“Human rights violations in Venezuela are not narrative”

Activist Rosa María Payá, founder of the Cuba Decide movement and daughter of Oswaldo Payá, an opponent murdered by the Castro dictatorship in 2012, countered this Wednesday (21st) the statements made by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who said in May, during the visit of the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro to Brazil, that the accusations about repression in Venezuela are a “narrative”.

“The human rights violations in Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela are real and not a narrative”, said Payá, in a speech during the 53rd Regular Session of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS), in Washington. “It is time for states to unite against dictators.”

According to statements reproduced by the Argentine website Infobae, Payá also pointed to the “authoritarian interference of the Cuban dictatorship as a fundamental factor” for the political crisis in the other dictatorships mentioned and said that the “export of the Cuban repressive model” was decisive for the “collapse of democracy in Cuba”. Venezuela”. “Military counterintelligence in Venezuela is in the hands of Cuban agents,” said the activist.

Last week, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) released a report that pointed out that the Cuban dictatorship caused the car accident that killed political opponents and human rights defenders Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, in the province of Granma, in southern Cuba. country in 2012.

In an interview with Infobae, Rosa María Payá praised the IACHR report. “The truth about the events prevailed and brings us closer to a future of justice, which will only come when my father’s dream of freedom for Cuba is realized,” she said.