Oswaldo Paya has announced at a press conference in Havana on Thursday the creation of a Citizen’s Committee for Reconciliation and Dialogue (CCRD), an organization comprised of more than 300 citizens to promote reconciliation, dialogue and peaceful democratic change in Cuba. The CCRD will lead the Civic Campaign of the Cuban Forum Campaign. The following is the statement by the Citizen’s Committee for Reconciliation and Dialogue. To learn about the persecution against the activists and citizens that participated in the “Cuban Forum” campaign, read the news and hear the denunciation on Radio Martí (Spanish only).

A new light shines upon Cuba as it begins to be reborn

A new light shines upon a people who want to be free

(Source: EFE. Citizen’s Committee for Reconciliation and Dialogue in the press conference in Havana)

Cuba, November 22, 2007- We have founded the Citizen’s Committee for Reconciliation and Dialogue that promotes the Civic Campaign of the Cuban Forum. For months we have worked to form the first team of the Citizen’s Committee that already has a presence in all the provinces around the country, including some hundreds of citizens who today are the founders of this Citizen’s Committee. We are getting ready now to promote the creation of many teams to facilitate the voluntary affiliation and participation of all Cubans, without exclusions, in this civic movement that will promote the peaceful changes that the people of Cuba want and need today.

The Citizen’s Committee for Reconciliation and Dialogue (CCRD) has been formed to promote the Cuban Forum Campaign and contribute in this way toward “establishing a new nation of sincere democracy,” as our Apostle José Martí declared.

Citizen’s Committee for Reconciliation and Dialogue gathers all citizens, without exclusions, that are committed to work toward achieving the objectives of the Cuban Forum Campaign through legal and peaceful means.

 The Cuban Forum Campaign is a civic and peaceful process that has the following objectives:

• The release of all those who are imprisoned for peacefully defending, promoting, and exercising universally recognized human rights.
• The necessary changes in the law to guarantee the exercise of fundamental rights of all Cubans, living inside and outside of Cuba.
• The establishment of free elections for a Constitutional Assembly.
• To have all Cubans walk together, without exclusions, in reconciliation, freedom, and brotherhood, constructing a more human, more just, more free society in our sovereign and independent Nation.

Moreover, because the Cuban people and all Cubans have the right to speak for themselves and with their own voice; the Citizen’s Committee for Reconciliation and Dialogue proclaims today, the Declaration of Freedom for Cubans, as a document from the people and for the people, in which Cubans offer a vision of changes and of the future they desire, signal the changes they want to take, and express their hopes and desires.

For this reason, the Declaration of Freedom will become the declaration of every Cuban, and in this way the declaration of the people of Cuba.