[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 4 (Tuesday, January 9, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E43]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 FREEDOM FOR JUAN CARLOS HERRERA ACOSTA

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, January 9, 2007

  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Madam Speaker, I rise today to 
speak about Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta, a political prisoner 
totalitarian Cuba.
  Mr. Herrera Acosta is a tireless advocate for the freedom of Cuba and 
has dedicated much of his life to the cause of freedom for the Cuban 
people. He believes that every trapped citizen in totalitarian Cuba 
deserves to live with the most basic and fundamental human rights and 
protections of individual liberty.
  Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta is an independent journalist with the 
Agencia de Prensa Libre Oriental (APLO) in Santiago, Cuba and national 
coordinator for the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy. He was arrested 
on March 20, 2003, as part of the despicable island-wide crackdown on 
peaceful human rights activists and independent journalists. In April 
of 2003, he was wrongfully sentenced on trumped-up charges claiming 
that he undermined ``national independence and territorial integrity'' 
and served the ``imperialist ends'' of the United States, to 20 years 
in a hellish totalitarian gulag. In reality his only ``crime'' was 
challenging a corrupt, brutal, and repressive system that robs its 
citizens of every freedom.
  Reporters Without Borders reported that on August 29, 2006, Mr. 
Herrera Acosta was severely beaten and dragged along the prison's 
corridors by two regime henchmen because he reiterated a demand to be 
allowed to make a phone call--a right the dictatorship has routinely 
denied him. According to Directorio, Mr. Herrera Acosta has undertaken 
numerous hunger strikes while in prison to protest the deplorable, 
inhumane and degrading conditions in which prisoners of conscience in 
Cuba are held.
  Most recently, in an urgent declaration read aloud to the Cuban 
Democratic Directorate by Rolando Rodriguez Lobaina, executive member 
of the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy, Mr. Herrera Acosta 
reaffirmed his commitment to the cause of freedom for the Cuban people:

       I fight because the light of truth and liberty reaches this 
     land converted into a feudal estate before a Caesar that 
     bleeds her dry. As a dignified son of this country, I am 
     willing to offer my life if it is necessary to defend 
     pacifism, so that peace and concordance would thrive in the 
     land of Varela and Marti. I do not discard the possibility 
     that a clinically induced death, at the hands of the 
     commissars of terror, will truncate my life. But as long as I 
     have strength and my heart is beating, I will continue to 
     fight from inside the monstrous womb of Castro's prisons.
       I will never lower myself to bow down, nor will I live on 
     my knees, and as Jose Marti would express, I reiterate: ``I 
     want the first law of our Republic to be the respect of 
     Cubans for the plain dignity of man.'' The price to pay has 
     been very high. Pain, grief, and exile constitute the panacea 
     that is Castro's reign of terror.
       But I do not resign to live condemned, I am simply 
     continuing the dignified example of the historical Cuban 
     political prisoners. Freedom for Cuba! God, Country, and 
     Liberty! May human rights thrive and prevail in my country!

  Let me be very clear, Mr. Herrera Acosta is imprisoned because he 
refuses to accept the Castro brothers' dictatorship today. Madam 
Speaker, Mr. Herrera Acosta is representative of the fighting spirit of 
the Cuban people: of their rejection of the brutality, discrimination, 
depravity, and oppression of the totalitarian tyranny.
  We must speak out against the abominable violations of human rights, 
dignity, and freedom on that oppressed island. My Colleagues, we must 
demand the immediate and unconditional release of Juan Carlos Herrera 
Acosta and every other political prisoner in totalitarian Cuba.

                          ____________________