Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas
Background
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas was born February 29, 1952 as the fifth of
seven brothers and sisters. His father, Alejandro Payá, ran a small
business while his mother, Iradia Sardiñas,
raised the children in a Catholic environment. The Payá Sardiñas family
has never had ties to any of the Cuban governments nor to Fulgencia
Batista’s dictatorship.
Payá and his family have suffered persecution since the beginning of the
Revolution as a result of their steadfast loyalty to the Catholic faith,
even during the worst periods of persecution. During his youth, Payá
repeatedly demonstrated his tendency to think and act independently. He
was the only member of his grade school class not to become a member of
the Communist Youth, and he openly criticized the Soviet invasion of the
Czech Republic in 1968. Due to Payá’s openly critical position toward
the regime, the Cuban authorities imprisoned him without judicial
proceedings and sent him through various labor camps across the island
for the next three years.
When Payá was released from the camps in 1972, he enrolled at the
University of Havana to pursue a degree in physics, but he was again
persecuted for his openly Catholic beliefs and dissenting ideology and
was forced to leave. Employment was difficult to find and keep because
of his beliefs, and the rest of his family began to encounter the same
harassment at work and school. Nonetheless, when offered an exit from
the country by relatives in 1980, Payá refused. By the beginning of the
1980’s, Payá had become a specialist in electronic medical equipment, a
job he holds to this day. He continued to be harassed by agents of the
state security service, regularly followed, watched and threatened
at home, work and church.
Independent Voice
Despite this persecution, however, Payá continued to speak out against
the government in more vocal ways. In February 1986, he defended Cuban
Catholics’ absolute freedom to practice and called on the Church to
denounce injustice as a delegate of the Havana diocese in the Cuban
National Church meeting. The next year, he helped establish the Circle
of Cuban Thoughts and launched “God’s People” (“Pueblo de Dios”), the
first independent publication defending religious freedom and the
freedom of all Cubans. After the Archbishop of Havana halted the
publication and dissolved the Circle, Payá founded the Christian
Liberation Movement (Movimiento Cristiano Liberación, MCL) in 1988. The
MCL is a non-violent civic movement that has repeatedly called for
political and economic reform and the recognition of universal human
rights for all individuals. In March 1990, he was detained for several
days by the police, interrogated and threatened with several years in
prison should he continue.
In 1992, Payá announced that he was running for a seat in the Cuban
National Assembly.
State security arrested and paraded him through his Havana neighborhood
to intimidate neighbors, and threatened that “his candidacy would have
violent consequences”.
In 1995, Payá began voicing his criticism of U.S. policy toward Cuba,
calling for the U.S. to lift its embargo on food and medicine to Cuba.
To reinforce the autonomy of Cuba’s opposition, Payá became one of the
organizers of the Cuban Council that same year. The Council was a
coalition of hundreds of organizations dedicated to the proposition that
a democratic transition can be brought about by a peaceful process in
which these organizations exercise their human and civic rights. Once
again, Payá was arrested by state security agents and ordered to disband
the group. Upon his refusal, State Security fenced in Payá’s home to
obstruct the Council’s meetings.
In 1997, Payá again attempted to run for a seat in the Cuban National
Assembly. He received hundreds of signatures of support, but the
electoral commission refused his candidacy.
Civic Leader
From 1996 to 1997, Payá drafted the Varela Project (Proyecto Varela),
which draws upon a provision in the Cuban constitution that enables
citizens to introduce legislative initiatives when accompanied by 10,000
signatures. The initiative was launched in 1998, and on May 10, 2002,
11,020 signatures calling for a referendum on open elections, freedom of
speech, freedom for political prisoners, free association and free
enterprise were submitted to the Cuban National Assembly of People’s
Power. Nearly 200 groups and personalities from across the ideological
spectrum – known together as “All United” (Todos Unidos) – came
together to support the project. The Cuban government tried several
methods to quell the initiative, and on March 18, 2003, 75 civil society
leaders, most of which were Varela Project organizers, were arrested,
summarily tried and jailed. Despite the repression, Payá
and other PV leaders continued the initiative and submitted 14,384
additional signatures in October 2003.
In December 2003, Payá invited all Cubans on the island and abroad to
participate in a National Dialogue (Diálogo Nacional) on a peaceful
democratic transition in Cuba. Payá plans to develop a plan for a
transition to a democratic Cuba based on the results of thousands of
discussion groups both on and off the island. This plan would be
submitted to the Cuban national assembly for a referendum.
More recently, Payá has attempted to unite the often fractious peaceful,
democratic opposition in Cuba with a Common Ground (Base Común)
initiative. The initiative seeks to form a common front amongst the
opposition based on agreed upon common principles.
Oswaldo Payá currently lives in Havana, Cuba with his wife, Ofelia, and
their three children. He has been honored several times for his efforts.
In 2002, he received the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for
Freedom of Thought and the National Democratic Institute’s W. Averell
Harriman Democracy Award for his commitment to promoting democracy and
human rights. In 2003, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize by former Czech president Václav Havel and has been a candidate
for the prize each year since.
Original text in Spanish by Regis Iglesias Ramirez, member of the
Christian Liberation Movement. Last
updated January 2006.
http://www.presslingua.com/web/article.asp?artID=4544
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