[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 20]
[House]
[Pages 27734-27735]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               SUFFERING OF THE OPPRESSED PEOPLE OF CUBA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Madam Speaker, the international 
press, including almost all the press in the United States, continues 
to ignore the suffering of the oppressed people of Cuba. Yes, there are 
exceptions, such as the National Review's Jay Nordlinger, the premier 
defender of human rights in the American press, or The Miami Herald's 
Juan Tamayo or Wilfredo Cancio, and occasionally there are other 
dignified exceptions. But the almost totality of the U.S. press 
systematically ignores what goes on in Cuba.
  Despite 50 years of tyranny there, despite Cuba being 90 miles from 
our shores, despite hundreds of prisoners of conscience languishing in 
dungeons simply because of their peaceful advocacy for freedoms, 
including freedom of the press, which should not be denied to any 
people, and thousands of others imprisoned for crimes which are only 
illegal in the totalitarian fiefdom of a demented despot--crimes like 
``dangerousness'' or ``illegally attempting to leave the country''--the 
press continues to ignore the reality of Cuba. Their irresponsibility 
in doing so is absolutely indefensible.
  Jewish friends have told me that they understand what I'm talking 
about when I refer to the concept of the nonperson. For countless 
generations, for 1,800 years, Jews were subject to exile, to pogroms, 
persecution, discrimination. And their suffering was ignored in 
countries throughout the world. They were nonpersons. When their 
suffering was not ignored it was often minimized or ridiculed. Jews 
know that the recovery of their homeland, the establishment of their 
state in 1948 was absolutely necessary. That was the only way to 
guarantee the end of the nonperson status, to guarantee an end to 
pogroms, to discrimination, to persecution.
  Cubans have been stateless nonpersons for over 51 years. Their 
suffering is systematically ignored. Their unity of purpose is 
continuously questioned or ridiculed. Even the torture of their heroes, 
of the heroic political prisoners, is ignored. Martha Beatriz Roque, a 
respected economist, leading Cuban dissident and former political 
prisoner who was only released from prison so that she would not die 
due to her many illnesses in prison and embarrass Castro, she is close 
to death in Havana due to complications arising from a hunger strike 
that she's engaged in.
  Dozens of other brave dissidents are also on hunger strikes in the 
home of one of Cuba's other extremely respected pro-democracy leaders, 
Vladimiro Roca. Cubans, unlike the Jews, have not yet recovered their 
state. They will. But they haven't yet.
  I ask the press, Madam Speaker, the media to please cease treating 
Cuba's pro-democracy activists as though they

[[Page 27735]]

didn't exist. Stop treating Martha Beatriz Roque as a nonperson. Why do 
you continue to absolutely ignore Cuba's brave prisoners of conscience? 
Why don't you at least write about the elderly prisoners of conscience 
in Cuba, such as Hector Maseda Gutierrez or Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique, 
or about the severely handicapped prisoners of conscience such as 
Miguel Galvan Gutierrez, or most especially about the gravely ill Cuban 
prisoners of conscience in the gulag such as Ariel Sigler or Normando 
Hernandez or Dr. Jose Luis Garcia Paneque, or Dr. Alfredo Pulido Lopez, 
or Pedro Arguelles Moran?
  Members of the press, have you no conscience? Do not continue to 
treat the suffering oppressed people of Cuba and their heroes as 
nonpersons. Please, do your duty.

                          ____________________