No Comments on Human Rights and Democracy

Editorial:

US/Cuba: No Comments on Human Rights and Democracy

U.S. lawmakers visiting Cuba talked to Cuban high-ranking officials
about new opportunities for economic and diplomatic relations between
the two countries. The 10-member delegation was not allowed to meet with
acting president Raul Castro, but many members of the U.S. group think
time has come for Washington to change its policy towards the Caribbean
island.

This January 1st., the Castro brothers regime will celebrate the 48th
anniversary of the Cuban revolution that paved the road for Fidel Castro
to transform Cuba into a Communist country. The Cuban opposition claims
that 10,000 Cubans have been executed by firing squads or other methods
since then, and more than 60,000 have served long sentences of up to 30
years in prison for political reasons.

This month, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that Cuba is
the second country in the world with more journalists behind bars, 24,
after the People's Republic of China, 31. Amnesty International says at
least 72 prisoners of conscience remain jailed in Cuba, while the
Cuban-based Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation says
there are more than 300 political prisoners in the island at this very
moment.

Cuba is also the only Western country whose government owns all means of
production and services, including the news media, so it is the only
employer in the small country of 12 million souls. Private property does
not exist there. The government also acts as an employment agency for
some foreign companies still operating in Cuba.

This human rights record deserved a few words about what the Castro
regime may offer in exchange for a new U.S. policy towards Cuba, but
such words have not been heard during the U.S. lawmakers tour to the
island, at least not publicly.

In fact, it is time for a change inside Cuba. Fourty eight years with
the same government, is too much for a country. Cuba needs fundamental
freedoms, respect for human rights and a market economy to fight a
poverty that has kept Cubans living with less than one dollar a day, not
because of the U.S. embargo but because of a failed political and
economic system that led Russians, East Germans, Hungarians and many
others to drop it, sixteen years ago.

http://www.contactomagazine.com/uscubarelations06.htm