Mass in Cuba for Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero / Cubanet, Ignacio Gonzalez and Osmel Almaguer

cubanet square logoCubanet, Ignacio Gonzalez and Osmel Almaguer, Havana, 13 May 2015 – A Mass for the deceased Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, opposition leader, and Harold Cepero, activist, was held this afternoon at the Church of Los Pasionistas in Havana, with Rosa María Payá in attendance. Rosa María, daughter of the Cuban human rights activist and recipient of the European Union’s Andrei Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, arrived from the Miami Airport to Cuba on the morning of May 11, to reunite with her family and friends and to honor the memory of her father.

The Mass was attended by activists of the Estado de Sats project, Antonio Rodiles and Ailer González, and by Manuel Cuesta Morua, leader of Progressive Arc, among others.

Rosa Maria Returns to the Revolution of Death / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Click on image for link to video in Spanish
Click on image for link to video in Spanish

ROSA MARIA AND DEATH

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, 11 May 2015

Since she was a little girl, death was a guest in her home. A guest no one invited in the midst of the family happiness, rather an intruder imposed by a fascist State called Revolution. A totalitarian state that began killing before the assault on power, killing that prevailed for decades, and that will end up killing more, sooner than later. It is the only logic of a governance in which the Castros are effective, a dynasty of several generations that were never elected in Cuba. Since she was a little girl, death peeked through the blinds and revealed the probable terror: she always knew that the Cuban wanted to kill her papá. continue reading

Rosa María Payá, after a year and a half living outside Cuba, returns today to the Island where lie the remains of Harold Cepero — her soulmate — and those of Oswaldo Payá. She brings them a flower. A little flower of the most commercial and cowardly Miami. Where thousands of “mules” travel daily as accomplices of the Castro regime. Where all the entrepreneurs are Castros with Cubanologist ties, but ultimately they are simply thirst for dollars and power. A caste that, with the story of the economic empowerment of civil society, aspires to enslave Cuba based on their earnings and their corruption. They are not another shitty mafia, but they are the same and of the same ideological sign as the shitty mafiosos of the Plaza of the Revolution.

Cepero and Payá were assassinated in Cuba by order of the high command of the Ministry of the Interior on Sunday, 22 July 2012. It was a personal vengeance on the part of the homicidal brothers. A crime against humanity whose atrocious guilt will never expire, and for which they will be held accountable before justice, including the descendants of the tyrants: in particular Alejandro Castro Espín, who was already in office when they killed Cepero and Paya.

This crime would never have been undertaken blindly. Before executing it, the Castro regime consulted on the double homicide with the highest spheres of power in the European Union and in the United States. And also with the insulting insular Catholic hierarchy, and it is possible with the Vatican (Ratzinger’s resignation will eventually be totally explained). The Cuban-American tycoons, of course, did their part, with the perverse promise they would soon be allowed to return.

Such a plot is not launched directly, but with hallway inquiries and social destabilization blackmail. With hostages and promises of appeasement. The diplomacy of disgust. And everyone was in agreement that there would be no penalty for the Castros for the death of a man in his sixties who to the majority felt too weighty, whose moral superiority is intolerable in Cuba and in our ex-exile. He had to be sacrificed to the sanctimoniousness of democracy. It had to sink Cuba even deeper into despair. Harold Cepero, on that summer afternoon, was just collateral damage. And if Rosa María had been traveling in that Hyundai rental car, as she thought she might hours beforehand, Rosa María  would have been buried three years ago along with her papá.

But today Rosa María Payá returns as a Cuban of Cuba to Cuba. The whole world, and especially the Casto agents of the Miami press, sneeringly called her on zero day a “refugee” and the last of the “exiled.” As if all of us Cubans, wherever we live, weren’t refugees and exiles under the boot of our olive-green barbarity. Now they will tell Rosa María  whatever other vile things, as soon as the officials of El Habana Herald sends them by email the ongoing strategy of stigmatization of her.

