[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.
____________________