12 years after the assassinations of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero

This July 22nd marks the 12th anniversary of the death of the leader of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and his companion, Harold Cepero, an act widely denounced by their families and followers as an assassination.

His daughter, Rosa María Payá, announced the celebration of a mass this Monday at the Ermita de la Caridad, Miami.

Luis Michel Céspedes, representative of the MCL in Costa Rica, told ADN Cuba that “once again we ask for solidarity. Not only with this double murder but with all those that have occurred under Castroism since 1959, to which today the Cuban regime enjoys total impunity by the European democracies and those of the American continent. They have become accomplices, maintaining agreements that go nowhere but to sustain the tyranny”.

For his part, Cuban-American Senator Marco Rubio commented on Monday that “by paying tribute to the legacy and vision of Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero, we remember the great sacrifices that these two brave leaders paid for the cause of freedom and democracy for all Cubans.

As we pay tribute to the legacy and vision of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, we remember the great sacrifices that these two courageous leaders paid for the cause of freedom and democracy for all Cubans.

On July 22, 2012, Payá was traveling with Cepero, the Spanish politician Ángel Carromero and the Swedish Aron Modig, when he was involved in a suspicious traffic accident in the town of Bayamo, Granma province.

At that time, the opponents were working on the document “The People's Road” and wanted to make it known in the eastern part of the island.

The official communiqué then indicated that the driver of the car in which the four people were traveling lost control of the vehicle near Bayamo; however, the family of the opposition leader stated that the car had been deliberately taken off the road.

From the farewell mass to the creator of the “Varela Project” in the San Salvador Catholic Church, his son, Oswaldo, declared to BBC Mundo that it was not an accident and recalled that his father had received many death threats.

It was in June 2023 that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) published a detailed report in which it held the Cuban regime responsible for their deaths.

In the Report, the IACHR identified serious and sufficient evidence to conclude that state agents participated in the deaths of Payá and Cepero. 

Carromero and Modig, the survivors, confirmed that version.

“After the accident they called their superiors in Sweden and Spain saying that a truck hit them, crashed into them, rammed them several times until it pushed them out of the ditch, out of the road, and then in the hospital they were left incommunicado,” added Oswaldo son.

In addition, Carromero was driving the car and was charged with reckless driving resulting in death and sentenced to four years in prison in Cuba, although he served most of his sentence in Spain thanks to an agreement between governments.

Oswado Payá Sardiñas' official web page reads: “We hold the Cuban military junta and General Raúl Castro responsible for the life of our leader Oswaldo Payá and his companions. We hold them responsible for this premeditated aggression against their lives”.

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, winner of the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize, was the founder and organizer of the Varela Project, initiated in 1998 through which, under the protection of the Constitution, he collected the signatures necessary to present the government with a request for changes in the legislation.

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