Cuban Regime Opponent Rosa Maria Paya Nominated for Vaclav Havel Prize

Payá gave continuity to the work of her late father Oswaldo Payá in the promotion of democracy and human rights in Cuba. (14ymedio)

14ymedio biggerEFE via 14ymedio, Paris, 28 August 2018 — Cuban dissident Rosa María Payá was nominated this Tuesday as a candidate for the Council of Europe’s Václav Havel Human Rights Prize for her work for a democratic transition in Cuba.

Payá gave continuity to the work of her late father Oswaldo Payá (1952-2012) in the promotion of democracy and human rights as president of the Latin American network Youth for Democracy and launching the citizen initiative Cuba Decide.

The young activist, 29, has been nominated along with two other candidates, the Bahraini Nabeel Rajab and the Russian Oyub Titiev.

The winner will be announced on October 8 in Strasbourg, where the award will be presented, granted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Václav Havel Library and the Charter 77 Foundation.

Since 2013, the award has rewarded the “exceptional actions of civil society in the defense of human rights inside and outside Europe.”

In 2016 the award went to the young Iraqi woman, Nadia Murad, who with other women from her Yazidi community, was kidnapped and enslaved for three months by the Islamic State in northern Iraq.

The president of the jury, Liliane Maury Pasquier, stressed that in this edition of 2018 the inheritance of Václav Havel “resonates in a particular way.” Havel was president of the Czech Republic after having been one of the leaders of the dissidence during the Prague Spring in 1968, when his country was invaded by the Soviet Union.

The prize consists of a diploma, a trophy and a cash prize of 60,000 euros, a figure higher than that of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize, which was awarded 16 years ago to Oswaldo Payá.

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