Reply #107: It's unlikely they will pick up much more sympathy in Cuba, considering [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

they affiliate themselves with people who have terrorized Cubans previously. That would be a stretch.

~snip~
Payá also had an opportunity to let the international community judge his commitment to democracy when he launched a newly created “National Dialogue Committee”, whose goal is to organise a transitional programme perfectly in line with the plan President Bush has put in place for snuffing out the Cuban nation. The said committee is made up of around 110 members of the Cuban extreme right, several of whom have a broad experience in international terrorism against the Cuban people. (4)

Among these is Carlos Alberto Montaner, a former CIA agent who received a military training at Fort Benning, and currently president of the Cuban Liberal Union whose headquarters is in Madrid. The organisation he directs is financed by the CIA and has the aim of promoting US foreign policy against Cuba within European and Latin-American administrations. (5)

Payá has also sought the collaboration of José Basulto León, one of the directors of the terrorist organisation Hermanos al Rescate, which has, on many occasions, violated Cuban airspace and, on 24th February 1996, almost triggered an armed conflict between Havana and Washington after the Cuban authorities shot down two of the self-same organisation’s planes which were breaching the country’s security. Basulto also displays a long criminal record: he was trained by the CIA, took part in the mercenary invasion of the Bay of Pigs in April 1961 and, amongst other things, made a bazooka attack on the Blanquita Theatre in Havana on 24th August 1962 when it was full of people. (6)

Far from being satisfied with the presence of these two individuals, the leader of the Christian Liberation Movement has called on such members of the Cuban-American National Foundation as Joe García and Ramón Humberto Colas. (7) Payá has openly expressed his delight at gathering together such “illustrious” personalities: “It is the first time that Cubans from inside and outside are working together as a single people with a single aim”. The declared “aim” is set out clearly in detail in the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, prepared by the former Secretary of State Colin Powell: the elimination of the Cuban revolution. (8)

Oswaldo Payá is too perceptive an individual to overlook the smallest detail of the past history of the members of his committee with their links to terrorist activities, but he has deliberately chosen to align himself with the most backward-looking section of the Cuban exiles. He has formally declared his goal of establishing “a market economy” in Cuba, as outlined in his Varela Project, falsely claimed in the media as being a Cuban initiative when in fact it was created in Washington. (10)

Payá, who is very voluble before the microphones of the international press, has “launched a challenge to the regime” by demanding fifteen minutes on Cuban national television in order to explain his political project. “I am challenging them yet again – to give me just fifteen minutes on the television which we, the Cuban people, pay for through our work”, he said. (11) At the same time, this opposition figure from the Christian Liberation Movement announced that he would refuse to stand at the municipal elections. The reason for this avoidance, by someone who claims to represent a broad segment of the Cuban population, is simple: he has absolutely no local support. In fact Payá, like every “dissident”, can stand and be elected, as Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban National Assembly, has emphasised. (12) However, this type of election, where there is no need for an election campaign or for astronomical finances, but where the candidates are directly elected by those who live in the same district, interests the “human right activists” only minimally. They know full well that they are totally unknown by the Cubans and that the only support they enjoy on the island is within the US Interests Section.
(snip/...)

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=8077