.
In December 1979, during an Ethiopian military offensive, this time
including Soviet advisors and Cuban troops, it “was more specifically
directed against the population’s means of survival, including poisoning
and bombing waterholes and machine gunning herds of cattle.”
Worse yet, as starvation took hold in Ethiopia, Mengistu ordered planeloads of whisky to celebrate the tenth anniversary of his taking power. Denying that a famine was taking place. Once that could no longer be denied he then used the famine as a cover for ethnic cleansing and removing opponents.
This history, and the role played by the Cubans, Russians, and Chinese needs to be taken into account when looking at the situation unfolding in Venezuela now.
The population of Venezuela today is approximately 32 million of which 1.6 million is 5%. Based on 90 years experience of communist regimes is that the number that needs to be killed through hunger to successfully terrorize and subjugate a people? If that is the case then the efforts of the United States and other countries to deliver tons of humanitarian aid to Venezuela and break the death grip of an emerging famine in that country is in and of itself an existential threat to Maduro and his Cuban allies project of imposing communism on Venezuelans.
It is no coincidence that Nicolas Maduro admires and celebrates the legacy of Mao Tse Tung. This is the real reason why humanitarian aid is considered a great provocation by the Maduro regime and his Cuban allies. It takes control from their ongoing effort to kill a lot of Venezuelans to impos their political model. Furthermore, it is why it is important to hold those responsible for carrying out this policy accountable and brought to justice.
"Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so
that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]" - Orlando Zapata Tamayo, letter smuggled out April of 2004*
Orlando Zapata Tamayo, human rights defender
Born: May 15, 1967 - Died: February 23, 2010
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was a human rights
defender who was unjustly imprisoned in the Spring of 2003 and was
tortured by Cuban prison officials and state security agents over the
next six years and ten months. He died on February 23, 2010 following a prolonged hunger strike, aggravated by prison guards refusing him water in an effort to break his spirit. He is a victim of Cuban communism.
Cuban opposition leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, who was killed under suspicious circumstances on July 22, 2012, issued a statement
the same day that Orlando died and appeared in a photograph holding up a
photocopy of the martyred human rights defender name and image.
"Orlando
Zapata Tamayo, died this afternoon, February 23, 2010, after
suffering many indignities, racist slights, beatings and abuse by prison
guards and State Security. Zapata was killed slowly over many days and many months in every prison in which he was confined. Zapata
was imprisoned for denouncing human rights violations and for daring to
speak openly of the Varela Project in Havana's Central Park.
He was not a terrorist, or conspirator, or used violence. Initially he
was sentenced to three years in prison, but after successive
provocations and maneuvers staged by his executioners, he was sentenced
to more than thirty years in prison."
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas with photocopy image of Orlando Zapata Tamayo
Remembering Orlando Zapata
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was born in Santiago, Cuba on May 15, 1967. He was by vocation a brick layer and also a human rights activist, a member of the Movimiento Alternativa Republicana, Alternative Republican Movement, and of the Consejo Nacional de Resistencia Cívica, National Civic Resistance Committee. Orlando gathered signatures for the Varela Project, a citizen initiative to amend the Cuban constitution using legal means with the aim of bringing Cuba in line with international human rights standards.
Amnesty International
had documented how Orlando had been arrested several times in the past.
For example he was temporarily detained on 3 July 2002 and 28 October 2002.
In November of 2002 after taking part in a workshop on human rights in
the central Havana park, José Martí, he and eight other government
opponents were arrested and later released. He was also arrested on December 6, 2002 along with fellow prisoners of conscience Oscar Elías Biscet and Raúl Arencibia Fajardo.
Dr.
Biscet just released from prison a month earlier had sought to form a
grassroots project for the promotion of human rights called "Friends of
Human Rights." State security prevented them from entering the home of
Raúl Arencibia Fajardo, Oscar Biscet, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Virgilio Marante Güelmes
and 12 others held a sit-in in the street in protest and chanted "long
live human rights" and "freedom for political prisoners." They were then
arrested and taken to the Tenth Unit of the National Revolutionary
Police,Décima Unidad de La Policía Nacional Revolucionaria (PNR), in Havana.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was released three months later on March 8, 2003, but Oscar Elias Biscet, Virgilio Marante Güelmes, and Raúl Arencibia Fajardo remained imprisoned. On the morning of March 20, 2003 whilst taking part in a fast at the Fundación Jesús Yánez Pelletier,
Jesús Yánez Pelletier Foundation, in Havana, to demand the release of
Oscar Biscet and the other political prisoners. Orlando was taken to the
Villa Marista State Security Headquarters.
