#2 The Varela Project is amazing to me:
But despite this very real danger, Cubans are clearly losing their fear of the dying regime and are demanding a role in building their own democratic future. An authentically independent civil society -- the building blocks of a real democracy -- is developing before our eyes. The Varela Project is a peaceful call for a national referendum on political and economic reforms in Cuba that seeks to take advantage of a clause in the Castro constitution that requires the national assembly to consider a referendum upon the petition of 10,000 citizens. The regime obviously never thought that such a provision could be used against it, but it happened. Over 11,000 signatures were collected from ordinary Cuban citizens in 2002 and presented to the National Assembly. This showed incredible courage on the part of those who signed and registered their identification numbers. The response from the regime was to arrest over 20 of the organizers and to sentence them to long prison terms. But instead of capitulating to this pressure, civil society leader Oswaldo Paya and his colleagues reconstituted their effort and collected and delivered an additional 14,000 signatures. These thousands of Cuban citizens cannot be dismissed by the government as an insignificant, miniscule group of misfits. Vladimiro Roca, the son of one of the founders of the Cuban Communist Party, was jailed along with Marta Beatriz Roque, Felix Bonne, and Rene Gomez Manzano in 1997. Vladimiro himself did over 5 years in prison yet continues his work. We admire and applaud these valiant and principled efforts to promote peaceful and positive changes in Cuba despite active hostility from the Castro government. And we welcome the growing optimism in Cuba itself that the end of the dictatorship is near. |