MICHAEL OSBUN / Tribune Media Services
By THE ECONOMIST
Published: Monday, November 23, 2009 at 3:00 a.m.
Those who hoped that the arrival in power of Barack Obama and Raul
Castro would bring a thaw in the continuing 50-year cold war between the
United States and Cuba so far have little to cheer.
The Obama administration has lifted restrictions imposed by George W.
Bush on visits and remittances to the island by Cuban-Americans and has
resumed discreet talks on cooperation in practical matters such as
migration, drug trafficking and postal services. But administration
officials have said that they will not lift the economic embargo imposed
on Fidel Castro's regime
in 1960 until Cuba takes steps toward political and economic freedom.
For his part, Raul Castro, who replaced his brother at the head of
Cuba's government in 2006, has offered to talk to the Americans but
insists that the island's communist political system is non-negotiable.
On both sides there are pressures for further change.
These are more visible in the United States. On Thursday, the foreign
relations committee of the House of Representatives discussed a bill to
lift the ban on Americans traveling to Cuba. Supporters of this measure
claim to have close to the 218 House votes required to approve it. Its
chances in the Senate look slimmer.
Public opinion favors ending the travel ban. More surprisingly, a recent
poll found that a majority of Cuban-American respondents do, too. But
most Republicans and some influential Democrats still support the embargo.
The administration has been guarded on the travel ban. But if it is
lifted, the rest of the embargo might soon follow as different business
lobbies press for a piece of the action in Cuba, says Julia Sweig of the
Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank. U.S. hotel companies would
doubtless want to be allowed to invest there, for example.
In Cuba, meanwhile, the police state remains intact.
In a report released last week, Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental
organization, says that Raul Castro's government has made greater use of
a provision of the criminal code that allows indefinite detention for
"dangerousness," defined as conduct "in manifest contradiction to the
norms of socialist morality."
The report, based on an undercover investigation, states that at least
40 Cubans have recently been jailed under this provision for trying to
exercise basic rights, such as staging peaceful marches or writing
critical news articles. (On Nov. 6, Cuba's most prominent independent
blogger, Yoani Sanchez, was forced into an unmarked car, beaten and
threatened, before being dumped on the street.) There are at least 200
political prisoners, and probably many more: Cuba is one of only eight
countries in the world that denies the International Committee of the
Red Cross access to its prisons.
While Cuba justifies all this as self-defense against repeated U.S.
attempts to overthrow the Castro regime, in fact it is aimed at
enforcing political conformity, argues Human Rights Watch. It wants the
United States, before lifting the embargo, to secure a commitment from
Europe and Latin America to press for the release of political prisoners.
That looks naive. Many left-wing governments in Latin America apply a
double standard when it comes to human rights: While suspending the not
very repressive de facto civilian government in Honduras from the
Organization of American States, they want Cuba to rejoin. (After the
coup in June that toppled Manuel Zelaya, Honduras' president, Raul
Castro, with no apparent irony, even joined calls for an economic
embargo against the country.)
The European Union has normal economic ties with Cuba, but is critical
of its trampling of human rights. Spain's foreign minister, Miguel
Moratinos, has said that he wants to use his country's six-month
presidency of the EU from January to soften that policy.
Just as the U.S. embargo has been futile and counterproductive, there is
no evidence that "engagement" by Europeans or Latin Americans has much
impact in Havana.
In the end, if change comes to Cuba it will be from within. Raul Castro
has launched a wide-ranging public debate on the economy and is taking
modest steps toward more reliance on market mechanisms. The changes are
aimed at preserving communist control, and their pace will be glacial as
long as Fidel remains alive. But there can be little doubt that a
lifting of the U.S. embargo would help those within the regime in Havana
who want to move in a more liberal direction.
From the Economist magazine.
Resisting carrots and sticks in Cuba | PressDemocrat.com | The Press
Democrat | Santa Rosa, CA (23 November 2009)
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20091123/OPINION/911209946/1042
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