Posted on 12/14/2002 1:19:19 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
HAVANA - A Cuban dissident who is to receive a major human rights award next week said Friday that his house was vandalized overnight and he blamed the government.
A flag and bumper stickers of the militant anti-Castro group Alpha 66 were tied and pasted to the house of Oswaldo Paya, who advocates nonviolent change of Cuba's socialist system. Scrawled on the bumper stickers were "Death to informers" and words that included "spy" and "traitor."
Paya said he has not received the government exit visa needed to leave the country for a ceremony at which the European Parliament next week, where he is to receive the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya looks at the front of his home after it was plastered with anti-Castro propaganda, December 13, 2002. The propaganda included the flag of exiled extremist group Alpha 66, in what he called a government campaign to harass him and label him a traitor for winning Europe's top human rights prize, the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. REUTERS/Rafael Perez
"I interpret this (the vandalism) as the government response to my request to leave to receive the prize," he said.
Paya is a lead organizer of the Varela Project, an island-wide signature gathering effort requesting a referendum asking voters if they favor guarantees for rights such as freedom of speech and private business ownership, broad electoral reforms and freedom for political prisoners.
Alpha 66 is a Florida-based group which has organized paramilitary attempts to topple President Fidel Castro's government.
Andres Nazario Sargen, a spokesman for Alpha 66 in Miami, said his group had no part in the vandalism. "Although we don't agree with his political views, we don't label him a spy," he said.
Militant exile groups have accused the Varela Project of being so moderate that it favors Castro - though Paya said scores of people who signed the document have been detained or questioned by security forces.
In May, Varela Project organizers turned in stacks of petitions they said were signed by 11,020 people asking Cuba's parliament for the referendum. Paya said Friday that organizers since then have collected more than 10,000 additional signatures.
The Cuban parliament has not responded to the Varela Project request, though Cuba's government has repeatedly referred to dissidents on the island as insignificant in number and as paid agents of the United States.
"This is the first time that the assembly has had a mass meeting," she said. "But the objective is to join the 341 organizations so that, in a democratic way, these associations elect someone to lead them." Roque estimated the groups together have about 5,000 members. The loosely organized gathering lasted a few hours, with people coming and going, and broke up around noon. Reporters saw about 50 people. Even at that size, it was an unusually large and public gathering of dissidents in Cuba. "It is an achievement to be able to gather such a large force of the opposition," Roque told reporters. ***
Paya said he had endangered both himself and his family by traveling to Strasbourg, France, to receive the award at the headquarters of the European Parliament. ''The day before I left, they broke down my door,'' he said. ''They have threatened me and my family with death. I was afraid, but you don't get paralyzed by fear; you go on.''
As recently as last weekend, it was not clear whether Cuban authorities would allow Paya to travel to France to receive the award. A last-minute appeal to Castro by Pat Cox, president of the European Parliament, and Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain secured Paya's first trip outside Cuba.
He thanked the 15-nation European Union for supporting the cause of human rights in Cuba. ''This prize is for all Cubans, because I believe that in awarding it Europe wishes to say to them, you, too, are entitled to rights,'' he said.
''There are thousands of men and women who are fighting in the teeth of persecution for the rights of all Cubans. Hundreds of them have been imprisoned solely for having proclaimed and stood up for those rights.'' The $15,000 annual prize is named after Andrei Sakharov, the late Soviet physicist, dissident, and Nobel peace laureate.
''You represent for many Cubans today what Andrei Sakharov represented in the 1980s for many Soviet citizens,'' Cox told Paya. ''We recognize your personal courage ... to use peace and not terror as the pathway to democracy in Cuba. We walk with you on your journey.'' Paya, 50, founded Cuba's Christian Liberation Movement in 1987. The nonviolent opposition movement calls for deep political and economic changes in Cuba's communist system. [End]
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