[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 21 (Wednesday, February 25, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E232]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   FREEDOM FOR OMAR RODRIGUEZ SALUDES

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 25, 2004

  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to 
speak about Omar Rodniguez Saludes, a prisoner of conscience in 
totalitarian Cuba.
  Mr. Rodriguez has been active in the Cuban pro-democracy movement 
since 1995. In his capacity as an activist for freedom, he has worked 
primarily as an independent journalist and photographer. Mr. Rodriguez 
is the director of the New Press, an independent news agency in Havana.
  Mr. Rodriguez has dedicated his life to reporting and photographing 
the truth in totalitarian Cuba. Because Castro's totalitarian regime 
denies and abhors the truth, Mr. Rodriguez has been continually 
arrested and harassed by the dictator's ruthless machinery of 
repression. According to Amnesty International, Mr. Rodriguez was 
detained repeatedly between December 1998 and January 2002 for 
attempting to disseminate the truth about the only totalitarian 
dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere.
  On March 20, 2003, as part of the brutal crackdown on Cuban pro-
democracy activists, Mr. Rodriguez was arrested by the totalitarian 
government. Amnesty International reports that Mr. Rodriguez was 
convicted based on accusations such as ``he photographed places that, 
because of the state they were in, gave a distorted image of Cuban 
reality.''
  After this sham trial, Mr. Rodriguez was sentenced to 27 years in the 
totalitarian gulag. I repeat, Mr. Rodriguez was sentenced to 27 years 
in Castro's gulag, because he captured the truth about a decayed, 
bankrupt, and ruthless regime on his roles of film.
  Mr. Speaker, we must fight for freedom whenever and wherever human 
beings are shackled by totalitarian dictators. My colleagues, we must 
demand the immediate release of Omar Rodriguez Saludes and every 
prisoner of conscience in totalitarian Cuba.

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