But Rosa María will face the executioners whom she has known since childhood to be hunting her papá to behead him. The family has not even been given the autopsy showing how Oswaldo Payá died. Only Fernando Ravsberg, a Uruguayan terrorist turned privileged journalist on the Island, wrote with demonic detail of the destruction of Payá’s body: head split into five pieces, almost decapitated, heart pierced and kidneys turned to “mush.”

Rosa María Payá faces Monday May 11, 2015 in Cuba with that “mush” of a nation. The detritus of a country without citizens. Without values. Without a vision of the future. Aberration in time. Constitutional ugliness. Hatred on the surface and language as a hobby in perpetuity. Culture of simulation and a vocation to kill or be killed. De-anthropological damage, inhumane humanity. A double lack of State and of God.

From the Castro regime we can expect anything against that girl visited by death in her dreams in El Cerro in the midst of the Special Period. Because today the assassins no longer need to consult on their crimes ahead of time. The hands of President Obama and those of Pope Francis have exquisitely stretched out to the Cuban dictator, the octogenarian who has been stained and stained again with the innocent blood of Cubans.

Pray for Rosa María, please, at least those who still retain a remnant of what it is to pray after half a century of strictly observed Revolution.

Cuba Decides: Continuing Oswaldo Paya’s Work for a Plebiscite

"The plebiscite is the path by which the people of Cuba move to the truth and rights in solidarity and realize their hopes." Plebiscite for your rights: Freedom of expression, free elections, freedom of association
Click on image to open Cuba Decides site

For over half a century Cubans have been excluded from the political, economic and social decisions made in our nation. The group in power in Cuba has never been legitimized by democratic elections. The government is responsible for the repression and violence against those with opinions and alternative initiatives.

The absence of an environment of law and self-determination, has plunged the people into poverty and has led our country to economic and social failure, accompanied by constant mass exodus of its citizens.

We are aware that only Cubans corresponds us to define and decide on the changes needed in our society and so do our national project. But for citizens to design, approve and build their future, must be guaranteed by law rights and an atmosphere of trust and respect for all achieved. continue reading

In this way we can make a genuine national dialogue and begin the process of legal changes, without exception, for the people to retain or sovereignly change that decision. So proclaim and work for the people to be consulted in a plebiscite. There will be no transition to democracy in Cuba if Cubans are again excluded.

Our proposal continues the citizen petition the Varela Project. Bill that 25,404 Cubans with voting rights submitted to the National Assembly of People’s Power, supported by article 63 of the Constitution of the Republic. The National Assembly has yet to respond to these citizens.

Our demand considers Articles 19, 20 and 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Cuban state as one of its signatories committed themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the effective universal respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The Cubans are one people. All, without classify and divide them by their ideas, beliefs, race, political positions or country of residence, are called to promote and participate in this plebiscite.

No one should question the changes that the people want is freedom, reconciliation and all rights. For these goals and work peacefully fight the opposition inside and outside Cuba. But the great lack of Cubans is that we have no voice, no democratic means to express ourselves as the government and some in the world claim to speak for our people. Hence our demand to the government of Cuba, is to conduct a plebiscite for the people to express itself supremely 1 and decide on the following proposal:

Are you in agreement with that free elections held shall exercise the freedom of expression and Press and organizing freely in political parties and social organizations with full plurality? Yes or No?  

Urging all Cubans wherever they are to join this lawsuit. We invite governments, the democratic institutions and the men and women of good will in the world to support the sovereignty and self-determination of our people, which is to support the right to decide for Cubans, through a plebiscite.

Roberta Jacobson Queries the Castros’ Crime / Rosa Maria Paya

Screen shot from the Twitter account of one of the regime’s aliases

A subject we always include

Rosa María Payá

I have only been in Washington DC 12 hours. Time enough to take up Senator Marco Rubio’s kind invitation to go to President Obama’s State of the Union Address.