Orlando's mom, Reina Luisa Tamayo, holds up son's bloodstained shirt
"My
dear brothers in the internal opposition in Cuba. I have many things to
say to you, but I did not want to do it with paper and ink, because I
hope to go to you one day when our country is free without the Castro
dictatorship. Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so
that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that
are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]."*
Protests for Orlando Zapata Tamayo continue Nine years have passed but the martyred Cuban human rights defender has not
been forgotten. From the beginning the regime sought to put down and
silence protests and acts of remembrance for him, but failed. In March
of 2010 at the second Geneva Summit for Human Rights
former prisoner of conscience Jose Gabriel Ramon Castillo testified to
what had happened to Orlando Zapata. In Norway, regime agents became
violent and created international controversy after a Cuban diplomat bit a young Norwegian-Cuban woman
for trying to record her mom engaged in a protest remembering Orlando
Zapata Tamayo in front of the Cuban Embassy in Oslo in May of 2010.
On
September 30, 2010 the Canadian punk rock band released a song linking
what happened to Orlando Zapata Tamayo to the indifference of Canadian
tourists visiting Cuba asking the question: Where were you the day
Orlando Zapata died? On May 10, 2012 the Free Cuba Foundation published a
video accompanying the song, after receiving the band's permission, with images and song lyrics.
On 2/19/2018 twenty activists remember Orlando Zapata Tamayo in Cuba.
Four
days prior to marking eight years to the day that Orlando Zapata died,
activists inside Cuba took to protest in the streets with banners
remembering the courageous and martyred human rights activist. The Castro regime did all it could to eliminate the memory of this humble and good man. The dictatorship failed.
The importance of remembrance Friends of freedom all too often are on the defensive explaining
who and what they are against. The lives of courageous nonviolent
activists such as Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Harold
Cepero Escalante, Laura Inés Pollán Toledo
and the four men murdered in the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down who
were martyred by the Castro dictatorship should be remembered and told
to others.
The enemies of freedom do not like to have such heroes
remembered and honored. For example on May 24, 2010 in Oslo, Norway a Cuban diplomat attacked and bit a 19 year old Cuban-Norwegian girl
who was filming her mother's protest on behalf of Orlando Zapata Tamayo
outside of the Cuban embassy. The whole episode was a public relations
disaster for the Castro dictatorship in Norway.
Take action on Sunday On Sunday, February 24, 2019 at 3:00pm sharp join us at the Cuban
Embassy in Washington, DC to protest this and other crimes of the Castro
regime. If you are not in the area then make your own poster and take a selfie holding it up in protest. Ni1Mas! Not1More. Elie Wiesel is right: "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."
*Source:
"Queridos hermanos míos de la oposición
interna de Cuba", escribió Zapata
en su misiva, "tengo muchas cosas que
decirles,
pero no he querido hacerlo por papel y
tinta,
pues espero ir a ustedes un día cuando
nuestra patria sea libre y sin dictadura
castrista.
Vivan los derechos humanos, con mi
sangre les
escribí, para que la guarden como parte
del salvajismo de que somos víctima el
presidio
político Pedro Luis Boitel". - "Golpiza y
celda tapiada para Orlando Zapata" La Habana, 22 de abril 2004 (María
López, Lux Info Press / www.cubanet.org
"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
Génesis Carmona: 20 September 1991 – 19 February 2014
UNITEC will officiate aMass in memoryofthe student Génesis Carmona. Center Technological University will officiate a Massin memory ofthestudentGénesis Carmonaon ThursdayFebruary 19at 9:30am at theGuacara Campus, after a year of heruntimely deathwhen she was overtaken bygunshotsduring a marchinValencia. The UNITECauthoritiesinvitethe entire university communitytoattend Massto rememberour alumn, who lost her life followingsome acts of violence.
What happened Génesis Carmona wasmarchingat approximately 4:00pmon TuesdayFebruary 18, 2014, nearCedeñoAvenue and the intersection of Carabobo,when a group of masked gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on the demonstrators. Génesiswas shot inthe head in the leftoccipitalregion.She was with her sister Alejandra Carmona at the moment it happened. Alejandra in a radio interview said "I was with her, when the motorized units (of the Government), we fled running. We were stopped on a street corner, looking up and then suddenly she fell."
Genesis Carmona is evacuated on a motorcycle after
being shot.
According to VOXXI the "22-year-old was rushed in a motorcycle to the Medical Center Guerra Mendez in Valencia, where she was operated and kept in intensive care.Less than 24 hours later on 12:14 p.m., the doctors announcedthat shehad died from her injury.
Jorge Ramos of Univsion interviewed Gabriel Cegarra, the young man who was holding Génesis on the back of the motorcycle as they hurried to get her to the hospital. Below courtesy of John Sexton of Breitbart is a translation of an excerpt of the interview:
Ramos: The images of the students that have lost
their lives in the protests in Venezuela are impressive because, in the
majority of cases, they have been shot at and they have no way of
defending themselves. To
these images we add this impressive photo: beauty queen Genesis Carmona
being carried away as she was dying. The student is named Gabriel
Cegarra, who had her in his arms to try to save her life. He joins us
now via satellite from Valencia, Carabobo state. Gabriel, thank you for
speaking with us. What happened that day? Where were you?
