[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 155 (Thursday, October 30, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2160]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 FREEDOM FOR DR. MARCELO CANO RODRIGUEZ

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, October 29, 2003

  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak 
about Dr. Marcelo Cano Rodriguez, a prisoner of conscience in 
totalitarian Cuba.
  Dr. Cano Rodriguez is a Medical Doctor. As a physician, he has chosen 
to devote his life and his abilities to healing the sick, mending the 
lame, and easing the suffering of his patients. However, as Dr. Cano 
Rodriguez quickly learned, easing the suffering of the Cuban people is 
not a goal of Castro's dictatorship.
  The longer Dr. Cano Rodriguez worked within the totalitarian 
healthcare system, the more he noticed medical resources being taken 
from the Cuban people and redirected towards tourists who could pay 
with hard foreign currency. Dr. Cano Rodriguez, no longer able to work 
within a system that abandons citizens in favor of tourists, became the 
National Coordinator for the Cuban Independent Medical Association.
  The Cuban Independent Medical Association is comprised of physicians 
who joined forces to set up independent clinics where equipment and 
drugs prescribed by doctors are distributed without charge. As Dr. Cano 
Rodriguez searched for ways to make his group more effective, he 
approached the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National 
Reconciliation for guidance. After learning of the Commission's 
professed goal of basic human rights, he became an important member of 
that group.
  Unfortunately for Dr. Cano Rodriguez, his being associated with two 
groups who profess to work to provide the Cuban people with their basic 
rights and their basic medicine proved to be too much for Castro and 
his machinery of repression. On March 25, 2003, Dr. Cano Rodriguez was 
arrested in Las Tunas. The ``illegal'' activities cited by Castro's 
puppet prosecutor in the sham trial were that he visited prisoners as 
part of his work with the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and 
National Reconciliation and that he maintained ties to Doctors Without 
Borders. Dr. Cano Rodriguez was sentenced to 18 years in Castro's 
dungeons.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to repeat that, Dr. Cano Rodriguez was sentenced 
to 18 years in Castro's gulag for visiting prisoners and maintaining 
ties to Doctors Without Borders.
  My colleagues, every one of us should be totally appalled that a 
physician who attempts to aid the oppressed and heal the sick is 
languishing in a dungeon for his merciful actions. My colleagues, we 
must demand immediate freedom for Dr. Marcelo Cano Rodriguez.

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