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Who killed Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá?

Remembering Oswaldo on his Birthday and the first step on the path to changeNotes from the Cuban Exile Quarter: Remembering Oswaldo on his Birthday and the first step on the path to change

John Suarez
February 28, 2013

You are who decides, you have to make the decision to decide. You are the protagonist. The first step is to allow all that is good within you to come out and to rid yourself of grudges, of hubris, or of arrogance if you have abused power, of fears, and of that desperation that paralyzes many." - All Cubans, The Path to Change, last page of printed handout under Orientations

My father should be celebrating his 62nd birthday. Join us tonight, 7:30pm to talk about #SOSVenezuela and Cuba. - Rosa María Payá Acevedo over twitter


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Tony Diaz Sanchez,

Oswaldo Payá should be together with his family tonight in a modest neighborhood in Havana, El Cerro, celebrating his 62nd birthday. However, the totalitarian dictatorship that tonight is overseeing the murder of students in Venezuela who want to see their homeland freed, nineteen months ago on July 22, 2012 murdered both Oswaldo and Harold Cepero, a Christian Liberation Movement youth leader.
Nineteen moths has passed since the murdered of Payá and Cepero by the Castroit regime. After a year and seven month of their death we are still without answers. Over 100 public figures from around the world have called on the highest officials of the United Nations to launch an international and independent investigation, but so far the UN has not launch it.

Paya’s family have alleged that he was killed by military officers of the Castroit regime. It is necessary to keep insisting in an independent investigation on his death.
 
UN to hear testimony of foul play in Cuban dissident’s deathhttp://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2014/06/16/un-to-hear-testimony-of-foul-play-in-cuban-dissidents-death/

Published June 16, 2014 in Cuba by unwatch

Angel Carromero, driver in the suspicious crash that killed legendary Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá, to address UN Human Rights Council

carromero_2.jpg
Angel Carromero (inset) survived the crash that killed Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá
only to be accused by the Cuban government of vehicular homicide.

GENEVA, June 16, 2014 – As world figures continue to call for an independent investigation into the July 2012 car crash that killed Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá, Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch is bringing Angel Carromero – the Spanish politician who drove the car that many allege was targeted by Cuban security agents – to testify before diplomats, rights activists and journalists at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Carromero’s first-ever presentation at the UN will take place tomorrow, Tuesday, June 17th, on a panel that will also featuring Cuban poet and former political prisoner Regis Iglesias.

UN Watch is organizing the event as part of a coalition of human rights groups that include the German NGO International Society for Human Rights, Iniciativa por Venezuela, Human Rights Foundation, Humano y Libre, and Directorio.

Last year, the U.S. government joined calls for an international investigation into the car crash in eastern Cuba that killed Payá and Harold Cepero, a fellow activist in the Christian Liberation Movement.

After the crash, Cuba blamed Carromero, claiming he accidentally slammed the car into a tree killing the two passengers. In a one-day trial, a Cuban court sentenced Carromero to four years in prison for vehicular homicide.

In December 2012, Carromero returned to his native Spain, where he was allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence, which has since been relaxed to allow his freedom of movement with an ankle monitor.

Carromero will testify how Cuban security forces coerced him into recording a video confession—and will instead reveal what really happened.

# # # # # #

“The Situation of Human Rights in Cuba—And What Really Happened to Oswaldo Payá”
Tuesday, 17 June 2014, UN Human Rights Council, Palais des Nations, Geneva

• Ángel Francisco Carromero Barrios, Spanish politician, driver of the car in deadly accident of Cuban democracy leader Oswaldo Payá

• Regis Iglesias, Cuban poet, arrested with 74 other dissidents during the notorious 2003 Black Spring crackdown, Amnesty International prisoner of conscience. Exiled to Spain in 2010, he is spokesman for the Christian Liberation Movement

• Janisset Rivero, Directorio Democratico Cubano
It is good news that the U.N. at least have decided to hear the testimony of Angel Carromero on the suspicious death of Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá in July 2012 car crash. It is a first step in an independent investigation on Oswaldo Payá death.
 
UN hears testimony that contradicts Cuban account of dissident’s death
UN hears testimony that contradicts Cuban account of dissident's death, Ecumenical News

Peter Kenny
Monday, June 23 2014

The United Nations Human Rights Council, currently sitting in Geneva, has heard testimony from leaders of the Venezuela protest movement and from the survivor of the car crash that killed Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá.

The hearings on human rights in Venezuela and Cuba, was organized by a coalition of NGO's as an official event inside the Human Rights Council in Geneva on June 17.

Keith M. Harper, the U.S. representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva said, "We reiterate our call for an independent international investigation into the death of Oswaldo Payá.

"We have a simple question: What is Cuba afraid of?"

Eusebio Costa 22-year-old student activist, President of the Student Center at the Catholic University Santa Rosa in Caracas; member of the protest camp in Las Mercedes spoke before the rights council.

"We came to Geneva to ask the U.N. to send a mission to Venezuela to evaluate the cases of human rights violations that students have been subjected to.

"[The Venezuelan government] has been talking about a conspiracy that we are part of a war, that we were sent here by the CIA, which we weren't.

"Thirty-two people were murdered while protesting; I hope that the United Nations will not remain indifferent to violations in Venezuela."

Alejandro Suarez Teppa, a 33-year-ol Venezuelan philosophy student and protest camp leader said he was arrested and brutally detained last month.

