Oswaldo Pay%C3%A1
Oswaldo Pay Sardias was a Cuban political activist. A Roman Catholic, he founded the Christian Liberation Movement in 1987 to oppose the oneparty rule of the Cuban Communist Party. He attracted international attention for organizing a petition drive known as the Varela Project, in which 25,000 signatories petitioned the Cuban government to guarantee freedom of speech and freedom of assembly as well as to institute a multiparty democracy. In recognition of his work, he received the European Parliaments Sakharov Prize and People in Needs Homo Homini Award.
Oswaldo Pay was born onFebruary 1952 in Cerro, Havana. The fifth of seven children, he was brought up as a Roman Catholic and attended a Marist Brothers school in Havana. Pay was the only student at the school who refused to join the Communist League following the Cuban Revolution. The school was later closed. In 1969, he was sentenced to three years of hard labor on Isla de Pinos when he refused to transport political prisoners during his mandatory military service. While there, he discovered a locked Catholic church, Nuestra Seora de Dolores, that received permission from the Bishop of Havana to reopen as a mission, giving religious talks and caring for the sick.
Source: Wikipedia