[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 14 (Wednesday, January 24, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E189]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               FREEDOM FOR VICTOR ROLANDO ARROYO CARMONA

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, January 24, 2007

  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Madam Speaker, I rise today to 
speak about Victor Rolando Arroyo Carmona, a political prisoner in 
totalitarian Cuba.
  Mr. Arroyo Carmona is an independent journalist in a country 
oppressed by a regime that mandates official propaganda and prohibits 
news of the truth. He believes in writing and speaking the truth about 
the monstrous regime and that Cuba should and will be free from the 
totalitarian nightmare that is the Castro dictatorship. Because he 
believes in freedom for the Cuban people and because he actively and 
peacefully advocates for change, Mr. Arroyo Carmona has been repeatedly 
harassed and incarcerated by the tyrant's machinery.
  According to Human Rights Watch, Mr. Arroyo Carmona has been detained 
numerous times for his pro-democracy activism. In January 1995, he was 
beaten and jailed for 9 days after organizing a ceremony commemorating 
the birth of Jose Marti. In January 2000, he was charged with 
``hoarding'' and ``sentenced'' to 18 months in the hellish totalitarian 
gulag for organizing a toy drive and distributing toys to needy Cuban 
children. He served 6 months of his sentence before being released only 
to be severely beaten on three separate occasions in October of that 
same year.
  Subsequently, on March 18, 2003, as part of the dictator's 
condemnable crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy advocates, Mr. Arroyo 
Carmona was arrested because of his belief in liberty over repression. 
In a sham trial, he was ``sentenced'' on trumped-up charges that he 
``undermined national independence and territorial integrity'' to 26 
years in the condemnable totalitarian gulag.
  Mr. Arroyo Carmona has bravely participated in hunger strikes to 
protest the abhorrent conditions in the gulag and the depraved 
treatment of fellow political prisoners. Tragically, his daily struggle 
and suffering in an infernal roach infested gulag with hardly any 
contact with the outside world is not enough for the Cuban 
dictatorship, a regime of gangsters, by gangsters, and for gangsters, 
run by a gangster in chief. According to Reporters Without Borders, Mr. 
Arroyo is subjected to constant humiliation, physical torture and 
threats that he will never leave prison alive.
  Mr. Arroyo Carmona is just one of the many heroes of the peaceful 
pro-democracy opposition on that oppressed island. Despite incessant 
harassment, incarceration and abuse, he remains committed to the 
conviction that freedom and democracy are inalienable rights of the 
Cuban people.
  Madam Speaker, it remains categorically offensive that men and women 
who demand freedom from tyranny are locked in the dungeons of monsters. 
Here, under the dome that represents representative democracy, we must 
demand the liberation of all who suffer in the darkness of 
totalitarianism. My colleagues we must demand the immediate release of 
Victor Rolando Arroyo Carmona and every prisoner of conscience in 
totalitarian Cuba.

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