The death of opposition leader and founder of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) Oswaldo Payá was confirmed at 5 p.m. on July 22. The news started as a rumor that spread during the early hours of Sunday afternoon.
Known nationally and internationally for organizing and carrying out the Varela Project, his death at the age of 60 is a hard blow to the pro-democracy forces in Cuba. Social networks quickly did their utmost to spread the news and the hashtag #OswaldoPaya trended globally. The renowned dissident lost his life in a car accident -- the facts of which are still unclear -- that occurred around 1:50 p.m. local time.
The incident took place a few miles from the city of Bayamo in the eastern province of Granma, which is about 500 miles from Havana. Near the small town of La Gabina the car left the road and rolled until it hit a tree. It remains to be confirmed if, before the impact, it was hit by another vehicle, as claimed by several sources, or if the driver lost control, as claimed in the official version.
Payá was in the car with the dissident activist Harold Cepero, who also died some hours after the accident. The two Cubans were traveling accompanied by two foreigners, the Spaniard Angel Carromero, 27, and the Swedish politician Jens Aron Modig, 27. Carromero is a lawyer and adviser to the City of Madrid, and secretary of the New Generations of the People's Party in the Spanish capital. Modig chairs the Christian Democrat Youth League.
All were taken to the Professor Carlos Manuel Clinical Surgery Hospital in Bayamo, where hospital officials said that Oswaldo Payá was already dead when he arrived. After hours of incomplete reports, his wife Ofelia Acevedo was notified of his death through a Catholic Church source.
The two injured have been hospitalized in the same facility and, according to confirmations from El Pais newspaper, only suffered minor injuries. The entire hospital is surrounded by a heavy police operation, and it is impossible to communicate by telephone with the room where both Angel Carromero and Jens Aron Modig are being treated.
Rosa María Payá, the daughter of the deceased dissident, told several media that "they wanted to hurt" her father, "and ended up killing him." Similar suspicions are growing among opposition figures as well, but will have to wait for the testimony of the two survivors and for the results of police investigations.
The Varela Project
In 2002 Oswaldo Payá received the European Parliament's Sakharov prize, which was specially awarded for his work on the Varela Project. This initiative proposed a constitutional amendment under a process supported by legislation then in force on the Island. Through the Varela Project, he proposed the holding of a national referendum to allow free association, freedom of expression and of the press, called for free elections, promoted freedom to engage in business, and called for an amnesty for political prisoners.
Together with other members of the Christian Liberation Movement and activists of the banned opposition, Payá managed to present the National Assembly of People's Power some 11,000 signatures on March 10, 2002. Two years later another 14,000 signatures were added, but the Cuban government rejected the demand for a popular referendum.
Instead, the official response was to declare the socialist character of the country's prevailing system irrevocable, in a gesture that was popularly called the "constitutional mummification." Surveillance and repression around Payá increased from that date, including arrests, threats and repudiation rallies in front of his house.
In March 2003, when the Black Spring occurred, about 40 members of the MLC were among the 75 defendants. Their sentences ranged from six to 28 years in prison on charges of violating national sovereignty. The vast majority of them had to wait to be released until 2010, when an unprecedented dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Cuban government ended with the freeing of these dissidents. Although Payá was not arrested or prosecuted, during all this time he did not cease to denounce the situation of the convicted activists.
Secularism and civility
Born in 1952 and raised in a family with a strong Catholic tradition, Oswaldo Payá had a religious upbringing. He attended a Marist Brothers school until 1961, at which time it was taken over by Fidel Castro's government. When he was just 16 he did his military service and during that stage of his life was punished for refusing to transport a group of political prisoners. That refusal caused him to be sent to serve three years hard labor on the Isle of Pines.
On finishing this sentence he joined a parish youth group in his neighborhood of Cerro. Indeed his outstanding labor as a layperson led him to work on the process of Cuban Ecclesiastic Reflection (REC) and he served as delegate to the Cuban National Ecclesiastic Meeting (ENEC) in 1986. In parallel to his opposition activities he continued to work as a specialist in electrical equipment for a State agency. He had graduated as a telecommunications engineer.
In 1988 Payá founded the Christian Liberation Movement that quickly became one of the most important organizations of the nascent Cuban civil society. He also participated in drafting the Transitional Program to promote political change in the largest of the Antilles. From his status as a prominent leader he signed the Todos Unidos ("All Together") manifesto and served as coordinator for its rapporteur commission.
In 2009 he developed a Call for the National Dialogue and at the time of his death was championing an initiative to allow Cubans to freely enter and leave their own country. But his breakthrough as an opponent had come with the creation and dissemination of the Varela Project, an initiative that began to be developed by the MCL in 1998.
For his work he was awarded the W. Averell Harriman Prize, awarded annually by the National Democratic Institute in Washington and the Homo Homini Award of the Czech foundation People in Need. New York's Columbia University named him an honorary Doctor of Laws and he was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He was received in Rome by Pope John Paul II during the same trip that took him to the European parliament ceremony for the Sakharov Prize.
On his death he left three children, Oswaldo José, Rosa María, and Reinaldo Isaías, and also his widow Ofelia Acevedo.
With the death of Oswaldo Payá the Cuban opposition loses one of its most outstanding figures in both the national and international arenas. Gone, physically, is a politician of great importance for the political transition in the island, a prominent layman in the Catholic Church, and a man who was a bridge between the Cuban diaspora and the nation.
The body of Oswaldo Payá will be transferred to Havana where there will be a wake in the parish of Cerro, the neighborhood where he lived.
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- Carromero has been transferred to the Department of Technical Investigation of the nefarious Ministry of the Interior in Havana, where he remains detained.
- Spanish diplomats have been prohibited from seeing Carromero since Monday of last week -- the day after the accident.
- The Swedish government has publicly stated that Modig's continued detention in Havana is unjustified.
Meanwhile, Paya's widow has rejected the Castro regime's "official" report, which blamed the accident on driver error and stated:
"Until I'm able to speak with Angel and Aron, the last two people who saw my husband alive, have access to the expert reports and have the advice of people independent of the Cuban government, I can't have an idea of what really happened that day."
Boston, MA – Mitt Romney today made the following statement on the death of Cuban activist Osvaldo Paya:
"The cause of freedom in Cuba has lost one of its strongest voices and respected leaders yesterday. The news of Osvaldo Paya's death is profoundly heartbreaking and infuriating. The circumstances surrounding Mr. Paya's death again raise questions about the pattern of conduct by a despotic regime that is constantly seeking ways to annihilate all internal dissent while the world stands in silence. The international community should demand that the facts concerning Paya's death be accurately determined and that the surviving witnesses be protected. Ann and I wish to convey our deepest condolences to the Paya family and to Cuba's pro-democracy movement for the loss of Osvaldo Paya, a man of extraordinary courage, conviction, and peace."
Sen. Nelson was shocked and saddened to learn of the death of Oswaldo Payá. Payá's Varela Project was a symbol for civil and human rights in Cuba, including free and fair elections. He led this petition initiative at great risk to himself and for his work he received the European Parliament's Sakarov Prive for Freedom of Thought in 2002 and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. His fight for freedom and democracy won't be forgotten. And Sen. Nelson will continue to support the cause of freedom for the Cuban people.
The President's thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Oswaldo Payá, a tireless champion for greater civic and human rights in Cuba. Payá gave decades of his life to the nonviolent struggle for freedom and democratic reform in Cuba as the head of the Christian Liberation Movement, the leader of the Varela Project, and through his role as a civil society activist. He remained optimistic until the end that the country he loved would see a peaceful and democratic transition. We continue to be inspired by Payá's vision and dedication to a better future for Cuba, and believe that his example and moral leadership will endure. The United States will continue to support the Cuban people as they seek their fundamental human rights.
Freedom fighters in Cuba remember that the former leader of "Ladies in White" Laura Pollan, who died of a rare disease, also was object of a similar attempt on her life . Thus, there's an obvious pattern, which raises questions of whether this was in fact an "accident."
There is a Swedish (Aron Modig)and Spanish (Angel Carromero Barrios) survivor of today's crash, who were accompanying Paya.
Modig is the President of Sweden's Christian Democratic Youth League and Carromero Barrios is Vice-President of the Partido Popular's New Generations.
It's imperative that their Embassies protect them, so the truth can prevail.
The Castro regime currently has the provincial hospital in Bayamo surrounded by police forces.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvNidwcQhWw
YOUTUBE DOCUMENTARY: "La Primavera Negra de Cuba" The Cuban Black Spring- part #1 (English sub-titles) - Filmmakers Carlos González and Pablo Rodríguez made this important 2003 Czech documentary with interviews with dissidents prior to the March 18 crackdown knows as The Black Spring and with their relatives after their arrests and summary trials. Takes a look at the Varela Project as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfKW7ZJyDgc