Word: payas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...waiting to see what TIME would say about Fidel Castro's crackdown on Cuban dissidents [WORLD, May 19]. Tim Padgett's thoughtful and balanced appraisal of Oswaldo Paya, the Cuban dissident who stayed in the country to work for democratic reform, was worth the wait. Paya's drive calling for a plebiscite on free speech and multiparty elections has placed the emphasis on a hopeful future. Castro has run Cuba as his feudal estate for 44 years, but his naive supporters are finally seeing him for the tyrant he is. As Padgett wrote, Paya has succeeded in "wresting the Cuba...
...Oswaldo Paya is something Cuban President Fidel Castro has rarely, if ever, faced: a dissident as hardheaded as he is. When Castro took power in 1959, Paya was the only kid in his Havana primary school who refused to become a Communist Youth member. In high school, after openly criticizing the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he was sent to a labor camp for three years. Rather than escape to Miami in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, he stayed in Cuba to work for democratic reform. Now his doggedness has prompted one of Castro's most ironfisted crackdowns: scores of Paya...
...Paya, an engineer who bicycles to his job as a hospital-equipment technician, is also complicating George W. Bush's policy toward Cuba. The U.S. President is expected to give an important Cuba policy speech next week. Given the jailing of the dissidents and the stunning executions of three Cubans for the noncapital crime of trying to hijack a ferry to Miami last month, the Administration's natural inclination is to hammer El Comandante. But with some 40,000 Cubans in recent years having openly endorsed Paya's campaign for a popular vote on expanding freedoms, his Christian Liberation Movement...
...past, Castro, 76, managed to neutralize dissidents before they became globally known, like Lech Walesa in Poland or Corazon Aquino in the Philippines. But Paya's celebrity is beginning to rival Castro's. During his visit to Cuba last year, ex-President Jimmy Carter hailed Paya in a speech broadcast to every Cuban household. Paya won the European Union's Sakharov Prize for human rights last December. Vaclav Havel, who led the "velvet revolution" that toppled communism in Czechoslovakia, has nominated Paya for the Nobel Peace Prize. Robert De Niro's Tribeca Film Festival last week canceled its screening...
...Iraq, 78 dissidents and independent journalists have been jailed, accused of treason for allegedly being financed by the U.S. The evidence? Some of them recently met with American diplomatic officials who are permitted to work in Havana. But a prominent dissident who has not been arrested is physicist Oswaldo Paya, 51, head of the Varela Project, which is calling for a constitutional referendum on free speech and elections. Castro's ire at the growing popularity of Paya seems a key impetus for the dragnet, since most of those arrested are Varela activists. But Castro has apparently decided that arresting Paya...