Posted on 04/24/2003 1:54:51 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
HAVANA (Reuters) - U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin traveled to Cuba to promote sales of Iowa farm products, but ended his visit on Thursday calling on President Fidel Castro to release jailed dissidents.
The Iowa Democrat, an outspoken defender of human rights in other parts of the world, had planned his sales pitch trip to Cuba before the island's communist authorities arrested 75 pro-democratic opponents of Castro last month and handed them stiff sentences of up to 28 years in prison.
"The Cuban government should grant the appeals of all 75 prisoners of conscience and release them forthwith," Harkin said at a news conference. He said the harsh sentences were tantamount to life sentences for some of the older dissidents.
Harkin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, met with Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and the president of the Cuban National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, but not with Castro.
He also met with leading dissidents Elizardo Sanchez and Vladimiro Roca, who asked him to raise his voice to get their fellow dissidents out of prison.
The worst wave of political repression in decades in Cuba has brought to a standstill efforts in Washington by farm and business groups to further ease U.S. trade sanctions and end a ban on American tourism to the Caribbean island.
On Tuesday, the entire board of directors of the Cuba Policy Foundation, a Washington lobby group that had pushed to lift the embargo, resigned in protest over the arrests and executions of three men who hijacked a Havana commuter ferry in a bid to reach the United States.
"Some said I should not come here under these circumstances, but a policy of isolation and the embargo of 42 years has not achieved any U.S. objectives nor made life better for the average Cuban citizen," Harkin said.
The senator also asked the Bush administration to make it clear that it has no plans for military action against Cuba, responding to Cuban fears that Washington might be aiming at a regime change in Cuba after Iraq.
The Cuban government rounded up the dissidents last month and put them on trial for conspiring with the United States to subvert the one-party communist society born from Castro's 1959 guerrilla revolution.
The arrests included independent journalists and many of the organizers of a signature campaign called the Varela Project that united the island's small and divided oppositions groups last year behind a petition for peaceful democratic reforms.
After meeting with dissidents, including the Gisela Delgado, whose husband Hector Palacios was handed a 25-year jail term, Harkin said "it is clear that the best course of action now is moderation not escalation, engagement not isolation."
At that meeting on Tuesday evening at the Hotel Nacional, the dissidents recognized the waiter serving drinks as one of the witnesses the government produced at Palacios' trial to testify that the dissident had met with U.S. legislators at the hotel.
So what's to be done? Simply extending the U.S. embargo from here to eternity is unlikely to achieve much, but neither is it consonant with the lessons of history that rewarding criminals stops crime. At the least, voices must rise in fierce condemnation, and from all over the civilized world. The dissidents must be encouraged, their tormentors excoriated. The free world must not let go of its outrage, but beat the drum regularly, turning to other sanctions if effective, humane ones can be found, while insistently seeking the release of all Castro's political prisoners and the demise of his government by thuggery.***
After Castro has 3 dissidents executed, Harkin goes to Cuba to demand that Castro turn over a new leaf and free a few of the survivors. Whadda guy.
Their bodies are still warm in their graves and Harkin is already trying to grant Castro favors such as an end to our embargo on Cuba.
But not after first pitching his wares.
At that meeting on Tuesday evening at the Hotel Nacional, the dissidents recognized the waiter serving drinks as one of the witnesses the government produced at Palacios' trial to testify that the dissident had met with U.S. legislators at the hotel.A meeting surrounded by "minders," so much freedom just 90 miles from America.
U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D-Ia), visiting Cuba to promote sales of Iowa farm products, speaks at a press conference at the end of his visit, in Havana April 24, 2003. Harkin called on Cuban President Fidel Castro to release the 75 dissidents jailed for conspiring to subvert the one-party communist society born from Castro's 1959 guerrilla revolution. REUTERS/Rafael Perez
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