Cuban dissident leader Oswaldo Payá writes that the recently completed Latin American summit in Chile, ignored the aspirations of the Cuban people for freedom and democracy:
This Summit is taking place in Chile, a symbol of peaceful transition to democracy and the host of the memorable Viña del Mar Summit where the governments that were present, including that of Cuba, signed in support of human rights and democracy. But it seems that for the expediency of these very Summits, the memorable accords from Viña del Mar have instead been forgotten.Perhaps much time will pass before the people of Cuba find a reason to become part of these Summits. In the near future of a free and democratic Cuba, our children might ask “why doesn’t the Cuban state participate in the Latin American Summit and its institutions?” Surely we will have to give them a just reply with the truth:
- Because although we are historically, humanly, and culturally part of that family, those Summits abandoned and denied our people while we lived under totalitarian oppression.- Because many Cubans who sent messages to the Summits asking for solidarity ended up serving cruel prison sentences for only defending human rights and meanwhile these Summits remained silent and complicit.
- Because those Summits never had the courage to speak up for the rights of Cubans.
- Because those Summits legitimized and praised the regime that denied us our liberty, guiltily sanctioning the oppression that our people suffered.
- Because they had so much fear that they coexisted with a lie, much further beyond the limits of what was already a ridicule and disdain for our people.
- Because they did not dare to utter a word of solidarity with the Cuban people even in the final moments when the people of Cuba needed support for peaceful changes and dialogue among Cubans, based on respect for their rights.
There have been brilliant and exceptional individual actions of courage and coherence at the Summits that have recognized the rights of Cubans and those of us who defend those rights. To those individuals we send our permanent gratitude and admiration.
However this Summit that took place in Chile missed the opportunity, perhaps the last, to vindicate itself in the face of history, the Cuban people and its own nations. Once again, in such a crucial moment, they abandoned Cuba, its people, and its citizens and they submitted to the simulation of a democratic concert, in which there are so many abuses, a false concert that is a dissonant scandal.
We can proclaim that by the next Latin American Summit the people of Cuba will already be free, without the support of the Summits and in spite of the Summits.
In other words, just shut up.
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