It’s winter in DC, but as it gets late, the monumental silhouettes are turned on, giving the capital a warm appearance. In the Capitol I was able to talk to various Democrat and Republican senators, all of them wanting to hear about Cuba. The points in question continue to be fundamental ones:

1) The United States is having high level conversations with a government which has never been chosen by its citizens. And therefore we hope they will put on the table some support for the constitutional petition put up by thousands of Cubans in favour of a referendum for free and multi-party elections. continue reading

2) The United States authorities have, on various occasions supported the need for an independent investigation into the violent deaths on 22 July 2012 of my father Oswaldo Payá, European Union Andrei Sakharov prize-winner, and Harold Cepero, young leader of the Christian Liberation Movement. To be consistent, this matter should be discussed now with the Cuban government, as there is the opportunity to address it directly via the new official channels.

Flying back, I bumped into Roberta Jacobson, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere. I went up to her immediately and she got up to greet me. I was pleased she did that.

“Going back home or just to Miami?” she asked me in an innocent way. “I’m going to Miami,” I told her and it struck me that I had not gone back to my home in Havana for more than a year. The last time I was there, State Security chased my brothers in the street, by Parque Manila in El Cerro, and phoned them to say, “Bastards, we’re going to kill you.”

Mrs. Jacobson was going to Havana to some meetings with Cuban government officials. One of them is the well-known State Security functionary Gustavo Machín. Not by coincidence, it was he who had the responsibility for the press conference circus given by the Swede Aron Modig in Cuba, while he was kept in solitary confinement without charges, just before he was deported from the country without being allowed to meet my family, as we had requested as he was a friend and we would be the ones most affected.

Aron was in the car with my father the day of the long-expected attack on our family (nearly always with witnesses, to terrorize them, like an exemplary measure) and was captured by the State Security immediately after the car was run off the road.

I asked the Assistant Secretary whether the independent investigation we have been demanding into the death of Oswaldo Payá and  Harold Cepero would form a part of the dialogue with the Cuban government. “This is always a point that we raise,” she answered in agreement.

She also explained that they were planning to discuss human rights, without saying when. She was speaking in the normal way officials do, as if they weren’t travelling to the heart of the longest-running dictatorship on the planet to meet criminal functionaries, some of whom worked as spies in her own United States.

The Cuban government has lied to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extra-judicial Crimes, when he had asked them for information about my father’s death. More than two years later, the Cuban authorities continue to deny us the autopsy report, which the family has the right to see under current laws in the island.

This Friday January 21st, I am going to meet Ricardo Zúñiga in the White House. I hope that by then he will have news about the Cuban government’s response to Roberta Jacobson, about the investigation into the attack against Harold and my father that cruel day which my family feared but never were able to understand.

The United States and every other country in the world ought to know that, unless all the truth comes out about this and so many other atrocities that have been mythified  as a “Revolution”, there will be no real democracy or stability in Cuba. It is possible that before Friday the accredited international press in the island will already have a reply to both parts of this inescapable question in such a high-level dialogue.

 Translated by GH

22 January 2015

Open Letter From the MCL to Pablo Iglesias and His Hatred of Cubans / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

MCL (Movimiento Cristiano Liberación / Christian Liberation Movement) in La Razón: “Mr. Pablo Iglesias, There is Poverty in Cuba and Leftist People are Repressed”

How can you deem it a campaign against “Cuba” that family, friends and colleagues of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero demand that these deaths are clarified, deaths that even the Cuban regime has not been able to explain?

The Cuban regime repeatedly blames its problems on “lags of the past” and on the former “bourgeois regime.”

Well then, they are now the past and the new bourgeoisie.

Dear Euro-Deputy, Mr. Pablo Iglesias:

I have had the chance to read—living in a democratic country where both you and I can (yes, we can) say whatever we please—some statements of yours through which you defend the Cuban regime.

