Don't reward atrocities

Opposing view on Cuba:
Don't reward atrocities
Updated 9/26/2010 6:44 PM
By Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Ninety miles off Florida's coast, an elusive island beckons. Cuba evokes
an exotic bygone era for tourists and a potential market for American
farmers. So it should surprise no one that there are calls to open our
flights, markets and wallets to Cuba again.

OUR VIEW: A reflective Fidel Castro provides an opening for U.S.

Such appeals, however, mask the brutal truth: After 50 years of
oppressive rule by Fidel and Raul Castro, Cuba maintains one of the most
deplorable human rights records in the modern world.

Openly hostile to the United States, the Castro regime continues to
inflict substantial domestic political and economic oppression. The
Cuban people suffer without the most basic human rights, and the
government imprisons students, journalists and anyone who speaks against
the regime. For example, American Alan Gross has languished in a Cuban
cell since December without access to medical care, for his "crime" of
distributing cellphones to the Jewish community in Havana; Reina Luisa
Tamayo, mother of a dissident who died this year of a hunger strike, is
routinely beaten when she attempts to visit her son's grave.

These examples represent only a fraction of Cuba's flagrant human rights
violations. The Cuba Archive Project has documented more than 90,000
non-combat deaths — including executions, extrajudicial assassinations,
death in political prisons, and disappearances. Furthermore, 1.5 million
Cubans are in exile, while the regime continues to trumpet a release of
prisoners that only scratches the surface.

Declaring the embargo a failure and using it as justification to reopen
trade and relations ignores the fact that the Cuban economy is on its
knees. The paltry changes we've seen (allowing Cubans to buy and sell
some goods) have been necessitated by their economic crisis. Ending the
embargo now not only ignores the atrocities perpetrated by the Castro
regime, it also hands the Cuban government a huge financial boost at the
exact moment they need and want it most.

Friendship and an economic relationship with our nation must be earned,
and Cubans deserve the freedom, democracy and human rights they lack.
Until Cuba has demonstrated meaningful progress, unilateral changes in
American policy would undeniably reward horrific behavior.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a Democrat from Florida.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-09-27-editorial27_ST1_N.htm