Widespread criticism of Cuba regime urged

CUBA'S FUTURE
Widespread criticism of Cuba regime urged
Other countries need to step up their criticism of Cuba's regime, said
Sen. Mel Martinez, speaking at a Cuba Roundtable in Coral Gables on Monday.
Posted on Tue, Apr. 08, 2008
BY LUISA YANEZ
lyanez@MiamiHerald.com

With help from Eastern Europe to Latin America, a loud and clear chorus
of international condemnation of Raúl Castro's regime can help set the
stage for democracy to take hold inside Cuba, participants in a daylong
conference in Coral Gables said on Monday.

''This can no longer be just about the U.S. versus Cuba. Other countries
must condemn the island, too,'' said U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., who
hosted the Cuba Democracy Roundtable at the Biltmore Hotel.

Sitting on a long rectangular table were current and former U.S.-Cuba
policymakers, local politicians, exile leaders, Latin America and
Eastern bloc diplomats and former Cuban political prisoners.

Calling it ''a historic moment'' in Cuban exile history as the younger
Castro's political hold seems to be weakening, Martinez said that after
49 years of Castro family rule, other countries need to help Cubans
build a democracy.

A show of solidarity from abroad will remind Cubans that they're not
alone and that the United States, which Cubans have been trained to hate
through the communist government's propaganda, is not their only ally.

Petr Kolar, Czech Republic ambassador to the United States, said his
country is joining forces with Cuban opposition workers to send that
message. ''We want the Cuban people to know that life is better after
communism. We are the success story. . . . They deserve it, too,'' Kolar
said during a break.

José Cardenas, deputy assistant administrator with the U.S. Agency for
International Development, which provides U.S. economic and humanitarian
aid to foreign countries and has funneled support for dissidents on the
island, said USAID will soon begin following the model set by Eastern
bloc countries in the 1990s when they toppled communism. ''We want to
tap into their real-time experience,'' he said.

Martinez said the call for true democratic change must and will come
from inside the island. ''When oppressed people determine their time has
come, there is no one that can wield a big enough hammer to stop them.
And when they take to the streets, the international community must be
ready to react to support the Cuban people,'' said the Cuban-American
senator.

A ''spotlight'' needs to be placed on Cuba, just as it has been on Tibet
and Darfur, said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez, who
co-chairs the State Department's Commission for the Assistance to a Free
Cuba..

Gutierrez said the Cuban government has made itself look bad with its
recent policy changes.

'Their `momentous' announcement of changes -- that people can buy
cellphones and a computers and stay in hotels, are the best news
opposition leaders have had in years because they reveal a true picture
of life inside the island,'' he said.

Many around the world were probably shocked to learn, Gutierrez said,
that the government had prohibited Cubans from owning cellphones.

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