[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 137 (Monday, December 6, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2151]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page E2151]]
                   FREEDOM FOR LESTER GONZALEZ PENTON

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, December 6, 2004

  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to 
speak about Lester Gonzalez Penton, a political prisoner in 
totalitarian Cuba.
  Mr. Gonzalez Penton is a member of the Reason, Truth and Freedom 
Human Rights Movement and a delegate of the Cuban Confederation of 
Democratic Workers. He is a peaceful pro-democracy activist who has 
worked intensely to liberate Cuba from the control of the demented 
terrorist in power in Havana. Mr. Gonzalez Penton believes in human 
rights, worker rights, and freedom for the people of Cuba. As these 
tenants are the antithesis of the tyrant's policies of lies, fear, 
intimidation, and repression, he has been constantly harassed by the 
terrorist regime in Havana.
  According to Amnesty International, on August 5, 2002, the tyrant's 
thugs prevented him from leaving his house, in order to stop him from 
participating in events organized by fellow pro-democracy activists. 
Previously, on July 9, 2001, Amnesty International reports that Mr. 
Gonzalez Penton was questioned and threatened with imprisonment by 
police if he did not work: despite the fact that he was fired him from 
his job as a baker because the totalitarian regime was threatened by 
his peaceful activities with the Cuban Confederation of Democratic 
workers.
  On March 18, 2003, as part of the dictatorship's deplorable crackdown 
on peaceful pro-democracy activists, Mr. Gonzalez Penton was arrested. 
In a sham trial, he was sentenced to 20 years in the grotesque 
totalitarian gulag. According to the U.S. Department of State, members 
of the tyrant's totalitarian apparatchik threatened to suspend family 
visits for Mr. Gonzalez Penton because he, and eight other political 
prisoners, read aloud to each other from the Bible.
  Mr. Speaker, it is an affront to the inalienable rights of man that 
Mr. Gonzalez Penton is languishing in the inhuman squalor of a 
totalitarian gulag simply because he believes that liberty is the 
scared right of all people. It is unconscionable that he and others 
have been further punished because they read the Bible. My colleagues, 
we must demand the immediate release of Lester Gonzalez Penton and 
every political prisoner suffering under the nightmare that is the 
Castro regime.

                          ____________________