[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 131 (Wednesday, September 7, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5380-S5381]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            FREEDOM IN CUBA

  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in 
the Record the following articles highlighting the resilience and 
strength of the Cuban people as they continue to struggle under an 
oppressive regime. These stories and videos which continue to surface 
out of Cuba have underlined the Cuban Government's inhumane actions 
against its people. Santa Maria Fonseca is one of these brave ``Ladies 
in White'' who continue to peacefully fight for liberty in Cuba. She 
explained, ``Our objective is that one day the people will join us.'' 
Ms. Fonseca and the Cuban people deserve our unyielding support in 
their courageous efforts to reclaim freedom in Cuba.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

[[Page S5381]]

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Aug. 29, 2011]

                     Castro vs. the Ladies in White

                      (By Mary Anastasia O'Grady)

       Rocks and iron bars were the weapons of choice in a 
     government assault on a handful of unarmed women on the 
     outskirts of Santiago de Cuba on the afternoon of Aug. 7. 
     According to a report issued by the Paris-based International 
     Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the beatings were savage 
     and ``caused them injuries, some considerable.''
       It was not an isolated incident. In the past two months, 
     attacks on peaceful women dissidents, organized by the state 
     security apparatus, have escalated. Most notable is the 
     intensity with which the regime is moving to try to crush the 
     core group known as the Ladies in White.
       This is not without risk to the regime, should the 
     international community decide to pay attention and apply 
     pressure on the white-elite regime the way it did in 
     opposition to apartheid in South Africa. But the decision to 
     take that risk suggests that the 52-year-old dictatorship in 
     Havana is feeling increasingly insecure. The legendary 
     bearded macho men of the ``revolution,'' informed by the 
     trial of a caged Hosni Mubarak in an Egyptian courtroom, 
     apparently are terrified by the quiet, prayerful, nonviolent 
     courage of little more than 100 women. No totalitarian regime 
     can shrug off the fearless audacity these ladies display, or 
     the signs that their boldness is spreading.
       The Castro brothers' goons are learning that they will not 
     be easily intimidated. Take, for example, what happened that 
     same Aug. 7 morning in Santiago: The women, dressed in white 
     and carrying flowers, had gathered after Sunday Mass at the 
     cathedral for a silent procession to protest the regime's 
     incarceration of political prisoners. Castro supporters and 
     state security officials, ``armed with sticks and other blunt 
     objects,'' according to FIDH, assaulted the group both 
     physically and verbally. The ladies were then dragged aboard 
     a bus, taken outside the city and dropped off on the side of 
     a highway.
       Some of them regrouped and ventured out again in the 
     afternoon, this time to hold a public vigil for their cause. 
     That's when they were met by another Castro onslaught. On the 
     same day thugs set upon the homes of former political 
     prisoner Jose Daniel Ferrer and another activist. Six people, 
     including Mr. Ferrer's wife and daughter, were sent to the 
     hospital with contusions and broken bones, according to FIDH.
       The Ladies in White first came on the scene in the 
     aftermath of the infamous March 2003 crackdown in which 75 
     independent journalists and librarians, writers and democracy 
     advocates were rounded up and handed prison sentences of six 
     to 28 years. The wives, mothers and sisters of some of them 
     began a simple act of protest. On Sundays they would gather 
     at the Havana Cathedral for Mass and afterward they would 
     march carrying gladiolas in a silent call for the prisoners' 
     release.
       In 2005, the Ladies in White won Europe's prestigious 
     Sakharov prize for their courage. Cellphones that caught the 
     regime's brutality against them on video helped get their 
     story out. By 2010, they had so embarrassed the dictatorship 
     internationally that a deal was struck to deport their 
     imprisoned loved ones along with their family to Spain.
       But some prisoners refused the deal and some of the ladies 
     stayed in Cuba. Others joined them, calling themselves 
     ``Ladies in Support.'' The group continued its processions 
     following Sunday Mass in Havana, and women on the eastern end 
     of the island established the same practice in Santiago.
       Laura Pollan, whose husband refused to take the offer of 
     exile in Spain and was later released from prison, is a key 
     member of the group. She and her cohorts have vowed to 
     continue their activism as long as even one political 
     prisoner remains jailed. Last week I spoke with her by phone 
     in Havana, and she told me that when the regime agreed to 
     release all of the 75, ``it thought that the Ladies in White 
     would disappear. Yet the opposite happened. Sympathizers have 
     been joining up. There are now 82 ladies in Havana and 34 in 
     Santiago de Cuba.'' She said that the paramilitary mobs have 
     the goal of creating fear in order to keep the group from 
     growing. But the movement is spreading to other parts of the 
     country, places where every Sunday there are now marches.
       This explains the terror that has rained down on the group 
     in Santiago and surrounding suburbs on successive Sundays 
     since July and on other members in Havana as recently as Aug. 
     18.
       Last Tuesday, when four women dressed in black took to the 
     steps of the capitol building in Havana chanting ``freedom,'' 
     a Castro bully tried to remove them. Amazingly, the large 
     crowd watching shouted for him to leave them alone. 
     Eventually uniformed agents carried them off. But the 
     incident, caught on video, is evidence of a new chapter in 
     Cuban history, and it is being written by women. How it ends 
     may depend heavily on whether the international community 
     supports them or simply shields its eyes from their torment.
                                  ____


