Category: Rosa Maria Paya Acevedo

Cubans Expect Thaw to Lead to Improvements For All The People / 14ymedio

The new embassy of Cuba in the USA. (14ymedio)
The new embassy of Cuba in the USA. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, 20 June 2015 – This Monday, a group of protestors outside the new Cuban embassy in Washington accompanied the speech by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez with shouts of “Cuba sí, Castro No”; “Freedom for Cuba”; “Democracy.” While some chanted, “Viva Cuba,” others responded, “Freedom.”

At some points “Castro sí” was also hears. “Never in this country would I have imagines I would hear something like this,” said a Cuban who came to renew his passport in the consulate.

“I’m here to support the human and civil rights of the Cuban people who have not had free elections for more than 60 years,” said Laura Martinez, a Cuban-American, 26, gathered outside the building that, since 1977, housed the Cuban Interests Section in the United States. “Although I support the reestablishment of relations between Cuba and the United States, I want the human, civil and political rights of the Cuban people to be respected and we are demanding that right now,” she added.

The activist Rosa Maria Paya believes that “this is only the beginning of diplomatic relations that so far has meant the conversation between two elites, of people who were not there and don’t represent the Cuban people, because the Cuban people never elected them.”

“We are expecting that, at least in their discourse, those people who approach Cuba converse not only with the elites in power, but that they also support the right of Cubans to decide, of legislation conducive to [exiles’] visit to the island, and the extension of immunity from violence to those who demonstrate [against the regime] inside and outside of the island,” she adds.’

The writer Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo stressed the importance of the resumption of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana also resulting in greater freedom for independent journalists. He asks for “a more inclusive future,” in which “the chokehold that the regime keeps on civil society is loosened.”

MCl Leader for the Freedom of a Cuba without Castros / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Interview with Rosa Maria Paya

Leader of the Christian Liberation Movement and Cuba Decides

From El Pais

 “The United States is negotiating with the Cuban caste.”

Cuban regime opponent, daughter of Oswaldo Para, speaks of the shortcomings of the thaw.

Alba Casas

Madrid, 3 July 2015, 23:03 CEST

To Rosa Maria Paya (b. January 1989, Havana), daughter of the late Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya and a member of the Christian Liberation Movement — founded by her father — is not afraid to say the thaw will not end “the embargo on freedoms” that the Cuban Executive imposes on its inhabitants. “The United States is talking with the Government and those surrounding it. But civil society is left outside. It is a privilege reserved for the Cuban caste. For the rest, it is a situation of exclusion,” she says. continue reading

Although she looks favorably on the advance in relations between both countries — in her own words: “And attempt to include Cuba as part of the international community is good, provided the inclusion is of all of Cuba, not just the government.” Paya believes that the reestablishment of the talks offers a “halo of legitimacy to a Government that every day violates the rights of its citizens.”

And she defends, over and over again, the need for this process to come with a change for society. “The confrontation with the United States is the excise the government has used to justify some of its repressive measures. Now the excuse has fallen but the situation continues the same, which shows that it was not the United States that was oppressing Cubans, but rather the government itself.”

Among the North American giant’s motives, according to Paya, should be to defend “the opening of Cuba to Cubans themselves,” to offer legal security to entrepreneurs who want to embark on new commercial activities on the island.

“Totalitarianism is a tacit threat to them, like negotiating with the mafia. I don’t expect an altruism from foreign investors, but to negotiate without the guarantees of democracy is to accept the rules of the Cuban government,” says this young woman of 26, with some political ideas of her own who spend this same time leading rallies in front of the cameras.

In drawing a parallel between this “game that follows the rules of the Cuban government,” with the current situation of the thaw in which the United States, despite its initial demand to ensure the rights of Cubans, has finalized the embargo and removed Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, without a real advance in freedoms for society.

Paya says, “It is terrible when talking becomes more important than the objectives of the talks. When this happens, the impunity is total and the government feels free to assassinate a Sakharov Prize winner and nothing happens.” She is referring to her father, Oswaldo Paya, who died in 2012 in strange circumstances in a traffic accident. “To call it an accident is to use the government’s words,” she says.

Paya’s criticism against the executives who prefer “to ignore the violations of human rights” is not directed solely at the North American giant. The young woman even links to “the 15 years of recession experienced by the democracies in the region,” with the Cuban dictatorship.

“I’m not saying it’s the only reason, but it is a common denominator. And you can observe the complicit silence of the senior Latin American politicians with all the crimes of the region, not only those of Cuba,” she says.

The instrument that the Cuban Christian Liberation Movement proposed to achieve that advance in rights and initiate a process of the democratic transition is to hold a plebiscite to ask the citizens of the island if they want to participate in free elections, in which any citizen can stand as a candidate of the opposition, with full media coverage and, above all, “with guarantees for the voters that there will be no consequences from the powers-that-be.”

Looking at this utopian scenario cannot, however, ensure that Cubans taking to the polls is going to translate into the end of the Castro mandate. “I believe that if Cubans could vote, they would vote for freedom. But if they do not do it, all we can do is to give them the tool. Cubans will be free when they want to be so.”

“The Cuban people must get their voice back to begin the transition” / 14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Rosa Maria Paya

Rosa María Payá. (14ymedio)
Rosa María Payá. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 17 May 2012 — In the summer of 2012, Rosa María Payá had just started out in the political arena. She moved among the young people who animated the Varela Project, El Camino del Pueblo (The Path of the People) and the Heredia Project, initiated by the Christian Liberation Movement founded by her father, the dissident Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas. Now 26 years old, she has two missions that consume most of her time. The first, is demanding an independent investigation into the death of her father, for the government to explain an “accident” which she believes was an attack. The second is leading the project Cuba Decides, which promotes a referendum on a proposal to hold free elections in the country.

Escobar: Your departure from Cuba came less than two years ago. How do you see the situation in the country upon your return?

Payá: We left Cuba under political persecution. The persecution against my father and my family before the attack, that ended his and Harold Cepero’s lives, continued after they died and became increasingly intense. They chased my brother when he was driving my dad’s car and did so in cars that have the same make as those that were chasing my father and that finally rammed [the car he was traveling in] on 22 July 2012. In addition, they did it with uniformed people, so that everyone — not only my family but also the local people — was aware of it. continue reading

We had always been persecuted, but this time they were doing it in an ostentatious way. There were also death threats over the phone, they began to spread slanders and defamations about us, they published those articles of the penal code which according to them would provide a reason to imprison us, accusing us of defamation. The situation became untenable and we decided to leave the country for the United States. Our experience was very dramatic. They ultimately killed my father and Harold and the danger was very great.

“These definitions of final departure, of living forever in one country or another, belong to the language of totalitarianism.”

This is my country and I will never stop living in Cuba. The center of my return has been to honor the memory of my father and to visit his grave. I would also like to get to Chambas in Ciego de Avila where the remains of Harold Cepero rest. If I do not do it now I will do it another time. With this I put on the table that there be an independent investigation into the death of my father, an issue that has been taken up by the Cuban democratic movement and political and intellectual personalities worldwide.

Escobar. You are now visiting Cuba. Do you have plans to return, even to stay more permanently?

Payá. Where I am visiting is the United States. I interrupted this visit to come to my own country. These definitions of final departure, of living forever in one country or another, belong to the language of totalitarianism. The Cuban government still keeps intact the power to decide whose departure is permanent and who is not allowed to return.

There are many people who cannot enter and others who cannot leave and I’m not just talking about opponents, such as the Group of 75; I’m talking about professionals who “for issues of the public interest” cannot travel, perhaps, and as one example, a doctor because he is the only neurologist in Holguin. Freedom of movement that gives the right to enter and leave the country is not guaranteed. The times I leave Cuba, the times I decide to be outside of Cuba and the government’s repression with respect to limiting my freedom of movement are situations that are real.

Escobar. During your stay in the United States you have had the opportunity to talk to many people, and even with part of the US delegation participating in the talks with the Cuban government. Have you talked to them about your demand for an independent investigation into the deaths of Oswaldo and Harold?

Payá. The Government of the United States, from the United States Congress itself, has publicly called for this independent investigation to be carried out. More recently, on the occasions that I have met with Mrs. Roberta Jacobson and at the White House with Mr. Ricardo Zuniga, I have had the opportunity to bring it up. Because if this had been previously a request to the American government, now that they are talking with the Cuban government it should also be one of the issues discussed. I have understood that the matter has been talked about, but so far I don’t know what the response of the Cuban government has been.

