Thanks to your support and taking action, this petition to expel Cuba from the UN Human Rights Council has amassed over 1,000 signatures. Please share it with others.

The case for removing Cuba from the UN Human Rights Council is found in the dictatorship not following its own rules, or recognizing the sovereignty of Cubans.

The Varela Project, named after the Cuban Catholic Priest Felix Varela, sought to reform the Cuban legal system to bring it in line with international human rights standards. They had followed the letter of the law in organizing the campaign. They specifically asked for the following in the petition.

• Guarantee the right to free expression and free association that guarantee pluralism, opening Cuban society to political debate and facilitating a more participatory democracy.
• Amnesty for all those imprisoned for political reasons.
• Right of Cubans to form companies, both individually owned and in cooperatives.
• Proposal for a new electoral law that truly guarantees the right to elect and be elected to all Cubans and the holding of free elections.

The Christian Liberation Movement was founded by Catholic lay people in Havana in September 1988, and is part of a non-violent dissident movement that traces its origins and influences to the Cuban Committee for Human Rights that was founded in 1976.

Former President James Carter visited Cuba in May 2002 and on May 15th gave a speech at the University of Havana, where he advocated for the lifting of economic sanctions on Cuba and "called for the Varela Project petition to be published in the official newspaper so that people could learn about it."

Yet the dictatorship's response to the nonviolent citizen's initiative, and to President Carter's request, was to coerce Cubans into signing another petition declaring the Constitution unchangeable and quickly passed it through the rubber stamp legislature. 

Today marking this anniversary of the Varela Project, the Christian Liberation Movement released the following statement.

"Exactly 20 years ago, with hundreds of political prisoners in jail and a mostly terrified people, 11,020 Cubans peacefully demanded the freedom of political prisoners and free elections, so that Cubans could freely choose their political and economic model. 

The response of the tyranny was repression, exile and even murder. 

Two decades later, political prisoners multiply and terror expands on the island through repression, while the solidarity of many bows to petty interests, providing impunity to the regime, today more tyrannical and more despotic than ever. 

On the 20th anniversary of that civic gesture of the people of Cuba, honoring the memory of Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero and all those who have fallen in this struggle, thinking of the thousands of political prisoners who are today in communist dungeons, living with the Cuban people the lack of freedom and rights, we proclaim our will to continue working indefinitely together with the people, until freedom and democracy arrive in Cuba, which by right belongs to all Cubans. 

ALL CUBANS! 

ALL BROTHERS! 

AND NOW FREEDOM."