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María Payá Acevedo


Rosa María Payá Acevedo (Havana, 10 January 1989) is a Cuban activist for freedom and human rights. The daughter of activist Oswaldo Payá, head of the Christian Liberation Movement, she took up much of his activist work after he died under mysterious circumstances on 22 July 2012.

Since her father's death in 2012, she and her mother have been living in the Miami area, but frequently travels back to Cuba to visit.

She is the daughter of Oswaldo Payá and his wife, Ofelia Acevedo de Payá. She has two brothers, Oswaldo José and Reinaldo Isaías. She holds a degree in physics and has also studied photography.

In March 2013, Payá addressed the UN Human Rights Council, criticizing the Cuban government for its failure to allow a plebiscite on basic freedoms. When she went on to state that her father's death, contrary to the official Cuban line, was not accidental, the Cuban delegate, Juan Quintanilla, began to bang on his desk. He called Payá a “mercenary” and asked the president of the UNHRC to silence her. The US member spoke up for Payá, while the representatives of China, Russia, Pakistan, Nicaragua, and Belarus supported Cuba. Payá, after being allowed to continue, urged the UN to independently investigate her father's death and asked: “When will the people of Cuba finally enjoy basic democracy and fundamental freedoms?” Quintanilla again called her a “mercenary” and a tool of the US government, and accused her of “aggression against [her] own people.”

In a March 2013 interview with Cubanet, she discussed her efforts to persuade the United Nations to investigate her father's death, her speech at the HRC, her recent meetings with representatives of various European governments, and her dismay at the solidarity of Spanish socialist politicians with the Cuban government. Asked about Raul Castro's “reforms,” she accused the regime of trying “to sell an image of openness” without actually effecting meaningful change. The reforms themselves, she maintained, were “a mechanism of control,” having been framed not as rights but as “a concession by the government.”


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