OSWALDO JOSÉ PAYÁ SARDIÑAS
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CHRISTIAN LIBERATION MOVEMENT, YEAR 19 - 2007/11/14 23:25
CHRISTIAN LIBERATION MOVEMENT, YEAR 19
By Oswaldo J. Payá
Nineteen years ago, on September 8, 1988, the Christian Liberation Movement was formally established, although already years earlier, we had begun the work of this civic, secular, but Christian inspired movement.
It would be impossible to trace the history of almost two decades of work and peaceful struggle, but our Coordinating Council wants to render homage and recognize all of those Cubans who are current or past members of the movement. We have all experienced the charisma of dedicating ourselves resolutely, for love of our Homeland and our brethren, to the beautiful cause of proclaiming the new and grand news of liberation.
Belonging to this “Movement” has marked the lives of those who have embraced the cause of liberation, as it requires full devotion, an option for the poor and all those who are disadvantaged, a radical dedication to the defense of the dignity and rights of Cubans and tireless work to promote the citizens movement to rescue the liberty and popular sovereignty of all Cubans. Popular sovereignty is inseparable from Cuba’s independence and national sovereignty.
The price that the members of this movement have paid and continue to pay is too high in suffering harassment, threats and many different forms of repression in which the instruments of repression, aside from all of the resources of totalitarianism, use the most traitorous and abusive methods against defenseless individuals and families. Many now suffer in exile or in prison for this cause. We consider all of those individuals to be an inseparable part of the spirit of our Movement. Those of us who struggle inside and outside of Cuba, on behalf of the Christian Liberation Movement, give thanks to God for allowing us to embrace the beautiful cause of Liberation.
We also give thanks to all of the families, who have suffered for so many years because of our affiliation to the movement, to the mothers and fathers, dead or alive who have suffered day to day the pressure and harassment, the imprisonment of their children, the exile, to the children that have grown up targeted, in a state of uneasiness and disadvantage, to the wives that have shared the repression, the burden of the unequal struggle and to all those who as family and friends to members of the Movement, have paid the price of being targeted by the state’s repressive forces.
It is important to say and proclaim this to all Cubans and to the world, because belonging to the Christian Liberation Movement or any other dissident movement in Cuba is not a profession nor a temporary or part-time hobby, but a definitive choice to stand for the liberation of the Cuban people in the face of a totalitarian regime and that is why it compromises and encompasses your whole life. And we hope it is so.
Today we proclaim to all Cubans: raise your heads and your gaze with faith, open your ears, open your hearts, get your life up and running because the liberation is near. Today we give thanks in the name of the Cuban people to all those who up to now have signed and are signing the Varela Project. It is tens of thousands of brave and generous Cubans to whom we are saying: do not become discouraged, we know that you have suffered a lot, but those of you who have signed and are signing the Varela Project have paved the way through which the Spring of Liberation for Cuba will flow.
That Spring of Liberation could not be annihilated by the so-called black spring of repression, because our brothers, all of the Prisoners of the Cuban Spring, have sustained hope with their faith and their courage, and have carried in themselves, what the Apostle José Martí would have called “an entire people to human dignity.”
Our movement now joins its efforts to many other Cubans inside and outside of Cuba, not only by moving the Varela Project forward, but by expanding the avenues that this project opened, with a civic campaign that is part of this citizens movement, known as the Cuban Forum, which clearly defines its mission to achieve the changes that will guarantee the rights of all Cubans. The Cuban Forum is the peaceful path of Cuba toward a future that has to have liberty, democracy, justice, fraternity, and peace. This will be a future that is built by all Cubans and for the good of all.
This hope fills us with determination to continue, for we know that the people of Cuba want a new life, they want changes, they want their rights, and they want peace and reconciliation.
We are reminding the world and those inside and outside of Cuba who deceive themselves by making projects that are interwoven in the chains and muffles that today are imposed upon our people: “we Cubans are simple and we only want a life of love and peace, but we can not, do not know how and do not want to live without liberty.”
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas
In the name of the Christian Liberation Movement
Havana, Cuba, September 6, 2007
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FORO / Participative Forum 