My father denounced “the fraud change,” this process of scrubbing its image started by the Cuban government in the face of the international community

Escobar. There is a lot of debate about whether the government’s reforms are going to lead to a transition and also a lot of debate about the validity of the conversations that were announced on 17 December. What is your opinion on all this?

Payá. My father denounced and exposed what he called “the fraud change,” referring to this process of reforms and the scrubbing of its image started by the Cuban government in the face of the international community. But without recognizing the rights of Cubans, without actually, for Cubans, substantially changing things. In fact they have barely changed except maybe for the fact that there are more paladares (private restaurants).

The wellbeing of Cubans is still not a priority and of course they continue to violate our fundamental rights. There has been an effort to change the image at the international level that has borne fruit. We are experiencing a process where it seems that the international community is very interested in including the Cuban State in the family of world nations. We have seen it with the Organization of American States, in the negotiations promoted by Obama and in the process of negotiations with the European Union.

It seems very good to us that Cuba is included, but Cuba is not the Cuban Government. The citizens remain excluded precisely because they lack a tool to participate, because they do not enjoy basic human rights.

Escobar. Cuba Decides, this project that you are now promoting, could that be this tool?

Payá. The National Assembly of People’s Power never responded to the request of thousands of Cubans presented in the Varela Project. There we asked for a referendum. Cuba Decides is a project that in some way gives the appropriate continuity to that demand, that doesn’t come from any political party nor from any organization of civil society, but from the citizenry. It is a demand that is not based in any political color, it has no partisan position.

Escobar. So Cuba Decides is not a project of the Christian Liberation Movement?

Payá. All the opposition political parties and all civil society organizations are invited to take up the campaign. I repeat: it is not from a political platform because it has no political color. We are specifically demanding that they ask Cubans if, after 67 years in which there have not been ​​free and multi-party elections, they want a process of free, fair and multi-party elections, recognition of different political parties and access to the media. Do they want this process of free, multi-party and fair elections, yes or no?

“We demand that Cubans be asked if they want free, fair and multi-party elections, yes or no”

Escobar. Are you counting on the backing of the Christian Liberation Movement to carry out the project Cuba Decides?

Payá. My opinion is yes, but the project has no owner. If tomorrow someone goes out into the street saying “I Am Cuba Decides,” he is Cuba Decides. Anyone is Cuba Decides. The point is that we have invited many organizations to participate, we have not left anyone out, but we have not based it within any one [person or organization].

Escobar. Recently, the Government announced that it intends to adopt a new electoral law that would be in effect for the elections of 2018. Among various actors in Cuban civil society, especially in the context of the Cuban Civil Society Open Forum, there has emerged the initiative to maintain a storm of ideas so that each one adds to what we think should be in new electoral law. How do you see this initiative?

Payá. This initiative seems very good to me and I believe it complements what Cuba Decides is asking for. In fact, the Varela Project includes elements of an electoral law that is very specific on what changes there have to be in the current law to have minimally democratic and free elections. A representative part of the Cuban citizenry has already demanded those changes. It is interesting and opportune that this exercise is being done from within civil society. The Varela Project is one proposal, and there have been others, demonstrating that there is the capacity and diversity to design the country we Cubans want.

Escobar. Do you feel yourself to be a leader for the future?

Payá. The Cuban Government cannot claim to represent Cubans because it has not been democratically elected by its people. Nor have we as the opposition been elected. I do think that the opposition and civil society represent the vanguard of citizenship, but I do not want to speak for Cubans because Cubans never elected me. I have a proposal: that Cubans have a voice. I love the exercises that are being done and the proposals that are being presented. The Cuban people must get their voice back, not to begin democracy but to begin the transition. Cuba Decides is one citizen initiative and we invite everyone to participate, joining with us to demand that Cubans have the right to decide.

This would be the trigger to get to a stage in which the proposals of the Cuban Civil Society Open Forum can be presented and face the citizenry. Cuba Decides is not intended to replace other projects, nor presented as the only way. It is one step among others.

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.

Ask the People / Rosa Maria Paya

A butcher shop in Havana. (Source)
A butcher shop in Havana with a photo of Fidel. (Source  Enrique de la Osa, Reuters)

El Mundo, Rosa Maria Paya Acevedo, 12 April 2015 – Although the current Summit of the Americas in Panama has been a blackboard where the peoples of the Americas have been forced – once again – to choke on the barbarian mouthful of that old subject that is Cuban totalitarianism, hope is renewed by the attitude of consistency and solidarity assumed by the diverse civil society of the Americas.