"We were afraid to come here today," he said
The human rights activists, dissidents from Cuba and Venezuela, were harassed by delegates of those countries, current members of the UN Human Right Council, during the delivering of their testimony.

These cheerleaders of the repressive Castroit military regime and Venezuela authoritarian regime, were trying to suppress the right of the dissidents to voice their grievances at the UN panel, as they routinely do at home.
 
Oswaldo Payás death in Cuba two years ago still awaits a proper investigation
Oswaldo Payá

By Editorial Board July 21, 2014

TWO YEARS ago Tuesday, a blue rental car was wrecked off a deserted road in eastern Cuba. In the back seat was Oswaldo Payá, one of Cuba’s best-known dissidents, who had championed the idea of a democratic referendum on the nation’s future. Mr. Payá’s voice was not the loudest against the Castro dictatorship, but it was one of the most committed and determined. On the day of the car crash, he had been trying for more than a decade to bring about a peaceful revolution, one that would empower Cubans to decide their own fate and end the half-century of misrule by Fidel and Raúl Castro.

Mr. Payá endured harassment and intimidation for his efforts. Many of his friends and allies were jailed. He received threats by phone and other warnings, some violent. But he did not give up. On the day of the crash, Mr. Payá was traveling with a young associate, Harold Cepero, across the island to meet with supporters of the Christian Liberation Movement. In the front of the rental car was a visitor from Spain, Ángel Carromero, a leader of the youth wing of that country’s ruling party, and one from Sweden.

The car spun out of control after being rammed from behind by a vehicle bearing state license plates, according to Mr. Carromero. While he and the associate from Sweden survived, Mr. Payá and Mr. Cepero were killed. Mr. Carromero says he was then coerced to confess and subjected to a rigged trial in order to cover up what really happened. Mr. Carromero’s videotaped “confession,” broadcast on television, was forced upon him; he was told to read from cards written by the state security officers. He was sentenced to four years in prison for vehicular homicide and later released to return to Spain to serve out his term.

Since then, there has been no serious, credible investigation of the deaths. Cuba has brushed aside all demands for an international probe that would reveal the truth. Mr. Payá held dual Cuban and Spanish citizenship, but Spain has been shamefully uninterested in getting to the bottom of the story. The truth matters — to show the Castro brothers that they cannot snuff out a voice of freedom with such absolute impunity.

On May 14, Pope Francis received Mr. Payá’s family at his private residence. We don’t know what the pope said, but Mr. Payá’s daughter, Rosa Maria, delivered a letter carrying an impassioned appeal for the cause of democracy and human dignity in Cuba. Hopefully, the pope will keep listening to the voices demanding change in Cuba and speak out for democracy and freedom there. The values that Mr. Payá fought for in Cuba must not be forgotten. Other dissidents are still struggling, despite crackdowns, beatings, jailing and persecution, and they must not be forsaken.
Paya’s family have alleged that he was killed by military officers of the Castroit regime. It is necessary to keep insisting in an independent investigation on his death.

There is no doubt that the Castroit regime killed Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero since they have become a political threat to them.
 
The Political Legacy of Oswaldo Paya / 14ymedio
The Political Legacy of Oswaldo Paya / 14ymedio | Translating Cuba

Posted on July 22, 2014

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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 ?”
Payá had the guts to stand up against the tyrannical Castroit regime that harassed him for decades. He was a true hero fighting the good fight, which remained in Cuba and gave up his life in the struggle against the Castroit tyrannical regime.

Payá’s call for liberty and human rights in Cuba will be realized someday. I am sure it will.
 
Cuban defector says he has information about Payás death
Cuban defector says he has information about Payá

By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

An officer in Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior who claims to be related to former MININT chief Jose Abrantes and to have valuable information has defected and is being held in a migrant detention center in the Bahamas.

Ortelio Abrahantes Bacallao, 42, claims that fellow counterintelligence agents told him that dissident Osvaldo Payá was killed when intelligence agents rammed his car in an attempt to stop and search it, and not in a one-car accident as the Cuban government claims.

None of the claims could be independently confirmed. But he has documents identifying him as a member of MININT’s Technical Investigations Directorate, a police-like unit that investigates common crimes, and a graduate of MININT’s law school.

Abrahantes Bacallao told El Nuevo Herald he held the rank of major in MININT’s Directorate of Counterintelligence (DCI) and was last in charge of all the ministry’s land and sea transportation operations in the province of Ciego de Avila, in central Cuba. The powerful ministry is in overall charge of the island nation’s domestic security.

The defector said he launched his escape March 24 from a key off the northern coast of the province aboard a MININT-owned sailboat, but was picked up three days later by the U.S. Coast Guard and was taken to the Bahamas. He is being held at the Carmichael Road migrant detention center in Nassau.

Bahamian police and United Nations officials have interviewed him for his application for political asylum, Abrahantes Bacallao said. But he fears he will be murdered if the Nassau government repatriates him to Cuba before the application is processed.

“I know too much. They would love to have me in their hands,” Abrahantes Bacallao told El Nuevo Herald. His Miami lawyer, David Alvarez, said he “faces being executed if he returns to Cuba because he was involved in the military.”

