[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 22]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 31005-31006]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   FREEDOM FOR MANUEL VAZQUEZ PORTAL

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, November 21, 2003

  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak 
about Manuel Vazquez Portal, a prisoner of conscience in totalitarian 
Cuba.
  Mr. Vazquez is a 52-year-old writer, poet and founder of the 
independent news agency Grupo de Trabajo Decoro. Originally, Mr. 
Vazquez was a high school teacher and a journalist for several state-
owned media outlets. However, after years of observing the constant 
lies and incessant distortion mandated by Castro's totalitarian regime, 
Mr. Vazquez began working for an independent news agency in 1995. As an 
independent journalist, Mr. Vazquez relentlessly chronicled the 
atrocities committed by Castro's machinery of repression, even going so 
far as to have his articles published under the pseudonym Pablo Cedeno. 
Eventually, Mr. Vazquez founded the independent news agency Grupo de 
Trabajo Decoro in 1999.
  In fact, because of his ability to find and write the truth as a 
journalist working under Castro's stifling repression, Mr. Vazquez will 
receive the 2003 International Press Freedom Award from the Committee 
to Protect Journalists on this coming Tuesday, November 25, 2003.
  Mr. Speaker, when Mr. Vazquez's fellow recipients of the 
International Press Freedom Award accept this high honor, Mr. Vazquez 
will be languishing in the Cuban totalitarian gulag next to a toilet he 
describes as a ``hole regurgitating its stench 24 hours a day.'' Mr. 
Vazquez was arrested in the reprehensible March crackdown on those many 
patriots who actively opposed Castro's tyranny. Subsequently, in a sham 
trial held in April, Mr. Vazquez was sentenced to 18 years in the Cuban 
gulag.
  I remind my colleagues that, under Castro's totalitarian regime, any 
freedom of the press, any effort to display the atrocities of the 
regime under the spotlight of truth, is met with swift and violent 
repression. Mr. Vazquez described the punishing conditions of the Cuban 
gulag in a diary smuggled out of prison by his wife. He said ``the cell 
is a space of 1.5 meters wide and 3 meters long.'' Inside his cell, he 
describes an interior comprised of insects, an unstable cot, a filthy 
mattress and a disgusting toilet.

[[Page 31006]]

  Mr. Speaker, a man who is about to receive the International Press 
Freedom Award is suffering at this very moment in those abominable 
conditions. Mr. Vazquez had the courage to depict the reality of Cuba 
under Castro's totalitarian dictatorship, and now he is locked in the 
gulag for the next 18 years.
  My Colleagues, we can not stand by in silence while those who pursue 
truth languish in the gulags of repressive dictators. We must stand 
together and loudly demand freedom for Manuel Vazquez Portal.

                          ____________________