[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 10 (Wednesday, January 23, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E62]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   FREEDOM FOR RAUDEL MARTINEZ GOMEZ

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, January 23, 2008

  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Madam Speaker, I rise today to 
speak about Raudel Martinez Gomez, a political prisoner in totalitarian 
Cuba.
  Mr. Martinez Gomez is a member of the Plantados Movement for Cuban 
Freedom. He along with fellow dissidents Victor Yunier Ferenandez 
Martinez and Joenny Alonso Asiz, were arrested in February 2006 for a 
crime the Cuban dictatorship calls ``dangerousness.'' In sham trials 
they were each convicted, with Mr. Martinez Gomez sentenced to 3 years 
in prison.
  Unfortunately, his imprisonment for what is really political dissent 
is nothing new for his family. While Mr. Martinez Gomez was facing 
trial before the dictatorship's facade of a judicial system, his father 
was imprisoned in a Cuban gulag for nothing more than participating in 
a peaceful pro-democracy protest outside the French embassy in Havana. 
The Cuban regime released his father this past May without formally 
charging him with any crime.
  Shortly after his father's arrest, the local chief of the so-called 
``Committee for the Defense of the Revolution'' came to the home Mr. 
Martinez Gomez shared with his father. Mr. Martinez Gomez was forced 
out of his home along with his wife, who was 7 months pregnant at the 
time. But these local vigilance committee goons were not content with 
forcing Martinez Gomez and his pregnant wife from their home, they 
wanted to add insult to injury. So they sent a group of ruffians to 
shout insults and obscenities at Martinez Gomez and his wife as they 
left the home they had known for the last 11 years.
  What exactly did Mr. Martinez Gomez do to cause his conviction for 
the so-called crime of ``dangerouness?'' This is impossible to fully 
know in the totalitarian circus of present day Cuba but perhaps the 
regime was afraid of the courage repeatedly demonstrated by Mr. 
Martinez Gomez.
  Madam Speaker, this is just another condemnable occurrence in the 
constant pattern of brutality by the totalitarian tyranny just 90 miles 
from our shores. And yet, though the tyranny has attempted to stop Mr. 
Martinez Gomez, he will never cease in his commitment to freedom for 
Cuba. My colleagues, we must demand the immediate release of Raudel 
Martinez Gomez and all prisoners of conscience in totalitarian Cuba.

                          ____________________