The defector said his father was a cousin of Interior Minister Gen. José Abrantes, who was arrested in 1989 and charged with failing to stop the drug trafficking and corruption that led to the execution of Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa and three others that same year. He was serving a 20-year prison term when he died in 1991 in what friends described as mysterious circumstances.

Although Abrahantes Bacallao spells his surname differently from Jose Abrantes, he has claimed that his birth certificate spells it the same way and that the “h” was added when he joined the MININT. Official Cuban records often contain misspellings.

The defector said he heard details about the Payá case during a party with other DCI officers about one month after his death on July 22, 2012, in what Cuban officials portrayed as a one-car accident caused by his driver, Spanish politician Angel Carromero. The Spaniard has insistently alleged that he was rammed from behind by another vehicle.

One senior officer at the party told him that counterintelligence agents from the province of Holguin, east of Ciego de Avila, who were driving a red Lada vehicle model 2107 had tried to stop Carromero’s vehicle to search it an instead caused it to crash, Abrahantes Bacallao told El Nuevo Herald. The crash occurred south of Holguin and near the city of Bayamo.

Payá and fellow dissident Harold Cepero died at a hospital in Bayamo, according to the defector’s version. Cuban officials have said Payá died at the crash from massive head trauma and Cepero at a Bayamo hospital.

Abrahantes Bacallao said he was told the agents in the crash were from the KJ department, which specializes in surveillance, of DCI’s Section XXI, in charge of monitoring and repressing dissidents.

Friends at the party also told him that MININT rewarded the agents with medals and ordered the Lada chopped down to erase all evidence of a two-car crash, according to the defector. They knew about the accident in part because Cepero was a native of Ciego de Avila.

Abrahantes Bacallao added he was also told the Cuban government had claimed that Payá — 2003 winner of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize and founder of the Christian Liberation Movement — died at the site of the crash in order to cover up its responsibility.
Carromero and another passenger, Swedish politician Jens Aron Modig, survived the crash.

Modig has claimed he was asleep when they crashed. Carromero was convicted in Cuba of vehicular homicide for losing control of his vehicle and slamming into a tree. He was sentenced to four years, but is serving the sentence in Spain.

Payá’s daughter, Rosa Maria Payá, said the family has spoken with the attorney for Abrahantes Bacallao but will not comment on the defector’s version of the deaths of her father and Cepero.
Family members have repeatedly alleged that Payá was tailed by government agents virtually everywhere he went, and that they have information showing Carromero was rammed from behind by another vehicle. They have urged several international bodies and Spanish courts for an independent investigation of the case.

Abrahantes Bacallao said he joined the MININT in 1998, earned a law degree in 2010 from a MININT college in Havana and a master’s degree in 2011 in business administration from the university in Ciego de Avila.

Another document shows he studied “DTI operative investigations” for five years at a MININT institution in Ciego de Avila, where he said he was recruited by counterintelligence. Such recruitments are not unusual in Cuba, where people in sensitive positions have dual responsibilities to their regular supervisors and their DCI chain of command.
Top ranking Castroit senior officials keep abandoning the sinking ship. I am sure Paya’s daughter will like to speak to Ortelio about her father murderous death. Ortelio should be very careful since the long hand of the Castroit regime repressive apparatus could try murdered him in an “accident” in the Bahamas.
 
The island of Cuba nowadays is natural habitat for humans being warehoused from the real world. Something like the Zoo, where the animals are confined to an area by moats and are taken care of by caretakers and handlers.

The captives on the island of Dr. Castro are fed a minimum, living three to four generation on the same house, receiving minimal medical care and transportation, and are taught only what the captors want them to believe and know, and their movement is also closely monitored.
 
Spaniard convicted in death of Cuban activist Payá recounts ordeal in visit to Miami
Spaniard convicted in death of Cuban activist Payá recounts ordeal in visit to Miami | The Miami Herald

BY NORA GÁMEZ TORRES
NGAMEZTORRES@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM 10/11/2014


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Angel Carromero was emphatic during his visit to Miami on Friday: “What happened on July 22 wasn’t an accident, it was an assault,” he said.

The young SPANISH LAWYER was sentenced to four years in jail in the deaths of opposition figures Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero in a car crash near the Cuban city of Bayamo on July 22, 2012. His fate was decided in a Cuban courtroom because of his alleged role as the DRIVER of the car in which they traveled en route to Santiago de Cuba. Although Cuba insisted the wreck was a car accident, others said State Security agents had been following the car and were responsible.

Carromero was found guilty in a trial he describes as full of contradictions, in his BOOK Death under Suspicion, which he is currently promoting in the United States after obtaining a special permit to do so. Cuba eventually released Carromero to Spain to serve out his term.

Another key witness in the case, Jens Aron Modig continues to remain quiet. The Swedish delegate was also traveling in the car with Carromero but was quickly repatriated to his homeland due to a supposed pact of silence.

However, Carromero decided to speak up a few months after returning to Spain.

On Friday afternoon, he attended a Miami Herald editorial board meeting and displayed a multitude of video stills from footage belonging to the Cuban government. Carromero explained that this footage was used by Cuban authorities to produce a video aimed at convincing the public that an accident provoked by him was the true cause behind the death of one of the main leaders of the Cuban opposition.

In the photos, which were also presented at his trial in Cuba, it can be clearly seem that the details of the car and location of the accident change inexplicably. In one set of photos, the crashed car has a bumper on it; in another it doesn’t. The car in the images is sometimes a blue Hyundai on grass; in others, it is on sand or near a small river.