Gabriel Cegarra: We were in Cedeño Ave, Valencia. We
were protesting there– the protest concentration was there. There was a
large group of us there protesting normally, peacefully. All of a
sudden we began to see motorcycles on the north side of Cedeño Ave. That
is a steep street, and at the top of the street we saw motorcycles with, um, they were armed
and over there. At first they were not doing anything, they were just
there
concentrated, and we were concentrated in our part and we took note of
each other. Then, all of the sudden, there were gunshots, there were
three rounds of gunshots. In the third, unfortunately, a bullet hit her in the head. Ramos: The government said, without proof, that the shots came
from the opposition group itself. Do you think the shots came from an
armed Chavista group? GC: Yes, because they were the only ones who were armed. We
do our protesting with a simple tricolor hat, a white shirt– which was what we
organized for that day— Ramos: So the official version from the government is not true
from your point of view? The bullets came from Chavista groups, not the
opposition? This is very important. GC: Not from the opposition, because among ourselves, I don’t
think we are there to kill each other. We were just there peacefully
protesting. The motorcycles that were shooting, you could see they were
armed and they had red shirts, some were black striped, but there were
people with red shirts. Ramos: You already knew Genesis. At what time did you see her get shot through the head? GC: Yes, I knew Genesis, she is my– was my “buddy” for all life.
She was my friend for five years. I realized that she was shot in the
head when… I heard the gunshots from
where I was, I ducked, and then when I see that she is leaning on a
friend’s arms.
The friend brought her to me– it was a short route, about 5 meters,
something like that– and I see that when I touch her with her left arm,
which I put behind my neck, I started to feel something cold on my arm, and a doctor
who was there at the protests also told me, “get on your bike and get
help, she’s been shot in the head.” Ramos: That is precisely what you did. That image and that
photograph traveled the world. When you were carrying her with you on
the motorcycle, she was still alive, right? GC: Yes, she was conscious. Ramos: She was conscious. Could she talk? Did she say something? GC: No, she didn’t speak to me but her eyes were open. With her
right hand she was pulling my shirt, as you can see in the image, and
with the left hand she was pulling the shirt of the motorcycle driver. Ramos: What did you tell her? GC: Stay still, everything will be fine, I would do everything
possible I could to arrive quickly so they could treat her, not to worry, that nothing was going to happen. Ramos: Then you arrived at the hospital. When did you find out she had died? GC: I found out yesterday, Wednesday, around 12:50– I was making
some
declarations and was not at the clinic at the moment, but I got a
message simply saying she had died. It was really very sad, that moment;
reading that message was nothing good. I didn’t expect that to happen.
Génesis
Carmona and friend posing with cover of her modeling.
Génesis
Carmona's aunt, Martha Baron, who lives in Calgary spoke out in English
concerning her nieces death on February 24, 2014 to the Calgary CBC:
"I would like her to be remembered as a brave girl that died for her
country. That's the only way I want her to be remembered."
Génesis
Carmona's last four tweets were re-tweets from others but give an insight into this young woman's state of mind and are reproduced below:
The first retweet (RT) is from Leopoldo
Lopez announcing that he would be on CNN in Spanish and asking for a RT
which she obliged. The second from VVSincensura said that "the
opposition united should defend Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado
before the intention of the government to jail them. The third from
Reinaldo dos Santos gave technical advise stating "If they drop Twitter
for Venezuela use a "hotspot shield" which is private navigation without
restrictions. Spread the word." The last retweet from Evo Morales (not
the president of Bolivia) said: "Stay with the one who tells the best
stories. One day they will tell yours."
Génesis Carmona's mother, María Eugenia Tovar, and sister left Venezuela
and on December 10, 2014 revealed that they are seeking political
asylum and continue to demand justice for Génesis. All evidence points
to the Maduro regime and its agents being responsible for this young woman's death. MariaEugeniaTovar,emphasized on February 12, 2015 in asentence whatthat day signified for her:"Forbidden toforget ourchildren, forbidden toforgetso much pain."
Five years later and her killers have not been brought to justice. In Venezuela she has not been forgotten. Yesterday at Florida International University Génesis's mom was interviewed and spoke about what had happened to her 22 year old daughter five years ago and she continues to demand justice.
Además de la madre de Óscar Pérez, en el acto de Trump en Florida también estuvo la madre de Génesis Carmona, estudiante de 22 años asesinada un #18Feb como hoy en Valencia, #Carabobo, durante una protesta. Cinco años después, aún pide justicia.pic.twitter.com/vtZxxz6UAZ
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