[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 49 (Wednesday, March 26, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H2374]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               ALERTING MEMBERS TO NEW REPRESSION IN CUBA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to express my concern 
regarding a disturbing chain of events that have unfolded in Cuba over 
the last week and a half.
  With the United States and the world preoccupied with the situation 
in Iraq, Castro is using this opportunity to take steps to dismantle 
the pro-democracy movement on the island. Hoping his actions would be 
overshadowed by world events, the regime has arrested and detained over 
70 nonviolent human rights activists, pro-democracy leaders and 
independent journalists. These are the harshest acts of oppression 
taken by the Castro regime to silence opposition in recent years. Many 
worry these are only the first steps in an all-out campaign to silence 
all opposition on the island.
  Last Monday, Castro issued an official communique that accused 
dissidents on the island of Cuba of conspiring with U.S. Interests 
Section Chief James Cason and other American diplomats to undermine the 
island's leadership.
  On Tuesday, Castro agents began the first wave of a series of arrests 
on the island, rounding up dissidents, independent journalists, owners 
of independent libraries, leaders of opposition political parties, and 
pro-democracy advocates who have worked to gather signatures for the 
Varela Project.
  Detainees have been charged with counts of counterrevolutionary 
activities, subversion, and conspiracy with U.S. diplomats. Many fear 
that Castro will use this as an opportunity to prosecute the prisoners 
under a much-criticized 1999 Cuban law that makes it a crime to publish 
subversive materials provided by the U.S. Government, and that carries 
with it a sentence of up to 10 years.
  Mr. Speaker, leading up to last week's events, Castro was becoming 
increasingly agitated by Cason and other American diplomats on the 
island who have met in public with opposition leaders in an effort to 
encourage democracy in Cuba. Cason and his associates have logged 
countless miles of travel and have crisscrossed Cuba to distribute 
shortwave radios and a wide array of books and pamphlets aimed at 
promoting American culture, democracy, and human rights.
  In an effort to silence these efforts, the Cuban Government announced 
on Tuesday that it was restricting the travel of Cason and other 
Americans at the U.S. Interests Section, and quarantining our 
diplomatic officials in the province of Havana.
  I would like to take this opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to note that one 
of the independent journalists currently in custody is Omar Rodriguez 
Saludes, whose work I have mentioned during previous speeches on the 
House floor, and who was featured in a story last June by The New York 
Times.
  At the time, Omar shared his struggles and those of other independent 
journalists currently working in Cuba. He told of how he traveled 
around Havana on a battered child-sized bicycle and wrote his articles 
in longhand, or on a 20-year-old typewriter that a group of reporters 
share; and how he gathered every 2 weeks with other journalists in a 
cramped apartment in Havana to wait his turn to place a phone call and 
dictate his stories to audiences in the United States.
  Castro believed the U.S. and other nations would be too engaged in 
world matters to notice the atrocities that he and his regime were 
committing against Omar Rodriguez and other voices for change in Cuba. 
I urge my colleagues to join with me and speak on the House floor and 
in other public forums to shed light on the situation in Cuba and show 
Castro that the world is indeed watching.

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