Cuban Christian dissident receives award

Cuban Christian dissident receives award

Oswaldo Pay of the Christian Liberation Movement in Cuba said his
organization would continue promoting the Varela Project for peaceful
change on the island. He received the National Endowment for Democracy's
2009 Democracy Award.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
By CNA

The coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement in Cuba, Oswaldo
Paya, said last week the organization would continue promoting the
Varela Project for peaceful democratization in Cuba, because to do
otherwise would be to abandon those Cubans who have been imprisoned for
reasons of conscience.

"No tyrannical power, nor group of powers, can make us abandon this
path. To do so would be to forget José Daniel and all our brothers and
sisters in prison. To do so would be to forget our own people who are
now without freedom, and we will not forget them, like the Hebrew people
in captivity never forgot Jerusalem," Paya said in a letter accepting
the National Endowment for Democracy's 2009 Democracy Award.

In his letter Paya expressed gratitude for the recognition of the
courage and commitment of Jorge Luis García Pérez (Antúnez), José Daniel
Ferrer García, Librado Linares García, Iván Hernández Carrillo and Iris
Tamara Pérez Aguilera, all detained "for peacefully defending an
promoting the rights of Cubans."

"They were convicted on false charges, accused of threatening our
national independence -- when they and we dedicate our lives to fight
for sovereignty and national independence, but with the conviction that,
to be real, sovereignty and national independence are inseparable from
freedom and from the rights of all citizens," Paya stated.

He went on to denounce the many other regimes that "establish and then
sustain themselves in the name of defending the sovereignty of the
people." "Meanwhile," Paya said, "they take away their citizens'
freedom; they silence them, and leave them without a voice and without a
real opportunity to exercise their sovereign right to determine their
own destiny."

"If you wish to support our people," Paya told the international
community, "support with your voice and with your heart the path of
peace and reconciliation that leads us unmistakably to freedom and to
the rights that we Cubans want for ourselves."

Cuban Christian dissident receives award | Spero News (1 July 2009)
http://www.speroforum.com/a/19761/Cuban-Christian-dissident-receives-award