Oswaldo Payá's daughter calls for unity, independent investigation of his death

Posted on Friday, 04.12.13

Oswaldo Payá's daughter calls for unity, independent investigation of
his death
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Making her first formal appearance in Miami, Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo,
the daughter of the late Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá, said Friday that
it's time for all Cubans on the island and abroad "to push in the same
direction."

One avenue would be her father's Project Varela, Payá Acevedo said. The
proposal for a plebiscite on whether Cuba should have a multi-party
democracy and freedom of speech and assembly gathered more than 25,000
signatures in 2002.

The 24-year-old physicist's remarks and news conference at the
University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies
came a week after Havana journalist and blogger Yoani Sánchez spent
several days in the capital of Cuban exiles.

Like Sánchez, the Cuban government had been denying Payá Acevedo
permission to travel abroad until February, a month after a reform of
the island's migration system removed the requirement for the much hated
"exit permit."

Payá Acevedo said her trip abroad, with stops in Chile, Spain, Sweden,
Washington, New York City and Miami before she returns to Havana next
week, was designed in part to spread the message that Cubans need
democracy and unity of purpose.

"We need to push together. . . . It is time to push in the same
direction," she declared, drawing a round of applause from her first
formal audience since arriving in Miami on Thursday evening.

Asked whether Cubans are ready for democracy, she shot back, "One
doesn't have to go to school for freedoms and rights."

Seeks crash probe

But her trip also was designed to push for an independent investigation
of her father's death in a July 22 car crash that the Cuban government
says was an accident but which others insist was caused by State
Security agents who were following his vehicle.

She has appealed to the European Parliament and the human rights
branches of the United Nations and Organization of American States to
investigate the crash. The Payá family also has hired a Madrid lawyer
for a possible lawsuit against Cuba, because her father was a Spanish
citizen.

"All the evidence indicates that it [the crash] was no accident," she
asserted. "We have the right to know the truth."

Oswaldo Payá and fellow dissident Harold Cepero were killed when their
car, driven by visiting Spanish politician Angel Carromero, crashed near
the eastern city of Bayamo. Carromero and Swedish politician Jens Aron
Modig survived.

Carromero told her during several recent meetings in Spain that he was
run off the road by another car, presumably one of the State Security
vehicles that had been following them since they left Havana, and that
the Europeans were punched by the first men to arrive on the scene.

Cuban prosecutors say Carromero was speeding and crashed into a tree. He
was sentenced to four years in prison for vehicular homicide, but
returned to Madrid under an agreement that allows Spaniards and Cubans
to serve sentences in their own countries.

Her father was always very careful on Cuban roads and never would have
allowed Carromero to drive too fast, Payá Acevedo declared.

Modig told her at their recent meeting in Stockholm that he was sleeping
before the crash but woke up as the car swerved and does not remember
crashing into a tree, she said.

Since the crash, presumed State Security agents have continued to harass
and intimidate her and her family in much the same way they tried to
coerce her father after he founded the dissident Christian Liberation
Movement in 1987, she said.

Threatening calls

Family members are followed almost everywhere they go in Cuba, she said,
and she has received threatening telephone calls at 4 a.m. The last such
phone call repeated a threat that was voiced to her father before the
fatal crash: "We are going to kill you."

She has asked for protective measures for her and her family during her
meetings at the U.N. and OAS, Payá Acevedo said, but remains concerned
about the safety of other dissidents.

Asked about her father's relations with the Cuban Catholic church — he
was a tough critic of Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega — Payá Acevedo said
priests and nuns have been supportive and even hosted relatives of
political prisoners who must travel far to visit them.

"At the hierarchical level, I can't say the same," she added with a smile.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/12/3340879/oswaldo-payas-daughter-calls.html#storylink=misearch