Good Afternoon. With the concurrence of Chairman Burton, this joint Subcommittee will now come to order. This afternoon, we will examine “Year Two of Castro’s Brutal Crackdown in Cuba.” I want to thank the Chairman of our Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, Dan Burton, for agreeing to this joint hearing. I also want to thank our respective Ranking Democratic Members, Mr. Payne and Mr. Menendez, for their support in organizing this important hearing.

    Two years ago, with the world’s attention riveted on Iraq, Fidel Castro ordered his feared State Security apparatus to round up at least 75 of Cuba’s bravest and brightest, prominent and lesser-known dissidents. Among these are 28 independent journalists and 40 Varela project workers. With sickening speed, these men and women were paraded before kangaroo courts and given prison sentences ranging from 6 to 28 years. 61 remain in jail.

    When the Committee on International Relations met April 16, 2003 to decry this vile abrogation of justice, I stated at that time: “Even some of the most outspoken leftists, who once saw in Fidel Castro something to admire, now admit that Castro’s unbridled cruelty, thirst for blood and extreme paranoia are indefensible.”

    I regret to report that Castro has given me no cause to reassess that statement. 

    What were the so-called crimes of these brave men and women? Advocating democracy……writing as independent journalists……being men and women of faith…… 

    Their real offense was to dare to question the authority of a single man, Mr. Castro. The Cuban Revolution is really about Castro’s vanity and pursuit of personal power. From the beginning, Castro has shot and jailed anyone——even his close friends——who has dared get in the way of his personal ambition.

    Dictatorships, reflecting the whims of a despot, always subject their people to deprivations and absurdities. The Castro regime recently let a handful of its political prisoners out on “parole,” citing health reasons. The regime’s callousness towards ailing political prisoners is well documented.

    Now, independent Cuban journalists are reporting that Cuba’s prisons have been virtually emptied of medical personnel. Why? Mr. Castro decided to send them to Venezuela and other places to advance his personal expansionist agenda. 

    Writing in the Spanish newspaper, El Pais, Noble prize winner Jose Sarampo, a Portuguese communist and close friend of Castro commented, “Cuba has won no heroic victory by executing these three men, but it has lost my confidence, damaged my hopes and robbed me of illusions.” 

    Without anything that resembles due process, three alleged ferry hijackers were killed by firing squad in Cuba, while others got long jail terms.

    Illusions, as Castro lover Jose Sarampo has only now begun to acknowledge, often persist despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

    Nowhere has this been more evident than in the case of Castro’s Cuba. 

    Despite decades of credible reports of widespread egregious violations of human rights, including the pervasive use of torture and vicious beatings of political prisoners by the Cuban government, some have clung to indefensibly foolish illusions of Castro’s revolution. 

    Despite the fact that the Cuban government systematically denies its people the freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and association, and severely restricts workers’ rights, including the right to form independent trade unions, some have, nevertheless, clung to illusion. 

    Despite the fact that Castro maintains an unimaginably vast network of surveillance by the thugs in his secret police and Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) – neighbors spying on neighbors -- some continue to embrace bogus perceptions-- illusions about Cuba. 

    In his book, “Against All Hope, a Memoir of Life in Castro’s Gulags” Armando Valladares, a courageous and amazing man who spent 22 years in Cuban prisons wrote, 

    “The government of Cuba and defenders of the Cuban Revolution denied that incidents that I recount (in the book) ever happened. Castro sympathizers, who were more subtle, said the incidents I described were exaggerations. And there were others, well meaning, who simply could not bring themselves to believe that such horrors, crimes and torture existed in the political prisons of Cuba.”

    “My response to those who still try to justify Castro’s tyranny with the excuse that he has built schools and hospitals is this: Stalin, Hitler and Pinochet also built schools and hospitals, and like Castro, they also tortured and assassinated opponents. They built concentration and extermination camps and eradicated all liberties, committing the worst crimes against humanity.”

    “Unbelievably, while many non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International and America’s Watch have denounced the human rights situation in Cuba, there has been a continuing love affair on the part of the media and many intellectuals with Fidel Castro.”

    That love affair -- that illusion – seemed to crash and burn with the onset of the current crackdown on dissidents. The EU took action in June 2003 by limiting high-level EU governmental visits and inviting Cuban dissidents to national day celebrations. But their memories are short. In January of this year, at the initiative of the Spanish government, the EU temporarily suspended these measures for a six-month period. 

    Let me mention a few of the ones who were summarily sentenced and remain in prison. Omar Rodriguez Saludes, an independent journalist known to ride his bicycle to news conferences: 27 years. Hector Palacios, one of the key figures promoting the Varela Project: 25 years. Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who wrote critical articles about the Cuban economy for the Internet: 25 years. The President of the Independent United Confederation of Cuban Workers (CUTC), Pedro Pablo Alvarez, 25 years. Journalist Raul Rivero and Ricardo Gonzalez Afonso, an editor at “De Cuba” magazine, each got 20 years. The list goes on and on.

    It was a true honor to hear from Economist Morta Beatriz Rogue today, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison and released for health reasons in 2004. We salute her courage to continue the fight on behalf of those who are still in prison today.

    For its part, the Bush Administration has made its deep and abiding concern for the political prisoners and the protection of elemental human rights in Cuba abundantly clear. At the time of the crackdown, former Secretary of State Colin Powell declared, 

    “In recent days the Cuban government has undertaken the most significant act of political repression in decades. We call on Castro to end this despicable repression and free these prisoners of conscience. The United States and the international community will be unrelenting in our insistence that Cubans who seek peaceful change be permitted to do so.” 

    In like manner, the Congress has consistently demanded the immediate release of all the prisoners and support of the right of the Cuban people to exercise fundamental political and civil liberties. HRes 179, a resolution offered by Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen in April 2003, passed by a vote of 414-0, 11 present. In April of 2001, I sponsored a resolution, H.Res. 91, calling on the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva to condemn Cuba’s human rights abuse and appoint a Special Rapporteur for Cuba. While it passed, there were a disturbing number of negative votes. That vote was 347-44 with 22 voting present.
    
    We have another opportunity today to move forward a resolution offered by my Colleague, Mr. Menendez, to show that these prisoners are not forgotten. Fidel Castro, his brother Raul, and numerous leaders of Cuba’s dictatorship, are directly responsible for crimes against humanity past –and present. Some day these oppressors will be held to account and the people of Cuba will live in freedom.

    This afternoon, we will learn about the continued plight of Cuba’s dissidents. More importantly, we will talk about the vision of a free Cuba that animates these men and women to assume risks we can only imagine.

    As Roger Noriega, our first official witness has observed: the democratic transition is already underway in Cuba. Freedom always begins in hearts of a few brave men and women.

    I would like to recognize my colleague Chairman Burton for an opening statement and to then recognize our Ranking Democratic Members, Mr. Payne and Mr. Menendez for their opening remarks