Democracy activists in Cuba report ongoing repression

January 30, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Havana, Cuba, Jan 30, 2020 / 04:50 pm (CNA).- A pro-democracy group in Cuba says its members are continuing to experience repression and harassment from police and government officials under the presidency of Miguel Díaz-Canel.

Eduardo Cardet, the national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement (CLM), says he was blocked Jan. 25 from traveling to the United States from Cuba, despite having his recently renewed passport and the appropriate visa.

According to the CLM, an immigration official at the Havana airport told Cardet he was prohibited from traveling. Asked why, the official reportedly told Cardet that “he ought to know the reason” and gave no further details.

Cardet was arrested Nov. 30, 2016, outside his home on charges of attacking law enforcement, scandal, and disorderly conduct. He was sentenced to three years in prison in 2017. The CLM contends, however, that the real reason for Cardet’s arrest was his criticism of the legacy of Fidel Castro and for his pro-democracy activism.

Cardet was released from prison under certain conditions in May 2019 and completed his sentence in September that year.

He was consequently “totally free and had no restrictions imposed on him,” Carlos Payá, CLM’s representative in Spain, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language new partner. Payá called the government’s refusal to let Cardet travel Jan. 25 “an arbitrary decision by the regime.”

Regis Iglesia, the CLM’s spokesman, says he was similarly blocked Jan. 1 from boarding an American Airlines plane departing from Miami International Airport for Havana because the Cuban government had notified the airlines that Iglesias was prohibited from entering the country. The Cuban dissident leader was exiled to Spain in 2010 by the Fidel Castro regime.

The CLM blasted the travel ban as a discriminatory violation of international law and a total disregard for the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Cuba has signed.

The organization has reported that other members had been given citations by State Security agents and threatened with prison if they continued their activism, been called terrorists by police officials, and been accused of vandalism.

The group said on its website last December that Cuban State Security issued a citation to Eduardo Cardet on Christmas Day, warning him that “the expansion of this organization will not be permitted” and that it would have “zero tolerance for the opposition.”

The Christian Liberation Movement was founded in 1988 by Oswaldo Payá and four other founders to achieve “peaceful and democratic change and respect for human dignity.” It advocates for free, fair, multiparty elections and other democratic reforms.

 

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Venezuelan bishops denounce contested election of legislative speaker

January 9, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

Caracas, Venezuela, Jan 9, 2020 / 05:19 pm (CNA).- The presidency of the Venezuelan bishops’ conference warned Wednesday that the disputed election of Luis Parra as president of the National Assembly is “contrary to all constitutional legality.”

Parra was elected head of Venezuela’s de jure legislature Jan. 5 by pro-government lawmakers, while opposition legislators were blocked from entering the chamber. It is the latest in a crisis over the government of Venezuela.

Under the socialist administration of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela has been marred by violence and social upheaval, with severe shortages of food and medicine, high unemployment, blackouts, and hyperinflation. Some 4.5 million Venezuelans have emigrated since 2015.

The Venezuelan bishops’ presidency said Jan. 8 that Parra’s election was “a shameful event” that “has replanted in the souls of Venezuelans reasons for hopelessness and a greater sense of helplessness.”

Opposition leader Juan Guaidó and 100 other opposition legislators were blocked Jan. 5 by Venezuelan National Guard troops from attending a vote in the legislature, where Guaidó was standing for re-election as its leader. Parra was elected instead, without a quorum, by pro-government lawmakers and some opposition politicians. Parra had been expelled last month from the Justice First party over alleged corruption.

Telesur, a state television network in Venezuela, said Parra was elected with 140 votes. The National Assembly has 167 seats.

Guaidó had declared himself interim president of Venezuela in January 2019, after president Nicolas Maduro was sworn in for a second term, having won a contested election in which oppositon candidates were barred from running or imprisoned. Guaidó and the Venezuelan bishops held Maduro’s second term to be invalid, and the presidency vacant.

He said that according to the Venezuelan constitution, when the presidency falls vacant, power is assumed by the president of the National Assembly.

On Jan. 5, Guaidó and opposition legislators held their session of the National Assembly at the headquarters of El Nacional, a Caracas daily. At that session, Guaidó was re-elected president of the legislature by about 100 lawmakers.

Then on Jan. 7,  Guaidó and 100 of his fellow opposition lawmakers accessed the National Assembly only after a half-hour stand-off with National Guardsmen who had cordoned the building. Pro-government legislators left when the opposition entered, and power to the building was cut.

Venezuela’s bishops said that the events of Jan. 7 were “a new abuse of power … which implies a hijacking of more than one democratic institution.”

They indicated that the recent events are “a new manifestation of the totalitarian ideology of those who hold political power. They have promoted and protected the lack of autonomy of the legitimate National Assembly; and, at the same time, they intend to recognize a directive chosen irritably against all constitutional legality ”.

The bishops urged members of the armed forces to place themselves “on the true side of the Constitution and of the people to which they belong and swore to defend.”

Archbishop José Luis Azuaje Ayala of Maracaibo, president of the Venezuelan bishops’ conference, said Jan. 7 that Parra’s election as speaker was an “invalid appointment” which pro-government lawmakers had done by “violating all norms of the assembly.”

Archbishop Azuaje’s statement was read at the opening of the Venezuelan bishops’ plenary assembly.

He said that because Parra’s National Assembly presidency is invalid, “it will be the responsibility of the true leadership elected by vote and according the  norms of the National Assembly, to continue to examine deeply how to  resolve the main problems afflicting the people.”

Archbishop Azuaje asked citizens to be aware because what is behind the crisis the country is undergoing is “power, as it is conceived and put into practice. Today, power as dominion is gaining ground against the truth.”

He called for “a new history based on the common good and on freedom.”

The opposition gained control of the National Assembly in a December 2016 election, and in 2017 Maduro formed a pro-government legislature, the Constituent Assembly, to supersede it. The Venezuelan bishops do not recognize the Constituent Assembly as legitimate or valid.

In 2018, Venezuela’s annual inflation rate was 1.3 million percent; late in 2019, the IMF forecast an inflation rate of 10 million percent for that year.

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