Oswaldo Payá

THE ONLY PROJECT FOR CUBA: LIBERTY

May our greetings reach all participants. We would especially like to recognize the organizers of this conference, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Shuman Foundation, who have worked arduously so that many voices can be heard at the event, as well as facilitating that our voice, which originates in the interior of Cuba, be heard and considered. We appreciate your efforts and dedicated solidarity greatly.

 

If anything is clear in the ideology, the doctrine or teachings of social Christianity is the idea that people, their liberty, their dignity, their rights, their right to full development, their vocation to fraternity and therefore to live a life in human community with equality and justice—all these matters are above ideological consideration, all strategy and interests and all schemes.

 

Christian Democracy is not ambiguous, in fact, it takes it cues from above; in human people themselves, the sons of God. Those ideas, those values and those goals can be summarized in a single irreducible category: liberation. That option for you neighbor, for his liberation, has been the inspiration of our peaceful struggle inside of Cuba.

 

Even though we have called on all, it is possible that at times we have marched on our own. Nevertheless, we have not struggled just for ourselves but for everyone—all Cubans. We are not only talking about the Christian Liberation Movement but the Cuban Forum, a civic mobilization, though still modest is nevertheless real and growing.

 

If we to be supported we need support now, in what we do—not in what we do not do or no one does. We do not want exclusives, nor are we exclusive. We call on everyone and many citizens have already responded. If you are not going to be in solidarity with what we do because others do not want to do it. If you are not going to cement your solidarity with us in the hope of supporting others, this historic moment will pass and your good will and spirit of solidarity will continue to float in the air without ever having found a place to land.

 

I am sure that the organizers and participants of this conference have as a goal that their reach and impact go beyond this conference. That is what we wish. That is why I suggest that we propose some time to dedicate to the fulfillment of a mission. That mission must be something that during that time of maturity cannot be postponed: to support the work that we do inside of Cuba.

 

Will you all leave here to speak of and promote support for the Cuban Forum, the Varela Project, which are campaigns for the rights of Cubans and the liberation of political prisoners? Will you all promote support the cries for liberty of these political prisoners, who lead their families in Cuba, including the Damas de Blanco?

 

That is what we are doing to create changes. If you are all in solidarity support these campaigns and do not leave without coordinating that support. We are not asking for money or material resources. We are asking for a public campaign to support our campaign for the right of all Cubans to their rights. Supporters, there is a path, we are creating it. Join us across the world with our message.

 

The Cuban government, its spokespersons, its journalists and intellectuals continue to speak about those of us working towards change that the Cuban people want and struggling peacefully for human rights in Cuba, with the same insulting, falsifying and threatening language. Its repressive bodies continue to harass civic activists and, with all the resources of totalitarianism, denying the fundamental rights to all Cubans.

 

Political and common prisoners continue to live in inhuman conditions. The defenders of human rights imprisoned and condemned unjustly continue in prison. While this situation of oppression remains others dedicate themselves to offer an amplified and forced image of opening, creating an entire virtual world of change which the government itself has yet to announce.

 

Cubans continue to inform themselves stealthily and misinform themselves of the lances from the international press that bounce back to Cuba indirectly.

 

No one wishes more for real change than the Cuban people themselves. No one works in a more transparent and peaceful way for this change than the fighters for human rights. It is not our spirit to deny the value of what may be positive but to consecrate as real change some measures and maneuvers is to close the doors of the future on our people and condemn them to live without rights—burying them in lies.

 

Our disposition to dialogue is authentic but until now the government has responded with fatal arrogance of someone who believes in having all the power and to whom charity is being asked of. It responds with more repression, offenses and calumny. But whether or not this dialogue comes to fruition, the Cuban people will reclaim their rights. In fact, this dialogue and road to reconciliation has already begun among Cubans.

 

Cubans have the right to have their voice heard at the polls, to have recognized in the laws and in practice their rights. This road began with the Varela Project, that legal and citizen reclamation continues today and will do so until it reaches its goals.

 

Some are offering economic models with restricted rights, like that of the Chinese, or better said, the model imposed upon the Chinese. Others propose schemes of change that have a rhythm of Jurassic scale or are disposed to offer blank checks so that the successors to power may experiment with an efficient dictatorship. They offer substitutes to democracy, as if Cubans were sentenced to live without rights.  

