Cuba 2014: Why this year is important

Despite heightened violence and repression Cubans are losing their fear

20 years ago on July 13, 1994 they were massacred by the Castro regime

The dictatorship in Cuba wants everyone to believe that 2014 is important because CELAC is being held in Havana but discerning people know better. 2014 will be important for a number of reasons. At the same time state security is engaged in a massive crackdown rounding up and threatening dissidents in an effort to maintain monopoly control. The Cuban government's body count continues to rise despite its apologists claims that it is reforming. This is nothing new.

Brothers to the Rescue martyrs murdered in act of state terrorism on February 24, 1996

 Less than a month from now, February 23rd will mark four years to the day that Cuban prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo died on hunger strike defending human rights and dignity. February 24th will mark the eighteen years since the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown where Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario De La Peña, and Armando Alejandre were blown out of the sky on orders of the Castro brothers while engaged in the search and rescue of Cuban rafters in international airspace in what was an act of state terrorism.

Died on hunger strike on February 23, 2010

2014 is also the 20th anniversary of the "13 de Marzo" tugboat masssacre off the coast of Havana where 37 men, women and children were murdered by agents of the Castro regime for wanting to flee the country on July 13, 1994.

Died under suspicious circumstances on July 22, 2012

 July 22 will mark two years since Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante were killed under suspicious circumstances. Relatives and friends continue to demand an international investigation to clear up the circumstances of their deaths.

 The Free Cuba Foundation has and will continue to call for nonviolent actions to demand justice and remember the dear departed.

This year is the 50th anniversary of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s December 11, 1964 Nobel Peace Prize Lecture that is required reading for advocates of nonviolence and resistance to injustice. Reverend King is a figure that inspired and continues to inspire Cuban dissidents to take action against injustice using nonviolent means.

Unfortunately, as the dictatorship engages in its distractions and those who should know better grant it a legitimacy that is not warranted, another man, Marcelino Abreu unjustly imprisoned, is dying on hunger strike. Let us pray that he survives this ordeal. Despite the media makeover to the contrary the human rights situation in Cuba remains dismal as revealed in Human Rights Watch's 2014 report on Cuba.

Despite the extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, death threats, and physical assaults Cubans are losing their fear and demanding that their rights be respected. On January 21, 2014 in the morning hours hundreds of Cubans took to the street in Holguin which is located in Eastern Cuba to protest against the confiscation of their household goods by government officials.

24 hour truth squad for Oswaldo and Harold

"Yes, Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero were killed, they were victims of an attack that cost them their lives and this we know from the first day by the reports that both victims and witnesses made reached their friends in and out of the island." - Regis Iglesias, February 19, 2013

Oswaldo and Harold

Seven months on July 22, 2012, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante and two other passengers in a car were forced off the road deliberately and that the series of events during and following the collision led to the deaths of the two Cuban passengers riding in the vehicle. Oswaldo and Harold were killed and the families of these two men are demanding an international investigation into their deaths to get at the truth and to obtain justice.

Earlier this week at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy Rosa María Payá, Regis Iglesias and John Suarez reiterated the call for an international investigation into the deaths of Oswaldo and Harold: 

 Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo

 
Regis Iglesias

 
John Suarez

Take action and join the petition drive requesting an international investigation into the deaths of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante and ask other people of good will to do the same. 

Meanwhile remind the world with a hash tag campaign over twitter on the seven month anniversary of these crimes that truth and justice are still needed. 

#JusticeforHaroldandOswaldo 

#JusticeForHCEandOWP 

#HCE 

#OWP 

#RememberHCEandOWP 

Remembering Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in Film

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas 1952-2012

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas spoke out for human rights and freedom inside of Cuba for decades challenging the Stalinist regime that has ruled over the country for 54 years. Over the course of that struggle Oswaldo's courageous stand was documented and recognized the world over.

Below are a few, of the many, highlights found in two documentaries: Dissident: Oswaldo Paya and The Varela Project and The Cuban Spring. The first was done by a U.S. based non-governmental organization (NGO) and the second by a Czech based NGO.



Although not directly titled, Oswaldo appeared extensively in the documentary: The Cuban Spring



Finally, Oswaldo had the opportunity to travel the world in 2002 when he recieved the European Union's Sakharov Prize and spoke at the London School of Economics. Its in Spanish without subtitles but its Oswaldo unfiltered expounding his views.



Oswaldo died under suspicious circumstances on July 22, 2012 with Harold Cepero and family members are demanding an international investigation and have an online petition underway.

Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero: Exemplars for Cubans everywhere

"Liberation is a task for the Cuban people – now with greater hope because we are definitely on the verge, on the threshold of truth and liberation. That is our hope." - Oswaldo Paya, March 29, 2012

Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas died as he lived seeking the liberation of an island nation enslaved to communist totalitarianism for over 53 years. When asked in an interview whether Cuba was a dictatorship his response demonstrated his clear thinking. He said that Cuba was not a dictatorship but that there was a dictatorship in Cuba oppressing Cubans. He did not identify the Cuban nation or its identity with repression. He recognized the existence of the dictatorship but that it was also an aberration that needed to be overcome not a permanent part of the Cuban identity.

Harold Cepero was expelled from University for advocating and gathering signatures for the Varela Project. A citizen initiative that  was supposedly  legal according to the dictatorship's constitution. He began his activism as a youth leader of the Christian Liberation Movement.

They lived their lives resisting tyranny and advocating liberation and living the lives of a free men until the day they died. Oswaldo died at age 60 seeking nonviolent democratic change for over forty years. There is controversy surrounding the circumstances of his death and that of his young compatriot Harold Cepero in an accident that  may  have been a set up by Cuban State Security to murder these Cuban patriots.

We will join Oswaldo Paya's widow and all people of good will  in demanding that an international organization investigate with transparency the circumstances surrounding this accident and the deaths of these two great Cuban exemplars.

In the mean time we will not focus on how Oswaldo and Harold died but how they lived their lives to obtain the freedom of the Cuban people. We will honor their legacy by continuing the struggle for liberation.