[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 5 (Tuesday, January 15, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E14]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               FREEDOM FOR CARLOS JESUS MENENDEZ CERVERA

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, January 15, 2008

  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Madam Speaker, I rise today to 
speak about Carlos Jesus Menendez Cervera, a political prisoner in 
totalitarian Cuba.
  Mr. Menendez Cervera is a member of the Cuban Commission on Human 
Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), Executive Secretary of the 
Social Democratic Party and an interim director of the Independent 
Libraries Project. He is a peaceful pro-democracy activist who believes 
that Cuba must be free, that all Cubans must be free to learn, free to 
worship, and free to enjoy human rights and the Rule of Law. 
Accordingly, Mr. Menendez Cervera has been targeted by the totalitarian 
regime.
  Because of his steadfast belief in freedom and democracy, Mr. 
Menendez Cervera has been harassed and detained numerous times. In 
February 2007 Mr. Menendez Cervera was detained and thrown into a 
police vehicle after he was seen exiting the U.S. Interests Section's 
Center for Information Services. He was locked inside the vehicle and 
interrogated for nearly an hour before being driven to a nearby police 
station. At the station, where a member of the Cuban political police 
further interrogated him, his short wave radio and a photocopy of a 
Miami Herald article he carried were confiscated. Regime thugs 
attempted to incriminate Mr. Menendez Cervera but he was eventually 
released.
  According to the CCDHRN, plainclothes members of the regime's secret 
police arrested Mr. Menendez Cervera on November 15, 2007. The CCDHRN 
said that Mr. Menendez Cervera was arrested when he entered the home of 
a well-known former prisoner of conscience, Mr. Hector Palacio, one of 
the ``Group of 75'' arrested as part of the Cuban dictatorship's 
heinous island-wide crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy activists in 
March 2003. Mr. Palacio, who was serving a 25-year sentence, was 
released from prison due to health concerns.
  Mr. Menendez Cervera represents the best of the Cuban nation, a 
nation that, though oppressed for 49 years by a totalitarian tyranny, 
has never stopped fighting for its freedom and for the Rule of Law.
  Madam Speaker, we must speak out and act against these arbitrary 
harassments and arrests, and the abominable disregard for human rights, 
human dignity, and human freedom just 90 miles from our shores. My 
colleagues, we must demand the immediate and unconditional release of 
Carlos Jesus Menendez Cervera and every political prisoner in 
totalitarian Cuba.

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