 

Our response is a radical demand: Why not rights?

 

This last question is of all Cubans in a tone of hope and determination. That question is for those that govern Cuba, for they too are Cuban, but in a demanding tone because it is their responsibility to implement those changes in the laws so that all the rights of Cubans are respected. For all those related to Cuba, those that speak about Cuba, those involved in the life of Cuba, be they states, group of states, institutions or individual persons, this question is in a tone of solidarity but also in a tone of warning and denunciation, telling them: we Cubans have not asked for embargos, isolation, sanctions, nor punishments but we have not asked for media publicity as if we are not worthy of liberty, models in which our rights are not respected, complacency with an order without rights which we did not choose, applause nor smoke curtains to present as successes supposed openings, supposed changes which have not begun and which the government itself has not defined publicly.

 

Some say that we must wait until the next presidency of the United States to see changes in the policy towards Cuba and believe that this is how changes will be produced in Cuba. We do not have to wait for changes outside of Cuba to change what we have to change ourselves. That is our challenge and obligation.

 

We have the right to rights because we are human beings, but only ourselves, only Cubans, can and must achieve the peaceful changes that we wish to enjoy. Many of our brothers are in prison solely for defending these rights peacefully. But that is not only an internal matter, which is why these rights are universal and to deny them to one person is to injure all of humanity, of which we all are family.

 

The United States has been constant in its recognition and respect for those in Cuba fighting peacefully for human rights, something which has not wavered with each government or diplomat. Many Cubans have found a home, rights, opportunities, liberty and a more dignified life in that country, although they suffer from exile and separation. It has also been constant in calling for civil and political rights for Cubans and the liberation of political prisoners.

 

Respect for the rights of Cubans is inseparable from the respect to our sovereignty, self-determination and national independence, without those mutual and inseparable respects there can be no honest friendship between our countries, as people wish and deserve.

 

Free and friends is how we wish to be. He who does not demand the respect to the rights of people, of us Cubans, in reality does not respect our sovereignty.

 

He who does not respect our self-determination and the sovereignty of the Cuban people is also not respecting our fundamental rights, because we are a nation with our own identity and history and our own way of living and existing and the only way we want it is total independence from the north, the south, the east and west. Today, tomorrow and forever.

 

I am not a mediator between the governments of Cuba and the United States, but whatever the government of the United States does that affects us is also our business and that is why, as part of the Cuban people, it corresponds to me to opine and demand on what the United States does or can do or any other country, with respect to Cuba.

 

We say that we are in moments of change because the Cuban people are awaking and not to be denied their dreams but to make them a reality.

 

We say that we are in moments of change no because there is an opening in Cuba to rights but because increasingly the people demand them more and we believe and desire that one day they will achieve them peacefully.

 

The rights of Cubans cannot and must not depend on the policy of the United States toward Cuba, nor on the state of relations between the two countries. Whatever the state of these relations we will continue to reclaim, as we have until today, the rights for Cubans and the liberation of political prisoners. But no one can deny the state of these relations will capture the majority of publicity and is the center of national and international attention and the focus of constant tension.

 

To say that the United States has nothing to change would be to say that everything that done or everything that it is doing is good for the Cuban people. But that is not the case. In this moment of change good will is expressed by change. I want to be clear, what we believe must change in Cuba we have already proclaimed and continue to demand in the Varela Project which we continue to push with the Cuban Forum Campaign.

 

We say the embargo and the laws that accompany it must be repealed, not only because they have been bad for the people of Cuba, but also because they do not contribute in no way to that good which is peaceful change. The Transition Program for Cuba authored by a commission of the government of the United States must be annulled because it only corresponds to the Cuban people to write the transition program for Cuba.

 

Help and collaboration will be welcomed and appreciated as long as they are accorded mutually between the two countries. The United States can and must extend the dialogue it sustains with civic movements and human rights groups inside of Cuba to the government of Cuba. This dialogue could contribute to a better environment for our people and to a better international environment. We are not talking about a concession.

 

Neither of the two governments must take this exhortation with arrogance, as that dialogue is an obligation and responsibility of every government with its own people and with all of humanity. We want to be clear that we do not have to wait nor depend on the results of that possible dialogue for our rights to be respected and for that reason we will continue to demand them. However, the relations and tensions between our countries are an undeniable part of our national realities.

