Cuban Liberty Council Director Addresses Miami HRTR Forum

Mr. Paul Alcázar, one of the Directors of the Cuban Liberty Council, addressed the Miami Human Rights Torch Relay (HRTR) Forum about uniting the victims and opponents of communist oppression to coordinate efforts to show the world the truth of communism, and to end the suffering of the oppressed.

The CLC was established in Florida in 2001 with the goal of assisting the efforts of human rights and opposition groups in Cuba, and to oppose the continuance of the totalitarian regime that has impoverished and enslaved the Cuban people.

The CLC is essentially a patriotic not for profit organization devoted entirely to the freedom of Cuba, we have no other agenda except for that,

Like the group that preceded me, who are our inspirations, we also have a number of political prisoners in our organization in fact Louis Zùñiga who you just heard from, is an executive member of the board of the CLC.

I don't want to miss the presence of Brigade 2506, in the person of Felix Rodriguez, who came in a little late, and we also take a lot of pride in having you here and being with you.

As I look around this room, if anyone were to look around this room, the first thing that they would immediately think is that there is many apparent contrast in this audience. We are of different ethnicities, we come from different geographies (geographical regions) different countries and nationalities, we speak different languages—all with an accent—we probably share different religions and customs. So what are we all doing here?

I think it s important to realize that the reason we're here is because we also share some strong similarities and I will mention a couple.

In all of the cases in this room, our homelands suffer from oppression, and we also happen to have one common enemy: It doesn't matter what that enemy's name is; it is essentially International Communism. It has been around for a long, long time, and we are its victims.

And that's what brings us here together today.

Another things that binds us, and we wouldn't be here if this wasn't the case, is our absolute and complete commitment to freedom and to the freedom of our people.

We will not forget that our people are not free today. And we have an ongoing refusal to yield to the communist system, in our lands or in any other lands around the world.

But let's not sell our enemies short. Our enemies have strengths. Among some of the strengths that I have listed in my notes, they share a lot of military and economic strength; they have well-tuned repressive apparatus that they work on, on a daily basis; they have the ability to adapt: in the last two or three decades, we have seen them go from outright totalitarian regimes, to state-controlled capitalism systems, such as the one China has, to 21st Century—call it what you call it, it is still basically the same thing.

They have that ability to remake themselves or their image, and nobody around the world is really calling them on it.

Today they trade with the democracies around the world. They have growing economies on account of the democracies being available to trade with them. Their system didn't really produce anything; they essentially use slave labor, which is something they have in abundance.

Even in a country as small as Cuba there are ten million human beings available to work on anything the government wants them to work on.

And they have many friends around the world; we cannot forget that.

Ironically, in our case, most of the friends of the Cuban dictatorship are not in the East—they are in the West. So Cuba (We) gets a tremendous amount of support from former eastern countries like the Czech republic. And sometimes the friends of our enemies come from countries that should be very close to us like Spain … France…

So we are up against all of that ands I think that our strategy should be to try to break those bonds, and try to show the world what this thing is all about.

They also have great weaknesses and I think that s what we have to concentrate on.

The communist ideology is dead, it's defunct. It was buried twenty years ago by the same people who created it, the folks who invented it.

And yet today in a number of countries around the world, in the biggest country in the world, China communism continues to thrive, even though the ideology itself is dead. So they're devoid of ideology, they don't have that to sell to people any more.

They still manage to survive in a number of developing countries, Asia, Latin America, but without an ideology it's going to be awfully difficult to keep that up for very long.

Their survival is through adaptation, it's not through freedom—and we're after freedom. That's the only think we're after. Everything will take care of itself afterwards.

There is a growing awareness around the world of the repressive nature of the Chinese in particular. But for many, many years trade has taken the forefront of this argument, and many people have refused to see the reality behind it.

We've had Tiananmen Square, we've had the persecution of Falun Gong, the issues with Tibet that have been going on for a while but most recently, and in Cuba's case we had the Dark Spring ¹ a couple of years ago. You know, the news tends to cover it slightly, and then they tend to forget about it and it's back to business as usual.

It is up to people like us to make sure that that doesn't happen any more, and that is why we gather in places like this and talk about these things.

Our strategy should be that of cooperation, through gatherings of this nature, a constant denunciation of the atrocities and violations of human rights that they commit around the world.

Last October–in fact, in our case, this is where we became kind of close with some of these other organizations that are represented here today, hosted the Southeast Asia Pro-Democracy Coalition and I think if we had not had that meeting, about four or five months ago, we wouldn't be here today. We kind of came to know each other at that meeting, and now there are six or seven different organizations that tend to work together and help one another.

We need to participate more in world forums, maybe through NGOs—we haven't done enough of that—and certainly we need to keep supporting the opponents of the regimes inside each of our countries. I think that is fundamental.

I know in the Cuban case we spend most of our time—Horacio Garcia here is very active along those lines, in supporting Cuban— real Cuban—opposition inside of Cuba.

Cubans have been fortunate in terms of getting the attention of the world's greatest democracy, the United States of America. In a very short period of time we have managed to have six members of Congress representing our interest—four in the House and two in the Senate. You met on of them today and you read a letter from another one.

I am sure—and they have said so, they have so stated—That their cause is not just for Cuba; their cause s for all of you. And in doing so [in supporting this cause] I think they raise the interest of the United States, overall, in these issues that are so dear and so important to us.

So, the responsibility that we have is to continue preaching, continue making a point, and using our elected officials and other organizations to convince people around the world that we're on the right track and Communism is on its deathbed.

Thank you.

1.) "Black Spring," (primavera negra) describes the March, 2003 crackdown on Cuban academics, journalists, librarians, and freedom activists, an effort by Fidel Castro to crush Cuba's underground, independent press.