EFE (via 14ymedio), Washington, D.C., March 7, 2024 — Cuban activist Rosa María Payá has been invited by Congressman Carlos Giménez to witness the annual State of the Union speech that the President of the United States, Joe Biden, will deliver this Thursday at the Capitol, the Republican legislator reported on Wednesday.
The representative of an electoral district comprising Miami-Dade County and the Florida keys pointed out that with the presence of Payá, daughter of the late Cuban opposition leader Oswaldo Payá, he seeks to “continue denouncing the evils of the regime.”
In a video published on social network X, Giménez said that Rosa María Payá will join him during the speech “to denounce the current brutality of Cuba, demand freedom for all political prisoners and hold the regime responsible for its crimes against humanity.”
He warned that “Cuban communism poses a direct threat to the security of the United States and the stability of the western hemisphere,” and he criticized the recent trip to Havana of his colleagues, alluding to the visit that Democratic legislators Pramila Jayapal and Ilhan Omar made in February to the Cuban capital.
The congressman emphasized that Rosa María is a champion in the defense of human rights and “a tireless fighter for the liberation of Cuba from communism.”
He alluded to the lawsuit for death by negligence that the Payá family filed last week in Miami against former U.S. Ambassador Víctor Manuel Rocha, who is detained and is expected to plead guilty to conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government.
In the lawsuit, Oswaldo Payá’s widow, Ofelia Acevedo, accuses Rocha of having been “an accomplice” in the “murder” of her husband.
“My family seeks what we have always sought, justice, the truth, and an end to the impunity of the Cuban regime and its accomplices.”
Payá “was assassinated by the Castro regime in 2012, a period during which Rocha was collaborating with Cuba while advising U.S. national security officials and had access to the most sensitive intelligence information,” stated the organization Cuba Decide, founded by Rosa María Payá.
“My family is looking for what we have always sought – justice, the truth, and ending the impunity of the Cuban regime and its accomplices, as we have done since the murder of my father in 2012,” Rosa María Payá said in her statement from the congressman’s office.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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