 

A sincere, respectful, civilized and honest dialogue is a good path, if the goal of that path is to favor the good relation of respect, peace and friendship between our peoples. A relationship which will be authentic and legitimate in the measure that the citizens of each country enjoy respect to their rights in their own countries and in the measure that there is a spirit of cooperation within the respect to self-determination of each people, free and friends.

 

There exists a human bond between Spain and Cuba with profound historic, family and cultural roots. This bond has served and must serve so that Spain, within its European context, may help achieve a greater comprehension of the Cuban reality. But to assume that that bond gives Spain the role of being the voice of Cubans in that context and allow it to interpret our interests or exponent of what is in Cuba’s best interest, is, at the very least, the inertia of a colonial mentality. In that sense, Spain, its citizens and its government are called to promote a dialogue between Europeans and all sectors of Cuban society, not discourage it.

 

It corresponds to the European Union as well as to every one of its member states to demand publicly and constantly the respect of the rights of Cubans in Cuba and the liberation of political prisoners and exhort in whatever way possible dialogue within Cuba. This has been until now the conduct of the institutions of the European Union, especially the European Parliament, which repeatedly calls on the Cuban government to demonstrate its willingness to change by allowing the Ladies in White and myself to present before them the real and current situation of our people. Nevertheless the recent tendency of some of its members, not all, has been to diminish their contacts with the democratic opposition in Cuba and gradual self-censorship. The tendency of some in the European Union is to do nothing that will annoy the Cuban government and give opportunity to the government and not the people of Cuba.

 

We have never has for sanctions from the European Union against the Cuban government, nor do we believe them to have been generated, although the indignant and insulting concept of not inviting us to receptions celebrating national holidays was created and accepted. Never did we ask and if to some our presence was going to cause so much anxiety not having in those events the excluding representatives of the Cuban government, it would have been better not to have invited us. Certainly we were offended. If this tendency of abandonment that we are observing is solidified and generalized the only people being sanctioned by the European Union are the people of Cuba.

 

The Cuban Forum Campaign in the Declaration of Liberty for Cubans (www.oswaldopaya.com) which is the visualization of the changes we propose to achieve, has proclaimed unequivocally the essence of the change we seek: we Cubans want liberty.

 

Lastly, the physical absence of the Christian Liberation Movement in this conference is also due to a sustained violation that we do not tire of denouncing: in Cuba, travel is NOT a right. For years I have been invited to different events, and the mechanisms of the Cuban government do not leave even fingerprints of violation, but the facts remain, and I am not there with you. Cubans cannot enter Cuba freely or leave freely; therefore in our state of persecution, we will not put up a façade of normality that some seek to force by talking about changes when there are no rights.

 

This conference has taken a title, an emblem which is a grave challenge for all of us. By saying “Quo Vadis Cuba?” we invoke the title of Henryk Sienkiewicz’ immortal novel. I believe you all had in mind who asks that question and to whom it is asked in the development of the novel.* I see that many across the world, many of those mentioned in this message, including many Cubans, are asking to Cuba, Quo Vadis Cuba? Certainly by knowing Cuba, and Cuba being all Cubans, the first reaction could be, where have they brought me and to where do they want to take me?

 

…but surely to the question of Quo Vadis Cuba, Cuba responds:

 

> I will not kill because I do not believe in killing, but I will challenge death because they want to obligate me to live without liberty.

> I will forgive so that my children may forgive themselves and that way release the hatred so that the evil they have suffered cannot follow them.

> I will walk barefoot to teach the merchants that my children and I cannot be bought.

> I will shout for myself because many speak for me but do not say what I feel and what I want.

> I will seek the darkness where the captives are kept for they hold the light of truth.

> I will look forward so that reconciliation and peace may break out.

> I will emerge above the waves of fear that submerge my children in a sea of lies.

> I will extend my hand in a gesture of friendship to all the countries of the world reminding them that over me no one can place their feet.

> I will part the sea so that my exiled sons may return, for I am the home of all.

> I will return to the fountain of all the rights: we are created free and fraternally.

> I will proclaim hope for liberty is near.

 

Oswaldo José Paya Sardinas

Coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement