Our mission is to support the dissident movement and the independent press within Cuba and to assist the families of the incarcerated members of the opposition. It has been misinterpreted by the uninformed or the ill-intentioned as a search for a new meaning. This is not the case. Since its inception, and reflecting the background of its leadership, Brothers has sought to cure the illness and not just treat the symptoms, to solve the problem that created the rafters in the first place -- the Cuban dictatorship.

During its first four years, in the midst of a continuous refugee crisis, Brothers concentrated almost exclusively on saving the lives of those desperate enough to seek freedom on rafts. Brothers sought then, as it does now, to do its best with what it had: a lot of goodwill, a few dollars and a courageous group of young pilots from diverse nationalities, while continuously pleading with Cubans on the island not to risk their lives at sea. Prior to the peak of the refugee crisis, Brothers had rescued more than 4,000 Cuban rafters.

In 1994 the Clinton administration was forging its private agenda -- to open relations with Castro using the Chinese model. Should it succeed in a China-type opening, the United States would benefit from cheap labor, joint ventures and a captive market at the expense of the Cuban people and their inherent right to democracy and sovereignty.

After the President's 1994 decision to return rafters to the island and to change their status from political refugees to immigrants, many on the island began considering other options. Brothers adopted a more ambitious strategy, without abandoning its search and rescue missions.

In order to forward a purely Cuban agenda, apart from Castro's and Clinton's policy, Brothers searched for a viable national strategy aimed at empowering the Cuban people to independently choose their own path and future. Brothers is convinced that, given current conditions in Cuba, the historically successful ``active nonviolence'' is the Idomeneus tool for social change in Cuba. (Active nonviolence shouldn't be confused with pacifism or passivity. This is a common mistake made by the uninformed and a misnomer used by those who wish to mislead).

Active nonviolence

Brothers has smuggled to the opposition in Cuba pertinent writings on active nonviolence by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi and renowned scholar Dr. Gene Sharp, of the Albert Einstein Institution, in Cambridge, Mass. The staffs of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and of the Albert Einstein Institution also have provided Brothers with substantial training.

Brothers has created and successfully introduced for the consideration of the internal opposition the Proposal for a Plan for National Civic Defiance, to a large extent based on Dr. Sharp's work, adapted to the conditions in Cuba. Due to its many benefits, the opposition has embraced civic defiance and has begun to implement this plan.

Brothers's highest priority is to assist the opposition forces within the island in organizing and conducting civic struggle, which will create a democratic alternative to the Cuban dictatorship, within the context of a national strategic plan of active nonviolence, carried out by the Cuban people, using their own resources.

We only ask that the United States give us its moral support and respect our right to choose our own destiny. We ask The Herald to accurately portray Brothers instead of creating its own ill-conceived version of reality.