Carromero, who is an advisor of Madrid’s City Council and the director of the New Generations of the Popular Party in Madrid, pinpointed other inconsistencies in the case.

The three witnesses who testified, despite remembering exactly at which speed the car was traveling, couldn’t, however, specify who took out the four people who had been inside the car.

They also didn’t remember the white car that Carromero claims almost “appeared out of thin air” and took him to a hospital in Bayamo, which was soon after “militarized.”

He also remembers that in the Cuban video in which he is shown incriminating himself he has his shirt buttoned in some takes and unbuttoned in others, something he did to prove that the video was staged and not a spontaneous confession.

Carromero claimed to speak with a “clear conscience” about the trial, among other topics. Here are some questions and answers Friday. (Click the link above to read the interview).
Carromero recount his ordeal during the time he was in a Castroit dungeon incommunicated. They use East German type of interrogation. The regime MININT is ''almost a carbon copy'' of the repressive Stasi security system, exported by East Germany to Cuba in the 1970s and '80s, and the ties between the two organizations run far deeper than previously known.
 
No rewarding the Cuban regime
No rewarding the Cuban regime - The Washington Post

Letters to the Editor
October 27, 2014

Conversations with the Cuban government, which have been maintained for decades by U.S. congressmen, lobbies, nongovernmental organizations, businessmen, journalists, religious leaders, intelligence and government officers, have hardly served democracy in Cuba. Neither has the U.S. trade embargo.

What Wayne S. Smith, Cuba project director for the Center for International Policy, said in an Oct. 26 letter [“Keep the trade embargo?”] is a Cuban move “toward liberalization,” my father, Oswaldo Payá, called “fraudulent change.” The Cuban dictatorship that is supposedly changing is the one responsible for taking the life of my father and Harold Cepero on July 22, 2012. They refuse to allow an investigation of these deaths.

How can anyone know what “the overwhelming majority” of Cubans agree on if we have no access to mass media on the island and no citizen under the age of 80 has ever voted in free and pluralistic elections? Cubans deserve and have asked for a plebiscite to change our law so that we can choose a legitimate government and hold it accountable.

Lifting the U.S. embargo is not the solution because it is not the cause of our lack of political and economic rights. I’m in favor of coherent communication, but engagement and dialogue should not be a reward for the military elite from Havana that imposes its monologic agenda on my people while fostering intolerance and hostility with absolute impunity.

Let’s not speak for the Cubans but support the right of Cubans to have a voice in Cuba.

Rosa María Payá, Miami

The writer is a member of the coordinating council of the Cuban Christian Liberation Movement.
The reason that Rosa Maria Paya's letter was published is because The Washington Post is a much more balanced newspaper than the New York Times. The NYTs probably would not have published Rosa Maria Paya's letter or if published would have edited it.

The Castroit military regime created its own "vacuum" with travel restrictions. Millions of tourists from Canada, US, Europe, and Latin America traveled to Cuba. By 2008 the US had become Cuba's 5 trading partner. Only the uninformed outside Cuba still believe the Castroit propaganda that blames the "blockade" for the lack of food, medicines, economic development and freedom in the island.
 
Many Americans think that if they are allow to vacation in Cuba, they could influence an opening of the system. In reality, like the others tourist, there contact whit the average Cubans will be limited since the resorts have been built in isolated areas controlled by the regime security forces and most of them don’t speak Spanish.

During the last 11 years 23.5 millions of tourist from around the world visited Cuba. Around 10% of those visitors were from the US, about to 2.5 million tourists. All those millions of tourist visiting Cuba didn’t have a visible impact on the system; they haven’t been able to influence a political and economic opening of the Castroit tyrannical regime. So much for the argument of the US tourist power to bring about change.
 
Rosa Maria Payá is right, establishing relations should not mean seeking business deals with the Castroit corrupt tyrannical military regime at the expense of the suppressed voice of Cuban people. The deaths of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero are the latest of many that have resulted from the Castroit regime decades’ long domestic and international lawlessness of which Mr. Gross is the unfortunate current American face of its many victims.
 
The legacy of Oswaldo Payá and his nonviolent fight for human rights
Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter: The legacy of Oswaldo Payá and his nonviolent fight for human rights

POSTED BY JOHN SUAREZ

"Two years and eight months since the unexplained deaths of Haroldand Oswaldo." - Christian Liberation Movement, over twitter March 22, 2015

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Despite calls for an international and transparent investigation by world leaders including Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and Anti-Apartheid leader Archbishop Desmond Tutu none has been carried out and made public.

Unfortunately, the international environment at the moment does not favor such an investigation. On December 17, 2014 Gerardo Hernandez, the Castro spy convicted in the conspiracy to murder four individuals to a life sentence was freed, along with two other regime spies by President Barack Obama. On February 24, 2015, nineteen years after the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, Raul Castro celebrated the return of his spies and planted medals on them. The unrepentant spy announced that he was ready for his next order.

Rosa María Payá Acevedo asked the following question in December 2013 after the US president shook hands with the Cuban dictator in South Africa: "Why did Barack Obama shake the hand of my father's killer, Raul Castro?" Rosa's question was answered on December 17, 2014: to free three Cuban spies, opening the US embassy in Havana, and announce a campaign to end the US commercial embargo.

