One good example is the recent campaign #OZT: I accuse the Cuban government. In barely a month, through Twitter and the Internet, a handful of activists have managed to gather almost fifty thousand signatures condemning the death of Orlando Zapata and supporting the release of the political prisoners in Cuba. Among them are hundreds of public figures ranging from Pedro Almodóvar, Mario Vargas Llosa and Fernando Savater, to Roberto Saviano and Anthony Appiah. The media effect of this campaign has been overwhelming and has successfully affected the Cuban reality. Three prominent young intellectuals, members of Cuba’s Artists and Writers Union, UNEAC, have decided to add their names, knowing the consequences which may befall them. Though few in number, they have a kind of immunity: were they to face repression, the subsequent wave of solidarity would encourage more people to get off the fence, causing major problems for the regime.

This has been the great lesson of Yoani Sánchez, learned by both the Ladies in White and cyberactivists-in-exile: Use the new media and the opportunities of the Internet to develop a win-win scenario of media transparency; no matter how it responds — whether with indifference or repression — the government is seen to be weak.

I signed because the Cuban government can no longer pretend that it is upholding the law when it incarcerates people for crimes of “disrespect,” “dangerousness” and “ideological diversionism.”

The shocking, brutal treatment of Orlando Zapata Tamayo in prison, the shameful persecution of the Damas de Blanco, and the ongoing incarceration of over 200 peaceful dissidents who held opinions not approved by the government, show that government to be the worst kind of dictatorship.

That the Castro regime has not responded to hunger striker Guillermo Farinas’ request that it release 26 of the most critically ill Cuban political prisoners is evidence of the callous disregard for human life that is the lynchpin of this totalitarian dynasty.

Valerie Block, American writer

Who are the campaign organizers and what are their affiliations, if any?

Most of the people involved in the campaign emigrated from Cuba during the 1990s and settled in the US, Canada, Europe and Latin America. Several of them were political refugees. They now work as academics, journalists, translators, programmers, photographers and artists. None is the member of a political or governmental association.

How was the campaign team formed?

Most of the team met in the Cuban blogosphere. A core group had collaborated on other human rights projects, most recently a successful fall 2009 campaign to pressure the Cuban government to release Panfilo, a man jailed for being filmed saying there was hunger in Cuba.

Why are they doing this?

The campaign team is united in their desire for a Cuba in which all fundamental human and civil rights are respected.

What are their sources of financing and other support?

The campaign receives NO outside financing or logistical, strategic or operational support. Both the hard costs (website, software, telecommunications services) and the soft costs (an enormous number of person-hours) have been assumed by the team members themselves.

What has the campaign done?

Organized a petition through which Cubans and other individuals around the world (45,000 and counting) can condemn the wrongful death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo in February 2010, demand the release of all remaining political prisoners from Cuban jails, and affirm their wish that Cuba respect the basic human rights of all its citizens.

What are its short and long-term goals?

In the short-term, to prevent the death by starvation of Guillermo Fariñas and any other hunger-striking dissidents and prisoners of conscience, as well as to obtain the release of all Cuban political prisoners. In the long term, to effect a transition to a Cuba in which there is the right to life, liberty and security of person; freedom of opinion and expression; freedom of peaceful assembly and association; and a government based on the will of the people as expressed in periodic and genuine elections.

Is the campaign being coordinated with the hunger strikers in Cuba?

No. Occasionally, we receive messages from hunger strikers conveyed by their relatives or human rights activists within Cuba. Fariñas and other prisoners of conscience are aware of the existence of this campaign and have signed the petition. That is the extent of the coordination.

Is there a set of campaign principles?

Human rights, democracy, transparency and non-violence.

How does this campaign differ from past efforts to promote human rights in Cuba?

This is the first human rights campaign to challenge a repressive regime through the use of e-democracy on a massive scale, joining the myriad voices of Cubans in and out of Cuba; important American, European and Latin American intellectuals and artists; elected officials from all political stripes; and citizens from over 103 countries. It is our hope that the campaign serves as the first step in a peaceful transition to a democratic Cuba.

What can I do to help?

Sign the petition, and ask others to sign it! And stay tuned for campaign updates.

With this post, '#OZT: I Accuse the Cuban Government' starts publishing a series of responses from public figures who've shared with us the reasons why they have signed the declaration for the Freedom of Cuban Political Prisoners. Their support covers a very wide political range and represents many sectors from society. That diversity is precisely the basis on which this campaign in defense of human rights (in Cuba and anywhere else in the world) rests.