Today in Cuba a self-transition from Power to Power is being cooked up, which tries to ignore the will of the Cuban people and its exile, while enthroning the military elite after a masquerade of reforms which decriminalize certain economic concessions but continue to hijack all the rights of the citizenry.

Since landing in the sister nation of Panama, I have re-experienced firsthand repression in the style of the Cuban regime. The sincere apologies of the Panamanian Foreign Ministry lose force in the face of all the abuses it allowed to take place against the independent civil society of Cuba and all of the Americas. continue reading

Only Cuban civil society activists and the foreigners who work with us were threatened and detained in Panama. But there were no consequences for Cuban State Security agents – such as Alexis Alfonso Frutos Weeden – who beat their peaceful countrymen openly in the street, simply for thinking that our beloved Cuban deserves, after more than half a century without plural elections, an alternative to totalitarianism. Similarly, these agents boycotted the discussion tables of civil society and beat accredited foreigners.

As on the Island in Panama as well: the Cuban opposition has been found a priori guilty in the eyes of authority. The marvelous-real isthmus thus turned into the magically-repressive. Hence, we civil society members elevate our demand for democracy in Latin America to the Organization of American States, in hopes of catching less indolent ears than those of the OAS’s outgoing secretary general.

However, the documents read in the plenary session at the end were indeed the consensus of the civil society of all of the Americas. The regime’s rudeness did not serve it well, as before the intolerant cry of “There will be no Forum,” the consistent voice of Latin American civil society was raised, supporting the implementation of “binding mechanisms for consulting the citizenry, such as plebiscites and referendums.”

Civil society forged networks to demand a life in truth. We young Latin Americans refuse to be subjects of alliances and hegemonies which, with a rhetoric more or less revolutionary, claim the lives of Venezuelan or Mexican students, gag the press in Nicaragua or in Ecuador, and condemn Cubans to a dynastic totalitarianism in perpetuity.

As my father Oswaldo Paya said so many times before his extrajudicial execution in Cuba on Sunday, 22 July 2012: dictatorships are not of the left of the right: they are just dictatorships. Because rights have no political color, no race, no culture. Because the dignity of the human person in an inalienable gift far beyond the markets and the State.

For this reason we are now working on the citizen initiative Cuba Decides, which proposes holding a plebiscite, which we presented in the parallel summits and in the Civil Society Forum in Panama. After decades of dictatorship, the Cuban government does not represent the people. Nor do we pretend to speak for all Cubans, but we do want the Cuban people to have a voice.

The world’s democracies have the opportunity today to pay less media homage to handshakes between the elected president of the White House and the hereditary general of the Plaza of the Revolution, and to prioritize the agenda of accompanying Cubans in our liberation, asking the people in a plebiscite to return to us our sovereignty.

Translated from the original Spanish published in El Mundo.

 

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.

Rosa Maria Paya of Cuba and for Cuba

Statement from Rosa María Payá at the Summit of the Americas
Panama, 10 April 2015

Good day.

I would like to thank everyone for their willingness to dialog. We came willing to dialog. We wanted to listen to our Cuban brothers and sisters, who we know are in the same condition as ourselves.

I want to ask forgiveness from everyone in the name of the Cuban people for what just happened in the conference hall. Despite what you saw, we Cubans are a generous and caring people. Even those people who were there were also deprived of their rights. They also cannot decide. And probably did not decide to be there. These are the aberrations that occur when you live in a dictatorship.

My father, who was killed in an attack from the Cuban government just over two years ago, said that rights have no political color. Nor do dictatorships have a political color. And we are here today wanting to promote solutions to a problem that is no longer only Cuban, nor only Venezuelan. It is a regional problem, like that we just had here. Because we have all been affected by an intolerance that we do not share. continue reading

There are two points I would like to put forward.

The first is affecting us in several countries in the region: it is the issue of impunity. We see young people disappearing in Mexico. We see prosecutors who die the day before they present their evidence. We see children murdered on the streets of Caracas. My best friend and my father were murdered in an attack two and a half years ago, and we don’t even have an autopsy report. We know it is also an issue in Nicaragua and in Guatemala. I would like to settle our point in favor of stopping the impunity and calling attention to the political leadership of Latin America to stop this impunity and take impartial measures.