In 2002 and 2003, more than 25,000 Cubans signed a citizens lawsuit—legally and constitutionally sound, according to Cuban Law, and known as the “Varela Project”—in which they demanded the basic rights and liberties enjoyed by citizens in democratic countries.

Specifically, the demands of the Varela Project are as follow: freedom of association, freedom of enterprise (for the citizens), amnesty for prisoners of conscience, and the call for a referendum to pass a fair and just electoral law, given that, at present, there can only be one candidate per position, and one who is logically endorsed by the regime. continue reading

Many of the undersigned and promoters of this project encountered retaliation and were fired from their jobs and teaching positions. 42 of these promoters were imprisoned and subjected to exile in 2010. This repression was the trigger to the well-known Cuban Spring (“Primavera cubana”).

Their demands continue to be ignored in Cuba. The slightest dissidence against the regime is severely punished. Dissidents continue to be oppressed, their neighbors  forced to participate in the so-called Acts of Repudiation or Pogroms, which often end in physical violence. Even people who await permits to work abroad are forced to participate in these repugnant acts to prove their loyalty to the regime.

It is not possible to form associations, it is not possible to publish anything that is not in agreement with the regime, and, least of all, to organize a political party.

The regime, in a more successorial than transitory eagerness, engages itself, today, in bogus economic reforms (which Oswaldo Payá used to call CAMBIO-FRAUDE, or FRAUDULENT-CHANGE) to perpetuate privileges by those known as Cuban economic-military junta, who attempt to switch from the wildest of Communisms to the wildest of Capitalisms, where the poor will be poorer (yes, there are poor people in Cuba; so poor, that they don’t even have the right to say they are poor), and the rich (the members of the Cuban Communist Party (CCP)) will continue to be the only rich.

It is shameless, as shameless as the rebelling pigs in Animal Farm, to move away from what were their mottoes (suffice to remember the emphasis that Fidel would place on the word Capitalism; today, one of his children exhibits his wins on golf, that Capitalist-par-excellence sport according to Castro) and to become allies of any foreign interest that seeks to invest, looking for easy opportunities by enlisting an enslaved work force—there are no free syndicates in Cuba—whose salary is paid for by the State, which, in turn, retains most of it.

To top it off, Cubans cannot shop, with their own currency, in the vast majority of stores (where, only with a bit of luck they may be able to acquire some basic product) because the regime uses an absurd currency duality via the so-called CUC (Cuban Convertible Peso), whose value is set arbitrarily; suffice to give the example of an SUV vehicle, which will cost 66,000 euros while the median salary in Cuba is equivalent to 20 euros per month.

Needless to say, these poor attempts of opening of the economy are also off-limits for anyone perceived as a dissident, and there are several small-business owners who, in their utter fear of losing their scanty properties, reject any kind of opposition to the regime, hence becoming part of the repressive machine.

Long-gone is also the notion of Cuba as a Medical and Health Superpower that the regime so proudly hoisted; today, Cuba is a more-than Third World country where diseases such as cholera—eradicated since colonial times—have reappeared, thanks to the inefficacy of a regime only efficient, nowadays, in repression. For the benefit of the leading caste, the regime exports thousands of health professionals (while retaining most of their salaries), leaving several regions of the island deprived of professional assistance and resources in health services, in sheer contrast with health facilities that cater exclusively to foreigners which enjoy the benefits and resources of First World nations.

Education in Cuba is nothing more than a doctrine and control-producing process since the earliest of childhood. I remember how we were forced to shout “We will be like Ché!” and many of us wondered why on Earth would they want any of us to become assassins. The process of selection of regime followers becomes more and more severe as the schooling level increases (college is for revolutionaries, as they say), with many study topics being forbidden if they are perceived to lead to disloyalty to the regime.

Anyone can claim this is part of the nation’s past, but repression continues to expand, and the question is how can the same people who created this mess back in 1959, and continue to be in power, can solve the problem? Again, they repeatedly blame their problems on “lags of the past” and on the former “bourgeois regime”. Well then, they are now the past and the new bourgeoisie.