Apart from the many reasons to sign this letter, I am even more intrigued by the reasons not to sign it that could be argued by those who have not signed such a simple document that the only thing it does is to advocate for the most basic human rights for all Cubans.

Paquito D'Rivera, Cuban musician

Never before has a document managed to collect so many signatures calling for improvements in human rights in Cuba. What's more, since the Varela Project - led by Oswaldo Paya - collected almost 11 thousand signatories to demand a democratic referendum in the country, we have not seen an similar flood of people adding their names publicly to a demand for change. The current campaign to demand freedom for political prisoners has been, without a doubt, an acid test for the injured Cuban civil society. With the death of the prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo, indignation has united citizens like no other common cause has done before. Even the breach, deepened by official propaganda, between Cubans on the Island and those in exile, has been disappearing with the tragic events of recent weeks.

Yoani Sanchez, award-winning Cuban blogger in the Huffington Post.

Numerous news agencies, newspapers and other media, report this morning on the Cuban regime's latest assault on the rights on the Ladies in White.

UPI: Cuba clamps down on 'Ladies in White'

"For the second consecutive week, Cuban security agents Sunday surrounded nine women and prevented them from marching after a church service in Havana, group member Alejandrina Garcia said."

The New York Times through Reuters: Cuba Clamps Down on 'Ladies In White' Protest

""We are not going to stop until you give us an order in writing that we need a permit," leader Laura Pollan told authorities before the crowd set in.

The women linked arms, held up flowers and stood mostly silent under the verbal abuse from government supporters.

The incident ended when state security agents forced the white-clad dissidents into a bus and whisked them away. They were driven to their homes.

Three of the nine women were helped from the crowd earlier when they grew faint after standing for so long under the warm sun and the hot breath of 100 chanting government supporters. "

The Miami Herald: Cuban security agents again halt march by Ladies in White

"A security agent told the women they could not march because they lacked a permit, but the women remained standing just outside the church for about three hours, García added.

``We staged an act of civil resistance,'' she said. Three of the women began to feel sick under the hot sun and went to a nearby hospital before the standoff ended, she added.

``At the end, the security agents and the mob were suffering from the sun as much as us, so they flagged down a city bus and forced us aboard in a harsh way, with pushes,'' García said.

The pro-government civilians shouted insults at the women, who answered with shouts of ``freedom,'' said García. The buses took them to the home of the group's spokeswoman, Laura Pollán."

Radio Netherlands: Cuba blocks Ladies in White march

"When the women showed up at their traditional gathering point at the Santa Rita Catholic Church in Havana's Miramar district on Sunday they were told they could not hold their march without a permit. The women were jeered and shouted at by government supporters for more than two hours before they were taken away in minivans."

CNN reports that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in its 2009 report, has ranked Cuba and Venezuela as the worst countries in the Americas regarding the respect of human rights.

"Venezuela has moved decidedly backward by the decisions of Chavez and, in many ways, is the most-serious case in the Americas," [Robert] Pastor [Latin America national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s] said.

"Cuba has pretty much stayed the same, which is bad," he said.

The Commission recently received and accepted a formal complaint against the Cuban regime by opposition activist Guillermo Fariñas who is on the 6th week of a hunger strike protesting the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo and for the liberation of 26 sick political prisoners.

Recently released independent journalist, Oscar Sánchez Madam, described his three year long experience in a Cuban jail under charges of "dangerousness" to José Barbeito of the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ).

“I don’t wish on anybody the dreadful experience I had in prison.” he told Barbeito. He went on to describe the deplorable conditions in which he had to survive during that time, including the filthy conditions and lack of water (“Detainees, including me, were diagnosed many times with severe, chronic diarrhea and parasites.”) in the small cell he had to share "with people who had convictions of 15 or 18 years on charges of murder or other serious, violent crimes.”

He explained how those people beat and harassed political prisoners on a regular basis by command of the penal authorities. He himself was beaten and harassed several times.

However, he remains committed to continue reporting on human rights abuses and the corruption of the Cuban regime: “I would prefer to continue reporting and writing about current affairs on the island, including human rights violations by the Cuban government,”

More details at the link.

Via www.payolibre.com

Cuban independent journalist Caridad Caballero Batista, reports that Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta, a prisoner of conscience imprisoned during Cuba’s Black Spring, has been interned in the medical post at the provincial prison of Holguín, Cuba since April 13th.