My second point perhaps could be understood as very particular, because it has to do with Cuba. But from Cuba there has been a marked interference (as there has been from other countries, such as the United States, but I am Cuban) and we have to stop the interference that in some places in Latin America, particularly in Venezuela, the Cuba government is engaging in right now.

My point is in favor of the right of Cubans to decide. Cubans have not decided in free and plural elections for more than 60 years. We are asking for support for the right of Cubans to decide in a plebiscite.

In two days time, a general will arrive here to converse with the presidents of Latin America: a person who has never been chosen by the people. We also want to hear him, but we want the people to be listened to. So we ask for your support for a plebiscite in Cuba and that Cubans be asked if they want free and plural elections, if they want the recognition of political parties, if they want access to the media. If they want this process in impartial conditions.

To support the right to decide of Cubans is also to support the right to decide, the right to development and democracy for the entire region.

Many thanks.

Rosa María Payá Acevedo

Video in Spanish

Young Latin Americans call to fight against political apathy / 14ymedio

Young Cubans at the 2nd Forum of Youth and Democracy in Panama. (14ymedio)
Young Cubans at the 2nd Forum of Youth and Democracy in Panama. Eliecer Avila with the microphone. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Panama, 8 April 2015 — Young Latin American leaders gathered Tuesday on the second day of the 2nd Youth and Democracy Regional Forum in Panama and addressed issues such as the rise of populist regimes in the region, and agreed on the need to organize civil society at the hemispheric level to fight against political apathy.

The protagonists of the morning session were Micaela Hierro Dori, president of the Argentine civil association CICES, who acted as moderator; Ricardo Antonio Álvarez Arias, vice president of Honduras; Eduardo Stein, former vice president of Guatemala; Guillermo Cochez, former Ambassador of Panama to the Organization of American States (OAS); Martha Lucía Ramírez, former Minister of Defense of Colombia; Gustavo Amaya, executive director of the Center for Training and Promotion of Democracy (CECADE) in San Salvador; and Carolina Quinonez, a journalist from Guatamala’s Antigua Channel.

Political apathy, according to attendees at the meeting, threatens equally countries ruled by totalitarian regimes and those in which the society assumes that “all is well” or at least “better than in other countries,” because in the latter it can leave the door open to the possibility that populism and other deformations will silence thoughtful proposals to take advantage of what the traditional parties have not resolved. continue reading

Carlos Amel Oliva, of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), compared this phenomenon with the rise of fascism in Europe before World War II, ignored by governments until the outbreak of the war. “The democratic countries of the region need to not let the same thing happen with populism. It is not Cuba’s or Venezuela’s problem, it is a regional problem.”

Press freedom was another issue that focused attention during the morning panel. The representative from UNPACU denounced the “media laws that are driving some governments to control and limit freedom of expression under the pretext of preventing the spread of lies and distortions.”

Participants also discussed the problem of parasitism that grows in the region due to both the family remittances from emigrants as well as government “handouts,” especially under populist systems, factors that discourage the growth and development of national economies and create a vicious circle that encourages emigration and at the same time reinforces parasitism.

Participants’ skepticism of transnational organizations and meetings was reflected in the statements of Eduardo Stein, shared by several attendees, who questioned the existence of a regional organization like the OAS. For the former vice president of Guatemala, on the OAS Permanent Council, the alliance of a few countries prevents certain issues from being analyzed in the Summits. “There will be no will to confront the political problems of each country, appealing to the right of national sovereignty,” he added about the Summit of the Americas.

The afternoon of the day was dedicated to the initiatives of young Cubans with regards to democratic opening, with the participation of Kirenia Yalit Núñez, Yasser Rojas, Eliécer Ávila and Roberto Jiménez on behalf of the Roundtable, a proposal of democratic changes on the base of initiatives that seek to involve all Cubans in the solution of the problems that affect the whole population.

Also presented at the meeting was the new Cuba Decides initiative led by Rosa María Payá and Erick Álvarez, members of the Christian Liberation Movement; while Yusmila Reyna and Carlos Amel Oliva spoke of the objectives of UNPACU.