             [From the Wall Street Journal, Aug. 26, 2011]

                        On Cuba's Capitol Steps

       The four Cuban women who took to the steps of the capitol 
     in Havana last week chanting ``liberty'' for 40 minutes 
     weren't exactly rebel forces. But you wouldn't know that by 
     the way the Castro regime reacted. A video of the event shows 
     uniformed state security forcibly dragging the women to 
     waiting patrol cars. They must have represented a threat to 
     the regime because they were interrogated and detained until 
     the following day.
       The regime's bigger problem may be the crowd that gathered 
     to watch. In a rare moment of dissent in that public square, 
     the crowd booed, hissed and insulted the agents who were sent 
     to remove the women.
       One of the four women, Sara Marta Fonseca, gave a telephone 
     interview to the online newspaper Diario de Cuba, based in 
     Spain, as she made her way home after being freed. Ms. 
     Fonseca, who is a member of the Rosa Parks Feminist Movement 
     for Civil Rights, said that the group was demanding ``that 
     the government cease the repression against the Ladies in 
     White, against the opposition and against the Cuban people in 
     general.'' The Ladies in White are dissidents who demand the 
     release of all political prisoners.
       Yet as Ms. Fonseca explained, the group wasn't really 
     addressing the government. ``Our objective is that one day 
     the people will join us,'' she said. ``Realistically we do 
     not have the strength and the power to defeat the 
     dictatorship. The strength and the power are to be found in 
     the unity of the people. In this we put all our faith, in 
     that this people will cross the barrier of fear and join the 
     opposition to reclaim freedom.''
       Ms. Fonseca said her group chose the capitol because the 
     area is crowded with locals and tourists and they wanted to 
     ``draw attention to the people of Cuba.'' In the end, she 
     said that they were satisfied with the results because she 
     heard the crowd crying ``abuser, leave them alone, they are 
     peaceful and they are telling the truth.'' This reaction, the 
     seasoned dissident said, ``was greater'' than in the past. 
     ``I am very happy because in spite of being beaten and 
     dragged we could see that the people were ready to join us.''
       For 52 years the Cuban dictatorship has held power through 
     fear. The poverty, isolation, broken families and lost dreams 
     of two generations of Cubans have persisted because the 
     regime made dissent far too dangerous. If that fear 
     dissipates, the regime would collapse. Which is why four 
     women on the capitol steps had to be gagged.

                          ____________________