The comparison with other disadvantaged world zones stems from a false argument. One only needs to review the official indexes put forward by the UN regarding human development in Cuba in 1958, which were, in fact, superior to those in Spain itself at the time. It must become clear, however, that dictatorship in Cuba did not begin in 1959, but in 1952, which explains why so many Cubans fought in that revolution that was immediately betrayed by those who continue to be in power today.

The trite insistence of calling the USA the foreign enemy is no longer credible. Today, it is precisely the USA that is Cuba’s main commercial partner in food and other products. The embargo is not the problem nor is it the solution. The rest of the world has no embargo against Cuba, and yet Cuba cannot engage freely in commercial exchanges with anybody else. The real embargo is the embargo of freedom to which the people are subjected by the regime itself.

The MCL does not seek revenge, nor does hatred nor ill-feeling move us. We work for the reconciliation of a country in which all Cubans, from within or from abroad, can live, because we are one nation; for a country where all political options are welcomed (I remind you that even leftists in Cuba are repressed) and where what has positively served us can be preserved; where no foreign intervention exists; where thousands of Cubans never again have to serve as fodder in post-colonial wars in Africa; where, within the diversity of ideas and initiatives, mistrust is no longer; where those who think differently are not referred to as “gusanos” (worms). And so on.

In other words, for a country where we can enjoy democracy (even if an imperfect one) just like the one we enjoy here. This is about democracy versus dictatorship, not an ideological matter.

It is not the intention of this letter to provoke controversy, but to clarify certain issues for you, as you seem to be rather ill-informed about them.

I remember some years ago, during a televised debate with your friend Juan Carlos Monedero, some of these (and other) topics were tackled, and just like I said then, the real proof that democracy will have arrived in Cuba will be the day when we Cubans are able to debate freely in Cuban television.

To finish, dear Mr. Iglesias, I must add that there’s an article of yours in which you claim that the Christian Liberation Movement is “campaigning against Cuba”.

In first place, it seems you are confusing Cuba with the Cuban dictatorship. Cuba is much more than that and the majority of Cubans do not want it.

Secondly, how can you deem it a campaign against “Cuba” that family, friends and colleagues of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero demand that these deaths are clarified, deaths that even the Cuban regime has not been able to explain? (see http://www.oswaldopaya.org/es/2013/12/15/una-secuencia-incoherente/).

On the other hand, you resort to a macabre exercise (due to its analysis and its origin: you place yourself in the place of the supposed executioner) when you allege that “had they been intended murders, the regime would have also eliminated their witnesses”. It is a dangerous exercise to use the reasoning of the executioner, and tyrannies have no presumption of innocence.

Like Oswaldo Payá said, in his acceptance speech for his 2002 Sakharov Human Rights Award from the European Parliament, where you now serve, “Dictatorships do not belong to the left nor to the right. They are only dictatorships.”

Last year, the European Union’s parliament voted to include an amendment, in its report of human rights, requesting an independent investigation on the death of Oswaldo Payá.

This year, we will once again petition support towards that investigation.

In the event that petition was indeed taken to the voting table, what would your vote be?

Sincerely, and wishing you the best in your exercise as Euro-Deputy,

Carlos Payá Sardiñas

Representative, Christian Liberation Movement, Spain

Translated by: T

29 June 2014

The Political Legacy of Oswaldo Paya / 14ymedio

Oswaldo Payá's Funeral (Luz Escobar)
Oswaldo Payá’s Funeral (Luz Escobar)

14YMEDIO, 22 July 2014 – On 22 July 2014, the opposition leader Oswaldo Payá and the activist Harld Cepero died. Payá led the Christian Liberation Movement and promoted the Varela Project, which managed to collect some 25,000 signatures to demand a national referendum. Freedom of expression, of association, freedom of the press and of business, as well as free elections, were some of the demands of that document signed by thousands of Cubans.

Nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize, Payá was one of the most visible and respected figures of the Cuban opposition. In 2002  the European Parliament awarded him the Sakharov Prize for Human Rights by and he was able to tour several countries to offer information about the situation on the island. He was also an official candidate for the Prince of Asturias Award and received honorary degrees from Columbia University and the University of Miami.

Paya’s death occurred in the vicinity of the city of Bayamo, while he was traveling accompanied by the Spaniard Angel Carromero, the Swede Aron Modig, and his colleague Harold Cepero. The Cuban government explained the death as the result of a car accident, but his family and many Cuban activists have maintained their doubts about that version. An independent investigation into the events of that tragic July 22 has been requested in various international forums, but Cuban authorities have not responded to those requests.

On the second anniversary of the death of Oswaldo Payá, we asked activists who shared his democratic ideals, “What is the greatest legacy of the leader of the Christian Liberation Movement?”

Guillermo Fariñas, a psychologist and the winner of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize

The main legacy left by Oswaldo Payá Sardinas for the Cuban nation, beyond its geographical boundaries, was that he showed his people and the world that the Cuban government breaks its own laws. When the Varela Project submitted almost 25,000 signatures to the People’s Assembly on a citizens’ petition for a plebiscite, the Cuban government refused to hold one and in a crude way changed the Constitution. That in my opinion was his main contribution: demonstrating that the Cuban government is beyond anything that could be construed as the Rule of Law and that it does not even respect its own draconian laws that support Castro’s totalitarian state. continue reading

Manuel Cuesta Morúa, promoter of Constitutional Consensus

I see the legacy of Oswaldo Paya in his pioneering activity to demonstrate that it was possible to generate civic trust towards democratic change. Even he had many doubts that the public would respond positively, would commit itself to a proposed change, especially at a time like the 90s and early 2000s when it was even more difficult for the civic movement. That’s what he sowed, what he left as a legacy, which demonstrated this as a future possibility for all pro-democracy activists on the island.

Dagoberto Valdés, director of the digital magazine Convivencia

First we recall our brother Oswaldo Paya with much love and affection and I would especially emphasize the future, in his legacy, the legacy he has rendered to all Cubans and so I think of the three gifts he left us. First, his posture, his civic attitude. He was a citizen who forged this society and who knew how to awaken a consciousness to fight for democracy in a peaceful way, and from there came his second contribution. Oswaldo was a man who fought tirelessly throughout his life with peaceful methods without being provoked or coming to violence. Finally—I have to say it—as someone who is also a Christian: he was a man who understood that religion could not be alienated or be divorced from the reality in which he lived, and that was why he was deeply committed as a Christian to work for democracy in Cuba.

Jose Conrado Rodriguez Alegre, Catholic priest

Oswaldo has left us a legacy full of sincerity and honesty; a love sacrificed for his country and a genuine commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ, a gospel embodied in social life, in political life, in the good of others, everything that has to do with society as such. His was a radical commitment to the gospel, but at the same time, as it should be, to every human being. In remembering him, we must pay tribute to the man he was in every dimension, while we feel the pain of the brother we lost and we ask God that there be many others like him, men who can give their lives for others, in silence, in humility, in the midst of the misunderstandings of men, but certainly with a total commitment and a quality of life that today illuminates the existence of those of us still here.

José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU)

There is no doubt that the late Oswaldo Payá left an everlasting impression. We remember him as a determined and courageous Cuban who, from an early date, assumed the method of nonviolent struggle with the intention of bringing Cuba the rights and freedoms that we have lacked for half a century. The work of the Christian Liberation Movement set a tone in peaceful actions in favor of the fair, free, democratic and prosperous Cuba that we all want, this was the side he was on.