His health has deteriorated dangerously. However, he had to plea repeatedly with the penal authorities to receive medical attention. He’s suffering from “acute pain in the cervical area of his spine, shortness of breath, dizziness, nausea, malaise, asthma and pulmonary congestion. He’s being hydrated intravenously and is wearing a neck brace”

The lack of medical attention is a constant complain from Cuban prisoners. On April 12th, Cuban doctor Darsi Ferrer, abandoned an almost two month long hunger strike after the Cuban regime agreed to give him medical attention for a dental infection. Ferrer also obtained the promise that his case will be finally heard in court. He has been in prison since July 21st, 2009 for allegedly buying some bags of cement and other construction materials (only available in the black market) to repair his home. He has not been taken to court, and neither arraigned nor tried.

Introduction to President Obama by Gloria Estefan at a fundraiser at hers and Emilio's home on April 15th, 2010. Via David Naranjo, the Estefan's publicist.

Welcome everyone to our home! Emilio, Emily and I are very happy that you’re here and we hope you very much enjoy this afternoon!

When our parents brought us to the United States as children they never imagined that the country that had opened its arms to them at a time of crisis would eventually become their country and in turn, our country. They came here to raise us in freedom and democracy so that we could thrive and learn. And that we did. We learned how to listen to and respect different ways of thinking, different nationalities, and different political ideologies.

We learned, as we watched our parents give up their homeland, their families, their history and in the case of my father who served proudly in the United States military, his life so that we could live the American Dream.

My father, a refugee from a country that is still in the stranglehold of the same oppressive government from which he rescued his family, my father, who when leaving for war said to my mother not knowing if he would ever see us again, that in a man’s life there has to be “something” that is worth fighting and dying for and for him that cause was freedom! My father, who would have been very proud to know that his little girl, years later, would be hosting in her very own home, the President of the United States, a President who just 21 days before publicly stated, “Today, I join my voice with brave individuals across Cuba and a growing chorus around the world in calling for an end to the repression, for the immediate, unconditional release of all political prisoners in Cuba and for respect for the basic rights of the Cuban people.” The President that is the very first African-American in history to attain this most honorable office!

Each person believes that they are living in the “best of times” and in the “worst of times”. We look around at the difficulties and challenges that our world is experiencing and we wonder (I know I do) if history has taught us “anything.” We question if there is indeed “something” still worth fighting and dying for.

Then I look at the country where I was born, a place where hope and freedom are a part of their history, not their everyday lives and I see Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a Cuban dissident and now MARTYR who gave his life on a hunger strike for the promise of a free Cuba and Guillermo Fariñas who is poised to give his life at any moment merely asking that his government free 26 other sick and dying prisoners of conscience. I see the bravery of the Damas De Blanco; women who walk peacefully, silently, heroically, yet still get beaten and arrested for simply petitioning for the freedom of their unjustly imprisoned loved ones.

I look at this magnificent country that has molded me and is now my homeland and I hear a choir of voices expressing their wishes, their desires, their demands and even their disdain for our government, freely and without consequence and I smile and quietly thank God that despite whatever problems we may be facing, we truly are a free people!

The beauty of this amazing nation is that anything is possible! Even hosting a very political evening to get the “ear” of my President when I am politically non-affiliated but the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. put it succinctly when he said “We may have all come on different ships but we’re in the same boat now!”

And regardless of where we may have come from, what color we may be, what political party we may or may not belong to I think there are definitely two things that we can all agree on; the first is that we all love this country and the second was beautifully put into words by Dr. Lawrence J. Peter, an American educator and writer, when he said, “Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.”

And it is my distinct honor to introduce him! Ladies and gentlemen, from one hyphenated American, I present to you, another hyphenated American, The President of the United States, Barack Obama!!

Via Francisco Chaviano González for Cambio-Debate www.cambiodebatecuba.com

At dusk, yesterday Tuesday April 14th, 2010, Cuban government’s paramilitary forces surrounded Licet Zamora Carrandi’s house. She is the Guillermo Fariñas’s spokesperson. They were there to stage what is called an “acto de repudio” (repudiation demonstration), i.e. they were there to harass, insult and probably assault Ms. Zamora Carrandi. Present at her home were opposition activists and independent journalists Carlos Valhuerdi Obregón and Rafael Pérez González, as well as Mr. Fariñas’s family doctor, Dr. Ismely Iglesias Martínez. No further details are yet available about this incident.

See note in Spanish at the link.

Efrén Fernández Fernández, Cuban prisoner of conscience
April 13th, 2010
Guanajay Prison, Havana, Cuba via www.PayoLibre.com

I was brought here in May, 2004. I remember the stories that common prisoners told me when I arrived about the beatings to Orlando Zapata Tamayo perpetrated by the authorities in the penitentiary.