Finally, the Aulas Abiertas (Open Classrooms) project was presented, a project which promotes knowledge of the basic questions inherent in democratic societies, to prepare citizens before the eventual process of transition in which they will be capable of participating with a proactive role.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to expand the debate with questions from the audience due to the frequent and prolonged power outages in the room where the session was being held, which also affected some of the equipment for projecting materials, and which the Forum organizers attributed a deliberate attempt to sabotage the activity.

Rosa María Payá announces the creation of the initiative “Cuba Decides” / 14ymedio

The site of Youth Movements Forum, held Monday in Panama. (14ymedio)
The site of Youth Movements Forum, held Monday in Panama. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, April 6 2015 – Rosa María Payá, daughter of the late Cuban activist Oswaldo Payá, has announced this Monday the creation of the citizen initiative Cuba Decide, or “Cuba Decides.” The goal of the project, presented during the Forum of Youth Movements in Panama, is for Cubans to pronounce themselves through a plebiscite regarding the changes they would like to implement on the Island.

“We are conscious that only Cubans should define and decide on the changes that our society needs,” states the group’s website. “In order for citizens to be able to design, decide and construct their future, their rights should be guaranteed by the law and an atmosphere of trust and respect for all should also be achieved. That is what we proclaim and we work for a plebiscite that will consult the people in that matter. There will be no transition to democracy in Cuba if Cubans are excluded once again.” continue reading

The initiative advocates for the calling of “free, just, and plural” elections in an atmosphere in which the freedoms of expression, press, and assembly into political parties and plural social organizations are respected.

“No one should question that the changes desired by the Cuban people are those of freedom, reconciliation and full and guaranteed rights. Opposition within Cuba and abroad works and battles peacefully to achieve these goals. However, our greatest deficiency is that we have no voice, nor the democratic tools needed to express ourselves while the government and some others around the world pretend to speak on behalf of our people,” reads Cuba Decide’s website.

The project presented by Rosa María Payá accuses the Cuban government of being responsible for repression and violence against those with alternative opinions and initiatives and blames the absence of an environment that respects the law and self-determination for the “social and economic failures, as well as the constant and massive exodus of citizens” from the Island.

The proposal seeks to give continuity to the Varela Project, promoted in 1998 by Oswaldo Payá with the aim of enlarging individual liberties in Cuba. Payá achieved the collection of the more than 10,000 signatures required by the Cuban Constitution for the proposal of legislative amendments. The National Assemble, however, rejected the proposal as inconsistent with the law.

Translated by Fernando Fornaris

Rosa Maria Paya Detained at Airport in Panama

Screen Shot 2015-04-05 at 12.07.51 PM

 

Translations, from top to bottom:

They searched everything I had in my bag, even my underwear. At one point they took my personal agenda with all my notes.

Now they have put me in detention, saying they are checking my documents I am someplace in the Tocumen airport.

“You will be deported to Cuba if you cause any disturbance, carry a placard… Go to your own country to cause disturbances,” the agent threatened me.

I am being detained by Panama National Security at the door of the airplane.

 

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

Rosa Maria Paya For the Future of All Cubans Without Castro

In recent years my country has been engaged in a deception. The Cuban government is changing the Law, but ignoring the rights of the people, which were sequestered over half a century ago.

More people are allowed to enter and leave the country, but the regime decides who can enjoy this “privilege”. The migratory reform was established as a control mechanism. For example, the government has invalidated the passport of the artist Tania Bruguera for attempting a performance in Havana. Sonia Garro, a member of the Ladies in White, and one of the political prisoners released during the Washington-Havana secret deal, cannot travel abroad and thus she is still continue reading

a hostage of the government, as Alan Gross was for 5 years. The same applies to the former prisoners of the Cause of the 75 from the spring of 2003.

The Cuban government has permitted more people to operate small businesses, but due to the Cuban laws, entrepreneurs cannot be a factor to foster democracy because their existence as “private” owners depends on their submission to the government. There cannot be free markets where there are no free persons.

The Cuban government said it would free 53 political prisoners, but instead it released them on parole. Meanwhile, many others were not freed at all. Yosvani Melchor was transferred to a maximum security prison last December. He was put in prison 4 years ago for being the son of a member of the Christian Liberation Movement, who refused to cooperate with State Security. The young artist Danilo Maldonado, known as El Sexto, was imprisoned after December 17 without committing any crime. The regime turns political prisoners into pieces to be exchanged, because they can catch-and-release at will more political prisoners, and democratic nations accept this blackmail with innocent citizens.