Last month on February 3, 2015 Rosa María before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee provided the following indictment of the Obama administration's outreach to the dictatorship in Cuba:

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.

Democracy is in decline in Latin America. Human rights are worsening in Cuba and in this international environment it has been in decline worldwide for the past nine years. The policies pursued by Western democracies do not promise a turn around any time soon.

Nevertheless, one cannot despair and the power of nonviolence needs not only to be remembered but acted upon. Speaking truth to power and engaging in effective nonviolent campaigns that topple entrenched unjust systems does not cost billions of dollars. Appeasing tyrants have generatedgreat profits for industries in the past as has going to war against them. This is both the tragedy and opportunity of nonviolence that provides power to the powerless. It can emerge spontaneously but with training, tactics and a strategy the odds of success increase dramatically while at the same time lowering the cost in lives.

On what would have been Oswaldo's 63rd birthday on February 28th a Mass was held for him at Our Lady of Charity and a rousing call was made there to nonviolent resistance in a homily that reflected on the prayer, Our Father.
Oswaldo Payá. on March 30, 2012, speaking on behalf of the Christian Liberation Movement he warned how the dictatorship would use the resources of the Cuban diaspora to perpetuate itself in power. Hs said: “Our Movement denounces the regime's attempt to impose a fraudulent change, i.e. change without rights and the inclusion of many interests in this change that sidesteps democracy and the sovereignty of the people of Cuba. The attempt to link the Diaspora in this fraudulent change is to make victims participate in their own oppression. The Diaspora does not have to "assume attitudes and policies in entering the social activity of the island." The Diaspora is a Diaspora because they are Cuban exiles to which the regime denied rights as it denies them to all Cubans. It is not in that part of oppression, without rights, and transparency that the Diaspora has to be inserted, that would be part of fraudulent change.”

Less than four months later he was killed, along with Christian Liberation Movement youth leader Harold Cepero in what now appears to have been an extrajudicial killing carried out by Cuban state security.
 
The key to liberation in a nonviolent struggle was first formulated theoretically in 1548, and over twitter Rosa María Payá quoted a key passage from that important work on strategic nonviolence:

“I don't ask that you push or topple the tyrant, but simply that you support him no longer.” - Etienne de La Boetie, 1548

Etienne de La Boetie's call from 1548 was echoed by Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas when he denounced the attempt “to make victims participate in their own oppression.”

Change occurs not by fighting or resisting the dictatorship, but by ending one's participation in one's own oppression. This is a powerful and nonviolent idea that poises an existential threat to the Castroit tyrannical regime in Cuba.
 
Cuban activists daughter in Tampa pushing for referendum
Cuban activist’s daughter in Tampa pushing for referendum | TBO.com and The Tampa Tribune

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Rosa Maria Paya reads a poem at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami, in 2014 in Coral Gables. el nuevo herald

By Paul Guzzo | Tribune Staff
Published: June 25, 2015

Rosa Maria Paya, one of Cuba’s best-known young dissident leaders, has a message for those who stand on both sides of the major question facing the communist island nation: Will normalizing relations between the U.S. and Cuba hasten real freedom for its people?

“They both want to help the Cuban people,” said Paya, 26, who is visiting Tampa this weekend. “I’m sure they agree what is best for the Cuban people is for them to decide on their own destiny.”

Paya’s organization, Cuba Decides, is urging the international community to pressure the Cuban government for a plebiscite — a direct vote of the populace on matters of national importance.
The question she wants answered: Do you want free multiparty elections covered by news organizations without government interference?

She will present her case at 11 a.m. Saturday at the headquarters of Casa de Cuba, 2506 W. Curtis St. At 12:30 p.m. Sunday, she will attend Casa de Cuba’s 25th anniversary celebration at La Giraldilla Hanley, 8218 Hanley Road.

This will be her first U.S. presentation of the plebiscite campaign, centered at the website Cuba Decide | Pregúntale al Pueblo.

“Everyone needs to help us exert pressure and spread the word that Cubans have the right to choose their government,” Paya said. “No matter your party or political affiliation, this is about supporting real change in Cuba.”


Cuban dissident’s daughter says he was assassinated
AFP

[video]http://launch.newsinc.com/share.html?trackingGroup=91421&siteSection=tbo_hom_non_non_dynamic&videoId=25021766[/video]
Click link above for full article
Cuban Public Opinion Survey conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI).

A total of 463 Cuban adults between the ages of 18 to 60 years were surveyed, asking questions on various topics ranging from economics, democracy, freedoms and use of technology. In the sample involved 46% of women and 54% of men between the ages of 18 to 60 years, who expressed his disappointment with the majority of political and economic situation in the nation that already has over half a century of communist rule. In the investigation 78.2% of respondents would vote for a change of political system a democratic system and political pluralism, freedom of choice, voting and free speech if given the chance.
 
Rosa Maria Paya's message: Let the people of Cuba decide their future
Uncommon Sense: Rosa Maria Paya's message: Let the people of Cuba decide their future

http://marcmasferrer.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c54f053ef01bb084a0edb970d-800wi
Rosa Maria Paya

Uncommon Sense
June 28, 2015

The struggle for freedom in Cuba is not for anyone afraid of what appear to be insurmountable odds or without the faith to believe that they will eventually prevail. After more than 56 years of communist dictatorship, winning Cuba's freedom is not a task for the meek or the faithless.

Rosa Maria Paya is neither.

She is committed to change in Cuba but not change for change's sake or as she puts it, a "fraudulent change" -- for example, economic "reforms and the normalization of relations with the U.S. -- that leaves the dictators in power. But a change based on the will of the Cuban people.

To determine that that will, Paya and others have launched the CubaDecide campaign, which seeks a national plebiscite to ask Cubans what they want for their nation and their futures. Specifically, it wants to put on a ballot this question:

"Are you in favor of free, just and pluralistic elections that give all Cubans the right to be nominated and elected democratically; the freedom of expression and of the press; the right to organize freely into political parties and other social organizations? Yes or No?"


CubaDecide is extension of her late father Oswaldo Paya's Varela Project campaign, which in 2003 presented to the Castro regime thousands of petition signatures demanding a similar referendum. The regime responded with the "black spring" crackdown that left several Varela Project organizers -- but not Paya -- in prison.

Rosa Maria, 26, assumed her father's mantle after he died in a suspicious car crash in 2012 that his daughter and others have blamed on the Cuban secret police.

Paya and other CubaDecide organizers were in Tampa this weekend to debut their campaign in the United States.

“Everyone needs to help us exert pressure and spread the word that Cubans have the right to choose their government,” Paya told the Tampa Tribune before her visit. “No matter your party or political affiliation, this is about supporting real change in Cuba.”

Before a full house at Casa de Cuba, Paya laid out her simple but very powerful message for the Castro dictatorship and the world: Cubans must be free to decide their future.

Paya is not a wild-eye idealist. She understands the magnitude of the challenge -- she knows what happened to her father and to many of his followers. And she understands that the Castro regime is not about to allow a national referendum on a question whose answer could mean their demise.

But as she repeated many times, change will not happen unless she and other Cubans demand it. If not know, when? If not us, who?

Like her father before her, Rosa Maria has a passionate belief in the Cuban people and that if given a real chance to decide their future, Cuba's fate will be much brighter than to which it has been condemned for more than 56 years.

For more about the CubaDecide campaign, including how you can help go here. Cuba Decide | Pregúntale al Pueblo


And to see more photos from Paya's presentation at Casa Cuba, go here. https://www.facebook.com/marc.r.mas...2712.1073741895.554822711&type=1&l=26dd0e7a2e
Click link above for full message.
Time fly, already 3 years has passed since the dissidents Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero were killed. Since then Rosa María Payá, daughter of the decease líder of the Movimiento Cristiano de Liberación (Cristian Movement of Liberation), keep fighting, supported by the report of the Human Rights Foundation, with the object that the Castroit regime pay for the committed crimes.

Her message is simple and powerful, “Let the Cuban people decide their future”
 
Rosa Maria Paya's message: Let the people of Cuba decide their future
Uncommon Sense: Rosa Maria Paya's message: Let the people of Cuba decide their future

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Rosa Maria Paya

Uncommon Sense
June 28, 2015

The struggle for freedom in Cuba is not for anyone afraid of what appear to be insurmountable odds or without the faith to believe that they will eventually prevail. After more than 56 years of communist dictatorship, winning Cuba's freedom is not a task for the meek or the faithless.

Rosa Maria Paya is neither.

She is committed to change in Cuba but not change for change's sake or as she puts it, a "fraudulent change" -- for example, economic "reforms and the normalization of relations with the U.S. -- that leaves the dictators in power. But a change based on the will of the Cuban people.

To determine that that will, Paya and others have launched the CubaDecide campaign, which seeks a national plebiscite to ask Cubans what they want for their nation and their futures. Specifically, it wants to put on a ballot this question:

"Are you in favor of free, just and pluralistic elections that give all Cubans the right to be nominated and elected democratically; the freedom of expression and of the press; the right to organize freely into political parties and other social organizations? Yes or No?"

CubaDecide is extension of her late father Oswaldo Paya's Varela Project campaign, which in 2003 presented to the Castro regime thousands of petition signatures demanding a similar referendum. The regime responded with the "black spring" crackdown that left several Varela Project organizers -- but not Paya -- in prison.

Rosa Maria, 26, assumed her father's mantle after he died in a suspicious car crash in 2012 that his daughter and others have blamed on the Cuban secret police.

Paya and other CubaDecide organizers were in Tampa this weekend to debut their campaign in the United States.

“Everyone needs to help us exert pressure and spread the word that Cubans have the right to choose their government,” Paya told the Tampa Tribune before her visit. “No matter your party or political affiliation, this is about supporting real change in Cuba.”

Before a full house at Casa de Cuba, Paya laid out her simple but very powerful message for the Castro dictatorship and the world: Cubans must be free to decide their future.

Paya is not a wild-eye idealist. She understands the magnitude of the challenge -- she knows what happened to her father and to many of his followers. And she understands that the Castro regime is not about to allow a national referendum on a question whose answer could mean their demise.

But as she repeated many times, change will not happen unless she and other Cubans demand it. If not know, when? If not us, who?

Like her father before her, Rosa Maria has a passionate belief in the Cuban people and that if given a real chance to decide their future, Cuba's fate will be much brighter than to which it has been condemned for more than 56 years.

For more about the CubaDecide campaign, including how you can help go here. Cuba Decide | Pregúntale al Pueblo

And to see more photos from Paya's presentation at Casa Cuba, go here. https://www.facebook.com/marc.r.mas...12.1073741895.55482 2711&type=1&l=26dd0e7a2e

Watch her presentation at Casa Cuba here:
Time fly, already 3 years has passed since the dissidents Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero were killed. Since then Rosa María Payá, daughter of the decease líder of the Movimiento Cristiano de Liberación (Cristian Movement of Liberation), keep fighting, supported by the report of the Human Rights Foundation, with the object that the Castroit regime pay for the committed crimes.

Her message is simple and powerful, “Let the Cuban people decide their future”
 
Three years without Oswaldo and Harold
Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter: Three years without Oswaldo and Harold ...

John Suarez
July 15, 2015

July 22nd will mark three years since Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante were killed in what appears to have been a premeditated extrajudicial execution by Cuban state security. Join the Payá family and Christian Liberation Movement in honoring their memory.

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"The true Liberation is to always remember that humanity is not orphaned because we are all brothers, we are all children of God." - Oswaldo Payá - July 22, 2012 - July 22, 2015

Three years without Oswaldo and without Harold...

The family of Oswaldo Payá and his brothers in the Christian Liberation movement, would like for you to accompany us to the Eucharistic celebration, that in memory of their lives we will offer next July 22 in Our Lady of Charity (La Ermita) at 8 pm.
In an interview, the Pope responding to a question by a Fox News reporter about human right violation in Cuba, “Should Havana improve its record on human rights, as well as religious freedom?”, answered neither yes nor no, but that Europe should work on expanding religious freedom. The Pope made clear he perceives human right violations in Cuba as a subject worthy of little discussion.

How Payá would had reacted to the Pope’s comment? I believe he had said, "Forgive ‘him’ father for ‘he’ do not know what ‘he’ is doing." As a catholic, he would held no grudge.
 
The Ladies in White, most of them Catholic members, has attended Sunday Mass in white clothes for years as a peaceful dissidence statement against the Castroit regime. The regime State Security for fourteen consecutive Sundays have rounded them up and had them arrested as they walked out of church for marching in support of political prisoners.
 
NGO reports on Paya's death, suggests Cuban gov't murdered him
NGO reports on Paya's death, suggests Cuban gov't murdered him | Fox News Latino

Published July 22, 2015 / EFE

A report prepared by the Human Rights Foundation and published Wednesday says that evidence gathered to date in the case of Cuban dissident leader Oswaldo Paya "suggests" the "direct responsibility" of the Cuban government for his death.

The report, compiled by lawyers for the non-governmental human rights defense organization, comes on the third anniversary of Paya's death in a car crash, an accident in which fellow dissident Harold Cepero also died.
The car the men were riding in, which was being driven by Spaniard Angel Carromero on a Cuban highway, hit a tree, killing the two dissidents.

Rosa Maria Paya, the daughter of the head of the Christian Liberation Movement, was present at the presentation of the New York-based HRF's report in Washington.

"The power in Havana believed it was necessary to destroy my father. But this report will be an important tool against the impunity of that power," said the daughter of the activist.

The document collects testimony and discusses physical evidence that were uncovered "in the months after the incident" and which were not considered by the court that convicted Carromero and sentenced him to four years in prison.

The report says that the "evidence, which was deliberately ignored, strongly suggests that the events of July 22, 2012 were not an accident, but instead the result of a car crash directly caused by agents of the state."

"Specifically, the evidence suggests that their deaths were the result of a car crash directly caused by agents of the state, acting with the intent to kill Oswaldo Paya and the passengers in the vehicle (in which) he was riding, with the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm to them, or with reckless or depraved indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to their lives," said HRF general counsel Javier El-Hage.

El-Hage said that there is solid evidence that the car in which Paya and Cepero were riding was crashed into by another car, although it is not clear whether the two men died upon impact or whether they were pulled from the car and then beaten to death by the people in the other car.

The report also says that the Cuban government violated the rights of the Paya family by not allowing them to participate in the investigation and the trial, as well as the rights of Carromero to have access to an adequate legal defense.

Carromero, a youth leader with Spain's governing Popular Party, was sentenced to four years in a Cuban prison for vehicular homicide but an agreement between Madrid and Havana allowed him to serve his sentence in his homeland, and he was released on parole last May.

Since the accident, the Paya family has always questioned the government version of the crash and has demanded an independent investigation. EFE
There is no doubt that the Castroit regime killed Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero since they have become a political threat to them. The evidence clearly shows that this was a set up assassination by the Castroit regime. They kill and spread the fear of death trying not to leave any evidence.
 
It is clear that the majority of the damage is to the rear half of the vehicle. I would describe it as if it were crushed from behind. To believe that the deaths occurred because the vehicle hit a tree would most likely stem from a belief that the tree was coming from behind at high speed.

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The Castroit regime posted false photos of the Oswaldo Paya accident crash site on the facebook page of the Cuban communist party. Why are they doing it? What are they trying to spin? This tactics doesn’t work on this time and age of internet information. The images of the car speak for itself.
 
If the Castroit regime has nothing to hide, given the high international profile of Mr. Paya, an international investigation should be allowed by the regime. The Castroit tyrannical regime has dedicated itself to a campaign of character assassination, ranging from videos on TV over data going back years on the man's driving record, to financials of his family in the state controlled media in Cuba and affiliated sites abroad.

The regime has being using violence against the Cuban people during the last 56 years. “Live by the sword, die by the sword.” The regime is destined to find the violence it seek and die instead
 
Lessons for Cuba: James Lawson on the power of nonviolence
Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter: Lessons for Cuba: James Lawson on the power of nonviolence

From Havana, from the world, from memory, from the future, from the Cuban heart #AFlowerforPaya - Rosa María Payá, over twitter from Cuba on May 15, 2015

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Rosa María Payá in Cuba leaving a flowers at her father's tomb

We are witnessing the power of nonviolence on display now in Cuba with Rosa María Payá Acevedo's return to the island demanding justice and freedom for Cubans. Reverend James Lawson, a contemporary of Martin Luther King Jr., was the man who trained youth in the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins that between February 13 to May 10, 1960 challenged segregation in eating establishments. In the video below Reverend Lawson talks about the importance of Gandhi and the power of nonviolence to effect change in the video below.



Also important to remember that the adversary is not static and will take measures to neutralize your nonviolent action. For example today Sayli Navarro reported over twitter that in Cuba, "the 'authorities of the cemetery' have given the order not to permit taking photos in pantheon where Paya's remains rest."

Oswaldo Payá defied the Castroit tyrannical regime using nonviolent means and refused to hate their adversary, an example that should be follow. Oswaldo, in May 30, 2012 said:

“We Cubans have a right to our rights. Why not rights? It's time. That is the peaceful change that we promote and claim. Changes that signifies freedom, reconciliation, political pluralism and free elections. Then the Diaspora will cease being a Diaspora, because all Cubans will have rights in their own free and sovereign country. That is why we fight.”
 
With respect to not hate his adversaries, on December 17, 2002, Oswaldo said: “You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together.” He was a great leader and for this reason the Castroit tyrannical regime killed him.
 
Cuban activists daughter in Tampa pushing for referendum
Cuban activist’s daughter in Tampa pushing for referendum | TBO.com and The Tampa Tribune

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Rosa Maria Paya reads a poem at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami, in 2014 in Coral Gables. el nuevo herald

By Paul Guzzo | Tribune Staff

Rosa Maria Paya, one of Cuba’s best-known young dissident leaders, has a message for those who stand on both sides of the major question facing the communist island nation: Will normalizing relations between the U.S. and Cuba hasten real freedom for its people?

“They both want to help the Cuban people,” said Paya, 26, who is visiting Tampa this weekend. “I’m sure they agree what is best for the Cuban people is for them to decide on their own destiny.”

Paya’s organization, Cuba Decides, is urging the international community to pressure the Cuban government for a plebiscite — a direct vote of the populace on matters of national importance. The question she wants answered: Do you want free multiparty elections covered by news organizations without government interference?

She will present her case at 11 a.m. Saturday at the headquarters of Casa de Cuba, 2506 W. Curtis St. At 12:30 p.m. Sunday, she will attend Casa de Cuba’s 25th anniversary celebration at La Giraldilla Hanley, 8218 Hanley Road.

This will be her first U.S. presentation of the plebiscite campaign, centered at the website Cubadecide.com.
Click link above for full article.
Cuban Public Opinion Survey conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI):

A total of 463 Cuban adults between the ages of 18 to 60 years were surveyed, asking questions on various topics ranging from economics, democracy, freedoms and use of technology. In the sample involved 46% of women and 54% of men between the ages of 18 to 60 years, who expressed his disappointment with the majority of political and economic situation in the nation that already has over half a century of communist rule. In the investigation 78.2% of respondents would vote for a change of political system a democratic system and political pluralism, freedom of choice, voting and free speech if given the chance.
 
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and The New York Times: A Case Study
Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter: Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and The New York Times: A Case Study

"We won't engage in pacts behind the people's back or a place in arrangements where they're excluded" - Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, quoted by Rosa Maria over twitter on December 16

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Ignored by The New York Times for 21 years of his activism

Posted by John Suarez
December 22, 2015

Three years, five months, and one day ago on July 22, 2012 Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante were killed under suspicious circumstances that point to a state security operation carried out by agents of the Castro regime.

In a previous post outlined the long romance between The New York Times and the Castro regime that began in 1957. In this one it is worth looking at the coverage given to one of Cuba's most important dissident leaders. Based on a search of The New York Times database the Grey Lady began reporting on Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas on May 11, 2002 at what amounted to a total of 13 stories. Four of these stories followed his untimely death.

13 years, 8 months, 4 days before Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas's first mention in The New York Times he founded the Christian Liberation Movement on September 8, 1988, in a country where independent organizations were and continue to be outlawed by the dictatorship, and had it become a national movement despite all the obstacles it faced.
Click link above for full article.
Andrew Rosenthal, The New York Times' Editorial Page Editor, when asked about the newspaper's obsessive string of Cuba editorials, responded that their goal was to “influence American policymakers as they continue contemplating policies towards Cuba.”

The NYT lobbying campaign editorials have a common theme, among them calling Raul Castro a reformer, to which Oswaldo Payá would call “fraudulent change”; underplay the Castroit regime's crimes and abuses; ignoring the democracy movement in the island, and of course blaming the U.S. for the regime shortcomings.

The article had highlight the facts and confront the omissions, and inaccuracies of the NYT, a very important task.
 
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