The Varela Project, the citizen initiative launched by Oswaldo in which so many of us became involved full-time, also set a tone in the actions of the fighters for democracy. Initially, there were more than 11,000 people, in complex and difficult circumstances, circumstances that were against those who collected signatures and against those who signed that citizen petition. The fact that for the first time so many Cubans defended a proposal, putting their names and identity data, supporting the five points that made up the project, it was a real milestone.

Personally Oswaldo was a great friend with whom I shared both difficult and happy moments. We are very mindful of that. The Cuba Democratic Union (UNPACU) will render the homage he deserves on this second anniversary of his tragic death.

***

Today, from 6:45 PM (Havana time) there will be the premiere of a documentary about Oswaldo Paya of the Varela Hall of Ermita de la Caridad in Miami, Florida. The video can also be viewed simultaneously on www.vocesdecuba.com.

Rosa Maria Paya Speaks at the United Nations About a Seat for Cuba on the Human Rights Council / Luis Leonel Leon

RMPAYA21Despite daily violations of the most elementary freedoms, Cuba has once again managed to join the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Rosa Maria Paya has continued to present herself before this and other international forums to denounce the reality, request support to foster democracy, and ask for a serious investigation to reveals the real reason for the death of her father and her friend Harold Cepera.

Cuban officials say that these two Cubans died in a “traffic accident,” though the two foreigners who accompanied them lived: the Swedish politician Jens Aron Modig (who was asleep at the time of impact and who then lived eight days of Kafkaesque detention in Havana ) and the Spanish Angel Carromero (who was convicted in Cuba of involuntary manslaughter, and who from his own country is demanding an international inquiry into what he considers a State Crime).

The two foreigners were isolated and coerced by the State Security. There are witnesses who saw these 4 people enter the hospital alive, but the only “investigation” allowed was undertaken by the dictatorship itself, which more than once had threatened to kill Paya, and whose version the Spanish government validates. Rosa Maria, and many others of us, are convinced that a shadowy operation was still waiting, like so many other manufactured horrors, for the answer will never be admitted by the Castro government .

I share this video of Rosa Maria Paya at the UN against the complicity of this organism with the dictatorship:

Christian Liberation Movement: 25 years on the Path of the People

25-años-207x300… We must announce to Cubans that their lives, their dignity and their freedom belong to them and that no one, not Caesar, can take these things from them if they don’t give in because of fear or other reasons.

Oswaldo Paya Sardinas

Inspired by these ideas, our Christian Liberation Movement was founded 25 years ago. Born to defend the rights of all Cubans and to promote the full liberation of the person leading to the development of society.

We want to serve, we are convinced that in Cuba the changes that the people want will only occur if the majority of Cubans, freeing themselves from the culture of fear, take a liberating step to reclaim their lives. The law should guarantee the right to do away with the simulation generated by an oppressive system, like the totalitarian regime that prevails in our country. We are part of the same people, those who live inside and outside the archipelago;we are not trying to speak for a people, we are working for citizens to have a voice.

Liberation demands its right and the right of Cubans to know the truth; an independent investigation is required to make public the circumstances under which died our leaders Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero died, after an attack on 22 July 2012.

The dialogue that we are proposing is inclusive, where we are all represented, and in an atmosphere of trust that only respect for the law and the practice of fundamental rights can guarantee. We condemn the “Fraud Change” and the false dialogue that excludes and discriminates against those who do not submit, tools that the regime seeks to impose to preserve absolute power and control of the resources belonging to all Cubans. We demand transparency for Cuba and call on Cubans one and all to claim and build this path of changes.

Liberation with the opposition diverse and united in the Camino del Pueblo (the Way of the People), promotes a plebiscite for the sovereign people to decide the changes. Only when citizens can choose their government in free and multiparty elections, can we talk about Cuba having inexorably begun real democratic changes. So today we demand, within the history of thousands of Cubans who propose legal initiatives through a referendum, a referendum to restore the sovereignty of the people

All Cubans, all brothers, and now freedom.