Every day I could see from my window the window of his cell, which is 30 meters away from the place where I am still kept captive. We used to speak to each other through shouts and we even exchanged correspondence with the help of common prisoners who were able to avoid the close vigilance from the prison guards. This is how Zapata himself told me, in very detailed account, what “the commons” had already told me: “when I was brought to this prison in 2003, I was placed in bunker #6, where First Lieutenant Emilio Guilarte Ramírez and Sub-Officer Leonel Torres Reñí beat me savagely, causing me heavy bruising.”

And that was just the beginning of the long story of abuses against Zapata. Many times I saw his jailers take him out handcuffed and shirtless, throw him on the floor, and drag him by his feet on all 200 meters of rough concrete to the military area. This inhumane trip passed even through a graveled basketball court that would break his skin.

By the end of 2003, during a requisition, the prison guards chained Zapata, and threw him on the floor so that First Lieutenant Quintana could give him a huge kick to the head. Right after that, a swarm of guards fell on him beating with all their hatred and sadism. Around that same time, several guards handcuffed him again, and the prison warden, Lieutenant Colonel Wilfredo Velásquez Domínguez, punched him in the mouth and made him bleed while his subordinates savagely clubbed Zapata.

Our late brother was the victim of many assaults and beatings in this Prison of Guanajay. They were so widespread that even female Captain Delia, Chief Comptroller, slapped him. He was also assaulted by officer Felito, and sub-officers Alejandro, Orestes, Pileta y Reinier, among many others.

During one of the darkest nights in the Taco-Taco prison in 2006, they tortured Zapata in the punishment cell for shouting slogans and conducting a hunger strike against the mistreatment, the horrible sanitary conditions and for the respect of the prisoners’ rights. They applied the torture technique known as “la sillita”, the little chair. After beating him, they shackled his feet, pushed his arms behind his back and cuffed him, and then used another pair of cuffs to link both the handcuffs and the shackle. With his body arched in that extreme position, they left him lying on the floor for several days. He, however, did not surrender, and continued shouting: “Down with Fidel! Down with the dictatorship! Long live our human rights!”

The swarm of mosquitos and bugs, and the rats made his torture even worse, so bad that common inmates Ramón Acosta Moreno, Michel Jáuregui Pérez, Enrique González Silva, Michel Rodríguez Roldán y Jesús, aka Monín, who inhabited the surrounding punishment cells, asked the military personnel to stop it. Major Orlando, penal comptroller, promised them that he would take their request to the provincial level since, as he stated, the order to punish Zapata had come from his superiors.

Hours passed, and Major Orlando did not come back, so the inmates started shouting and making noises by beating empty plastic containers against the floor, forcing the guards to return. The prisoners threatened with joining Zapata’s hunger strike. For this reason, the guards took Zapata’s cuffs off, but that night, while everyone else slept, they surrounded his cell with guard dogs while an entire platoon of guards gave him another beating.

Nevertheless, the Cuban government was never able to silence the human rights defender, Orlando Zapata Tamayo who never faltered in his peaceful struggle for the freedom of Cuba. Even today, within this blood spattered walls, his strong voice echoes and seems to rise every day against the regime’s abuses and to defend the right of common inmates to be treated as human beings.

Efrén Fernández Fernández, 47, is a member of the Movimiento Cristiano Liberación (Cristian Movement “Liberation”). He was condemned to 12 years of imprisonment during Cuba’s Black Spring in 2003. His family lives in Calle Clavel #582 e/ Tulipán y Concepción, Cerro, Ciudad de La Habana, Cuba.

This testimony was recorded by phone and transcribed by Tania Maceda Guerra, with the Center of Information for the Human Rights Relators Council of Cuba. It was told by Fernández on March 1st, 2010 from the maximum security prison of Guanajay.

Dissident Guillermo Fariñas's health has taken a turn for the worse probably caused by a bacterial infection. According to his wife, Clara Pérez Gómez, the independent journalist and opposition leader, complains of acute body aches and "does not even want to talk."

His family awaits the results of a blood culture, although they fear that it may come back positive for the very dangerous bacterium staphylococcus aureus. A couple of weeks ago, this bacterium caused him a severe infection that he attributed then to the unsanitary conditions at Arnaldo Milián Provincial Hospital, in Santa Clara, Cuba, in which he has been interned since March 11th.

