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PDFCuban democracy advocates today launched the CLICK Festival, described by a leading blogger as an online “constructive space to plan for tomorrow,” as an unprecedented collaborative initiative by the island’s civil society groups is sparking fresh hope that the democratic opposition can overcome factional rivalries (often engineered by state security agencies) and develop sustainable coalitions for change.
Pro-democracy groups are uniting behind Citizen Demand for Another Cuba, a manifesto for political change described by one democracy advocate as “a serious, coordinated effort led by street activists, opposition leaders, independent professionals and intellectuals to raise citizen awareness about their political, social, and economic rights.”
The initiative, whose signatories include the prominent blogger Yoani Sanchez, opposition activists Manuel Cuesta Morua and Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, leading dissidents and a wide range of independent voices, is the latest sign of increasingly vibrant debate and political assertiveness within Cuban civil society (above).
“The days of disagreement are coming to an end,” says Sanchez 
(right). Cuba’s civil society groups “have learned the lesson that unity, convergence and reconciliation make them stronger against the verticality of the totalitarian government.”
“The importance of creating coalitions is such that the main task of the island’s political police is now to destroy bridges and alienate potential allies,” she noted. “Intrigue, confrontation and fostering rivalries have come to be the hackneyed strategies employed by State Security to try to maintain a separation between the threads of the civic fabric.”
But activists believe the new initiate represents a genuine watershed.
“As Cubans, legitimate children of this land and an essential part of our nation, we feel a deep sorrow at the prolonged crisis that we are experiencing and the demonstrated inability of the current government to make fundamental changes. This obliges us, from civil society, to seek and demand our own solutions,” the statement begins:
The miserable incomes, shortages of food and shelter, the massive emigration due to lack of opportunities, the discrimination against those who think differently, the absence of spaces for public debate, the arbitrary arrests and lack of citizen rights, the corruption and the tenure and inability to remove the ruling elite, are some of the symptoms of the difficult reality facing us.
We want to debate publicly the dual currency, immigration restrictions, rights of workers to a living wage, the right of all Cubans, wherever they live, to promote economic initiatives in their own country, the demographic crisis, free access to the Internet and new technologies. We want to discuss the exercise of democracy…..
We are committed to democratic transformation where everyone can contribute their views and contribute to its realization.
“I feel we have gained awareness that together we are very hard to silence,” Sanchez wrote. “To see a list of signatures with such plurality and diversity gives me hope. It makes me believe that all the intrigues cooked up in the offices of the intelligence services no longer make even a dent in our consciousness.”
The Communist authorities recently detained 32 members of the celebrated Ladies in White after a sweep of arrests across the island.
“These women have been released little by little, because the objective was to prevent them from getting to Havana,” where they had organized a “literary tea” for political dissidents in honor of Father’s Day, the group’s leader Berta Soler told AFP.
Another leading dissident, Jorge Luis García Pérez* (left), commonly known as “Antúnez,” was also recently arrested, beaten and detained for several days after he joined fellow activist Sarah Marta Fonseca in giving testimony via live video conference to a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing about Cuba’s human rights violations.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry joined Cuban-American Senators Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Marco Rubio, R-Fl., in condemning Raúl Castro’s regime for suppressing peaceful dissent.
“I want to be crystal clear that I strongly condemn any efforts to intimidate Mr. Perez or any other Cuban citizen into silence,” Sen. Kerry said. “I echo the calls of my Senate colleagues, demanding an end to repression in Cuba and urging international observers to conduct an investigation into his detention.”
The Citizen Demand for Another Cuba calls for free access to the Internet and new technologies, but the Communist authorities’ reaction to the CLICK Festival launched today by independent bloggers and activists is a telling indication of the regime’s paranoia.
An article in the official media refers to the initiative as “Media Terrorism” and “a subversive monster,” notes Sanchez, one of the initiative’s organizers.
“Far from monstrous (no comment on “mediocre”), the CLICK Festival is technological, not ideological or political, [but] a constructive space to plan for tomorrow,” she writes:
We encourage all Cubans to attend, and also extend a broad welcome to foreign tourists visiting the Island who want to join us; the doors of the CLICK Festival will be open to you. Your presence will strengthen our visibility and transparency, contributing to the greatest protection we could count on.
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Citizen Demand for Another Cuba
As Cubans, legitimate children of this land and an essential part of our nation, we feel a deep sorrow at the prolonged crisis that we are experiencing and the demonstrated inability of the current government to make fundamental changes. This obliges us, from civil society, to seek and demand our own solutions.
The miserable incomes, shortages of food and shelter, the massive emigration due to lack of opportunities, the discrimination against those who think differently, the absence of spaces for public debate, the arbitrary arrests and lack of citizen rights, the corruption and the tenure and inability to remove the ruling elite, are some of the symptoms of the difficult reality facing us.
We want to debate publicly the dual currency, immigration restrictions, rights of workers to a living wage, the right of all Cubans, wherever they live, to promote economic initiatives in their own country, the demographic crisis, free access to the Internet and new technologies. We want to discuss the exercise of democracy.
The Constitution of the Republic of Cuba establishes:
In its Article 3: In the Republic of Cuba sovereignty resides in the people from whom all the power of the State originates.
And in its Article 63: Every citizen has the right to direct complaints and petitions to the authorities and to receive the appropriate attention or responses in a timely manner, according to law.
WE DEMAND THE CUBAN GOVERNMENT:
Immediately implement the essential legal guarantees and policies conceived in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ratify the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, signed by the Government of Cuba on February 28, 2008 in New York City. This would ensure full respect for citizens regardless of their ideas or their political-social actions and restore the rights of everyone who, in their opinions, disagrees with the government. We consider these rights essential to the formation of a modern, free and plural Cuba that will receive us all equally and place our sovereignty in a dynamic and increasingly global world.
We are committed to democratic transformation where everyone can contribute their views and contribute to its realization. We invite all Cubans inside and outside the Island who identify with these demands, to join this just and necessary claim. Our expectation of being heard by the government is almost exhausted, yet we have decided to bring the authorities this demand as an urgent recourse to achieve effective understanding. We are determined not to accept institutional silence in response to this demand for the ratification of the agreements mentioned.
*Jorge Luis Garcia Pérez (aka “Antúnez”) was one of five Cuban dissidents honored by the National Endowment for Democracy., the Washington-based democracy assistance group. Addressing the meeting by phone from central Cuba, he accepted the NED’s 2009 Democracy Award as an indication of the “prestige and recognition which the political opposition has gained.”