Coordinating Council, Christian Liberation Movement

September 8, 2013

Oswaldo Paya: The Act of Serving / Luis Felipe Rojas

Note: I published this a year ago and have nothing to say I didn’t say them, I have reposted the text (on the anniversary of his death).

Still dazed and in shock I compose these words to Oswaldo. When I started to get the first messages about Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas’s death they were showing the film “War Horse,” and in one of the scenes a soldier leaves his foxhole to save his charger and before the imminence of his death he is praying parts of the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” as if nothing should be lacking now to someone who is and well be a man-bridge, man-dialog, man-country.

The messages clogged my phone with the hashtag #OswaldoPayá and the mention ©OswaldoPaya. The questions of friends from every corner of the island and of the world. The police cordon at the hospital in Bayama, the details of the fatal incident, the doubts of a witness about a supposed police chase, the construction crews in the middle of the road on the El Naranjo curve. The questions. The answers. The words. The damn words.

It’s difficult to think of Payá and not go back to the now well-known EFE Agency photo where he, Antonio Díaz Sánchez and Regis Iglesia, on that 10th of May 2012, are approaching the site of the National Assembly of People’s Power to deliver the 11,025 signatures of citizens who supported the Varela Project.

There was the map of tomorrow’s Cuba. I say that because now the faces of the three blend together for me with those of hundreds of anonymous opponents, without a visible mark for the “mass media” merrymaking, those who gave birth to and collected these desires.

The most insignificant of the Cuban dissidents saw pass through their hands a form, a copy, or a summary of the range of strategies that Payá wanted to tune into so that Cuba would be different. Along with virtues, defects and contradictions, there was his greatness. The Cuban regime had to move, in an acrobatic high-wire act to the people to amend those articles that gave a glimpse of freedom and that were a dead letter in the Constitution until Oswaldo Payá grabbed hold of them.

The Varela Project was a lever that moved the country

I think of Payá, but also of Osmel Rodríguez (The Chinaman Manicaragua), of Ezequiel Morales and Juan Carlos Reyes Ocaña, of the Ferrer-García brothers and of the hundreds of Cubans who armed with courage went out through our dark country to seek signatures for the Varela Project, to spark the desire to be free or to dream with this treasure that is freedom.

I didn’t support all of Payá’s initiatives, and for this I won his friendship. The first time we met he listened to my arguments without interruption. In 2007 he invited me to review the draft of something he’d been “cooking up” for months and I still appreciate that gesture, that cunning to get me to participate. From that time he called me and I him.

The first close people who talked to me about him were Father Olbier Hernández and Deacon Andrés Tejeda who described him as a contradictory being, helpful, a rebuilding. They and the way in which the former American president Jimmy Carter in some way presented him on that day in 2002* in the Great Hall of the University of Havana depicted the face of Payá Sardiñas in the tapestry of an inclusive Cuba for everyone. It will come, we will have to find it together.

*Translator’s note: Jimmy Carter was allowed to address the Cuban people on live TV and took the opportunity to praise Oswaldo Payá and the Varela Project.

22 July 2013

Angel Carromero Details Car Crash That Killed Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero

Angel Carromero speaking publicly in Cuba while still in custody of State Security.
Angel Carromero speaking publicly in Cuba while still in custody of State Security.

The Washington Post has published a lengthy interview with the Spaniard Angel Carromero where he details the events leading up to the crash that killed Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero, and what transpired afterwards.

The article can be read here.

The Death of Paya Was Murder / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Oswaldo Paya’s daughter (Rosa Maria) and wife (Ofelia) at his funeral.
Disgusting freedom of expression.

The assassins always return to the scene of the crime.

Today I feel ashamed to be Cuban and that a Cuban coward can behave so criminally against another Cuban now incapable of defending himself, thanks to the “democratic security forces labor” of other Cubans.

www.cubaencuentro.com/opinion/articulos/la-muerte-de-paya…

All this is just proof that the truth is about to come out.

And that more good blood of innocent Cubans and Europeans will run.

February 28 2013