Doctors at the hospital decided to stop intravenous feeding (water, sugars, amino acids, and other basic elements to ameliorate the consequences of his prolonged hunger strike) because of a very high fever. "Since Sunday morning, Fariñas has not received any sort of nourishment."

She added that this situation will definitely worsen the already precarious health of the dissident who refuses to abandon his hunger strike which began more than a month ago as protest for the death of another opposition activist: Orlando Zapata Tamayo.

Agenda for a Transition in Cuba, an organization to which Fariñas belongs, presented the government of Raúl Castro with a "humane" formula to end the crisis. It consists of a popular referendum so that Cubans can vote on the fate of all remaining political prisoners.

The regime, that calls Fariñas's hunger strike "blackmail", has not made any public declarations on the proposal. However, a day after it came to light, Security of State (Cuba's repressive political police) detained Rafael León Rodríguez, general coordinator of Agenda for a Transition in Cuba.

Both the PP (liberal conservative) and the PSOE (socialist) parties' Members of Congress agreed on pushing forward a non-binding resolution that asks the Spanish government "to push for a dialog with the Cuban government to obtain the immediate and unconditional liberation of all prisoners of conscience, and to put an end to Guillermo Fariñas's hunger strike."

All major political parties of center and center-right joined the resolution, as well as the PNV (Basque nationalist -non-violent) and CiU (Catalonian nationalist). All left-leaning political parties, with the exception of the PSOE, opposed the resolution. There was one abstention, Coalición Canaria (Canarian Coalition).

The Montreal Gazette today reproduces an article from The Edmonton Journal about the Ladies in White in Cuba.

The article describes how the valiant women were assaulted and heckled last Wednesday and Thursday by hordes of supposed sympathizers of the Castros' regime in Havana. The Ladies were marking the seventh anniversary of Cuba's Black Spring.

The newspaper carries the declarations of Laura Pollán, one of the group members:

"This marks seven years that our relatives have been in prison. We will not stop our march, come what may,"

More at the link.

AFP reports that US Senator Robert Menéndez, called Guillermo Fariñas, Cuban opposition activist in a hunger strike, at his hospital room in Santa Clara, Cuba.

After the phone conversation, Mr. Menéndez, a Democrat and Senator for the State of New Jersey, stated that "Individuals like Guillermo Farinas and Orlando Zapata Tamayo are evidence of the unbearable brutality of the Castro regime and the tragic state of political prisoners in Cuba," and that "Guillermo was resolute in his position that the rights of Cuba's political prisoners must be honored,"

Fariñas told the Senator that "This is a personal problem between myself and Raul Castro," the Cuban dictator who has accused the US and Europe of orchestrating a "media campaign against Cuba".

"He says that we are mercenaries, and I'm going to show that we are patriots, willing to die for our ideas," said Fariñas.

More at the link.

The petition, accompanied by a dossier of human rights violations, was presented to the Commission at its offices in Washington DC by Cuban political refugees Alina Brouwer and Ricardo Boffil.

Guillermo Fariñas, a Cuban dissident who has been on a hunger strike for over a month to demand the release of all Cuban political prisoners, has presented in Washington D.C. his formal international denunciation before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) against what he calls “the illegitimate government of Fidel and Raúl Castro.”

Fariñas bases his accusation on “the legislated, programmed and systematically executed violations of all universally recognized human rights against my family and me that began on January, 1st, 1959.”

The dossier is being presented before the Commission by Alina Brouwer Guerra and Professor Ricardo Bofill, both political refugees from Cuba under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and permanent residents in the United States. Bofill is a founding member of the Cuban Committee For Human Rights (Havana, 1976).

Transcription of Mr. Fariñas’s letter to the IACHR :

From Guillermo Fariñas,
I, Guillermo Fariñas, Cuban born, currently residing in the city of Santa Clara, in command of all my mental faculties, but with visibly deteriorating physical health due to a hunger strike I initiated on February 24th, 2010, and bedridden, wish to present before this Commission my formal accusation against the illegitimate government of Fidel and Raúl Castro for the legislated, programmed and systematically executed violations of all universally recognized human
rights against my family and me that began on January, 1st, 1959.

The accompanying dossier shall be presented before the commission by Alina Brouwer Guerra, Cuban, and recognized as a political refugee under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Ms. Brouwer received political asylum in Spain in 1997, and is now a legal permanent resident in the United States; and by Professor Ricardo Bofill Pagés, Cuban, political refugee, permanent resident in the United States, and a founding member of the Cuban Committee For Human Rights.

Guillermo Fariñas Hernández
Santa Clara, Cuba. March 27th, 2010