[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 26 (Wednesday, March 3, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E296]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                FREEDOM FOR JUAN ADOLFO FERNANDEZ SAINZ

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 3, 2004

  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to 
speak about Juan Adolfo Fernandez Sainz, a prisoner of conscience in 
totalitarian Cuba.
  Mr. Fernandez Sainz worked for about 15 years as an interpreter for 
government agencies before being dismissed for his support of democracy 
and the rule of law in 1994. After being forced from his government 
job, Mr. Fernandez Sainz began to expose the repression and corruption 
of the dictator's regime as an independent journalist. He originally 
joined the independent news agency Nueva Prensa and a year later became 
part of the Patria agency where he wrote about all aspects of 
totalitarian Cuban society. Mr. Fernandez Sainz contributed to numerous 
foreign publications and became a correspondent for Prima, the Russian 
human rights news agency, in July 2001.
  Because Mr. Fernandez Sainz wrote the truth about a ruthless, 
repressive, bankrupt, and broken tyranny, he was arrested as part of 
the brutal March 2003 crackdown against Cuban pro-democracy activists. 
After a sham trial, where he was accused of supplying information to 
the U.S. government and endangering Cuban internal security, Mr. 
Fernandez Sainz was sentenced to 15 years in the totalitarian gulag.
  However, Castro's ruthless machinery of repression does not stop 
after sentencing innocent Cubans to the totalitarian gulag. According 
to the U.S. State Department's 2003 Country Report on Human Rights 
Practices:

       On December 6, a common prisoner in Holguin Provincial 
     Prison beat 54-year-old political prisoner Adolfo Fernandez 
     Sainz until Fernandez was unconscious. The prisoner who 
     carried out the beating was authorized by prison guards to 
     exercise control over other inmates. Prison officials told 
     Fernandez the common prisoner should have beaten him harder 
     in order to kill him. In April, Fernandez was sentenced to 15 
     years imprisonment for his work as an independent journalist.

  Mr. Speaker, we cannot allow Mr. Fernandez Sainz to languish in a 
gulag where he is abused and tortured. My Colleagues, we cannot allow 
Mr. Fernandez Sainz to remain in a gulag with totalitarian thugs who 
want to murder him. We must demand the immediate release of Juan Adolfo 
Fernandez Sainz and every prisoner of conscience languishing in the 
totalitarian gulags of the nightmare called the Castro regime.

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