As my father did, four months before he was killed, I denounce the regime’s attempt to impose a fraudulent change, and I denounce the interests that hamper a real transition and the recovery of our sovereignty. My father also denounced the attempt to link groups of exiles to this fraudulent change. He said, “The diaspora is the diaspora because they are Cuban exiles to whom the regime denied all rights, as they do to all Cubans. In such a context of oppression, without rights and without transparency, the insertion of the diaspora would only be part of the fraudulent changes.” As the engagement would be fraudulent, if the United States were to accept the rule of the Cuban government. We have never asked our people to be isolated or embargoed, but engagement will only be real if it occurs between free peoples.

We urge you to truly open up to Cuba, but to advance a helping hand is essential the solidarity with the Cuban citizenry. It is essential to support the peaceful and legal changes that thousands of Cubans have presented to their fellow citizens and to the Cuban Parliament, an alternative that allows our people to decide their own future.

There is no respect for the self-determination of the Cuban people when negotiations are a secret pact between elites, or when there is no mention that the Cubans can participate or be represented in their own society.

I know that the US Congress and the Administration will do what you think is best for this country, which has served as refuge for nearly 20% of our population. But only a real transition to democracy in Cuba can guarantee stability for the hemisphere. We the Cubans are not Chinese, we are not Vietnamese, and we definitely won’t accept a Putin-like model towards despotism.

The strategy to prevent a mass exodus from Cuba is not by saving the interests of the group now in control, this is an unstable equilibrium that could end in more social chaos and violence. In fact, this country is already facing a Cuban migratory crisis, despite the record numbers of US visas granted. More than 6,500 Cubans arrived in the United States via the Mexican border since last October, and more than 17,000 did so in the previous year. With or without the Cuban Adjustment Act, this situation will get worse because of the attempts of those in power in Cuba for self-preservation of the status quo.

We Cubans want real changes, to design the prosperous country that we deserve and can build. The only violence here comes from the Cuban military against Cubans, that’s why the solution is a peaceful transition, not an appeasement.

The way that you can promote stability in the region is through supporting strategies that engage the popular will, to reach the end of totalitarianism with dignity for everyone. You have the opportunity to support the petition for a constitutional plebiscite in favor of multi-party and free elections, already signed by thousands of citizens in the Varela Project, as is allowed for the Cuban constitution. There is an active campaign by Cubans from all over the globe, asking for rights for all Cubans and the Plebiscite, which is a first vote for the long-lasting changes that Cuba needs.

On 22 July 2012, Cuban State Security detained the car in which my father, Oswaldo Payá, and my friend Harold Cepero, along with two young European politicians, were traveling. All of them survived, but my father disappeared for hours only to reappear dead, in the hospital in which Harold would die without medical attention.

The Cuban government wouldn’t have dared to carry out its death threats against my father if the US government and the democratic world had been showing solidarity. If you turn your face, impunity rages. While you slept, the regime was conceiving their cleansing of the pro-democracy leaders to come. While you sleep, a second generation of dictators is planning with impunity their next crimes.

That is why we hope that this Congress demands that the petition for an independent investigation, regarding the attack against Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero, be included in the negotiations with the Cuban government, and that we hear publicly what response is given to this point.  Knowing the whole truth is essential in any transition process, and to tolerate impunity is to endanger the lives of all Cubans wherever we live.

Don’t turn your backs on Cubans again; don’t earn the distrust of the new actors of our inevitably free future, in exchange for complicity with a gerontocracy who belongs to the Cold War era.

I want to conclude with the words my father wrote to President Obama 5 years ago:

“Your government must move forward and extend a hand to the people and government of Cuba, but with the request that the hands of Cuban citizens not be tied. Otherwise, the opening will only be for the Cuban government, and will be another episode of an international spectacle full of hypocrisy. A spectacle that reinforces oppression, and plunges the Cuban people deeper into the lie and total defenselessness, seriously damaging the desire of Cubans for the inevitable changes to be achieved peacefully. The pursuit of friendship between the United States of America and Cuba is inseparable from the pursuit of liberty. We want to be free and be friends.”

God bless and protect our peoples.

Thank you.

Rosa María Payá Acevedo

3 February 2015

Original in English