[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 119 (Monday, August 1, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Page S5189]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  CUBA

  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I condemn in the strongest possible terms 
the Cuban regime's unjust incarceration of Alan Gross. As the editorial 
highlights and as the Castro regime well knows, Mr. Gross is simply a 
humanitarian who was seeking to help the Jewish community in Cuba 
access the Internet. Only the most oppressive, totalitarian regime 
would seek to jail someone for trying to expand access to uncensored 
information.
  As this editorial notes, ``The regime in Havana is so brittle and 
creaky that it blanches at the idea of its subjects communicating too 
freely with the outside world, lest they undermine a communist system 
whose attempts at economic development have delivered scanty results.''
  I also take this opportunity to once again call on the Obama 
administration to halt its new Cuba policies that liberalize travel and 
expand allowable remittances to Cuba. This unilateral gift to the 
Castro brothers by the Obama administration is totally unwarranted, 
especially in light of Mr. Gross' case as well as the ongoing 
repression of the Cuban people.
  I ask unanimous consent that a July 29, 2011, editorial by the 
Washington Post entitled ``Cuba Should Free Alan Gross'' be printed in 
the Record.

               [From the Washington Post, July 29, 2011]

                      Cuba Should Free Alan Gross

       Alan P. Gross, the U.S. Agency for International 
     Development subcontractor who committed what Cuba considers 
     the unconscionable offense of making the Internet available 
     to members of its minuscule Jewish community, has almost 
     exhausted possible judicial appeals of his 15-year prison 
     sentence.
       Mr. Gross, 62, a resident of Potomac, was arrested in 
     December 2009 as he prepared to fly home from Havana. 
     Convicted on trumped-up charges in March this year, he 
     appeared a few days ago before Cuba's highest tribunal to 
     appeal his conviction and plead for release. The outcome of 
     his appeal, expected in the coming days, is certain to be 
     dictated one way or another by Cuban leader Raul Castro--and 
     will be a sign of whether Cuba is remotely interested in 
     better relations with Washington.
       Cuba, besides its repressive ally Venezuela, is virtually 
     the only place in the Western Hemisphere where distributing 
     laptop computers and satellite phone equipment intended to 
     connect people to the Internet--Mr. Gross's supposed 
     ``crime''--could be construed as subversive. The regime in 
     Havana is so brittle and creaky that it blanches at the idea 
     of its subjects communicating too freely with the outside 
     world, lest they undermine a communist system whose attempts 
     at economic development have delivered scanty results.
       There are plenty of humanitarian reasons to release Mr. 
     Gross, who has been confined for 19 months. Somewhat 
     overweight when he was arrested, Mr. Gross has lost 100 
     pounds, according to his wife and other American visitors who 
     have been allowed to meet with him; he also suffers from 
     gout, ulcers and arthritis. His daughter is struggling with 
     cancer, and his mother is reported to be in poor health.
       Cuban authorities have portrayed Mr. Gross as a spy 
     involved in an enterprise aimed at undermining the regime. 
     That seems unlikely in the extreme. In fact, Mr. Gross, a 
     veteran development worker who had minimal command of 
     Spanish, was part of a democratization project of the sort 
     the U.S. government runs in countries all over the world.
       At the time of his arrest, Mr. Gross was working for 
     Development Alternatives Inc., a Bethesda firm that had won a 
     $6 million government contract to promote democracy in Cuba. 
     His work consisted mainly of providing computers and 
     satellite phones to Cuban Jews, a community thought to number 
     about 1,500, so they could access the Internet, whose use is 
     restricted in Cuba, and contact Jewish communities beyond 
     Cuba's shores. Not exactly a cloak-and-dagger project likely 
     to bring the Castro brothers to their knees.
       The Obama administration has made it clear that any 
     improvement in relations with Cuba is on hold pending Mr. 
     Gross's release. That's a fitting response to the communist 
     regime's knee-jerk behavior in persecuting an American whose 
     ``crime,'' if any, may have been an excess of naivete.

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