Questions Surround Death of Oswaldo Paya

HAVANA TIMES — The funeral and burial of Oswaldo Paya, the leader of the opposition group Christian Liberation Movement, will take place in Havana on Tuesday at the Colon cemetery, while his death on Sunday remains surrounded by the questioning voices among other Cuban dissidents.

During the funeral Mass held at the San Salvador Catholic Church, the dissident’s son (also named Oswaldo) told the BBC that the death was not an accident and he recalled his father having received many death threats.

“After the accident, they [the two survivors, both foreigners] called their superiors in Sweden and Spain saying that a truck had hit them, repeatedly ramming them into a ditch on the side of the highway, and later in the hospital they were keep incommunicado,” added the son of the opposition figure.

Paya was the founder of the Varela Project, which in 1998 gathered signatures for a referendum on civil rights on the island, an initiative that won him the 2002 Sakharov Prize and 50,000 euros from the European Union.

See: Cuba’s Oswaldo Paya Dies in Car Crash