Center for a Free Cuba

BY FRANK CALZON

Learning about BP’s efforts to free the Libyan terrorist serving a prison sentence for his part in the 1988 bombing of the ill-fated Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland, I came to appreciate the Bible’s verse that says “there is nothing new under the sun.”

Eight years after the Pan Am flight was blown up, four men flying two unarmed small Cessna aircraft, in a rescue mission in international airspace over the Florida Straits, were murdered by Cuban warplanes. The four, Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales, died as the result of an international terrorist attack carried out in 1996 by Havana.

Three of them were American citizens, and one was a legal resident of the United States.

Now press reports indicate that BP put profit over justice in the case of the 270 souls — 190 Americans — who were murdered by Moammar Gadhafi’s dictatorship. The deaths, as Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has indicated, meant little to BP when compared with the profits it sought by getting access to Libyan oil. The British government now acknowledges it committed a grave error by releasing the terrorist.

That the crime occurred 22 years ago has not prevented the American people from condemning BP’s disregard for the innocent victims.

Be that as it may, now the Texas Farm Bureau, the National Farmers Union and the chairman of the House Agricultural Committee, Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., are working tirelessly to provide trade benefits, subsidies and export insurance, to be paid by American taxpayers, to the Cuban regime — the regime that awarded medals to the air force officers who committed their barbarous act on the Florida Straits.

But the Cuban officers were not the only ones responsible for the crime. Cuba’s minister of the armed forces at the time was Gen. Raúl Castro. U.S. courts sentenced several Cuban spies linked to the crime. These spies, mind you, were not like the recently exchanged Russian spies; the record shows that they were assigned by Havana to find sites on Florida shores suitable for the landing of arms and personnel, who presumably were not coming to the United States to engage in a humanitarian mission.

One, Gerardo Hernández, is serving in a life sentence in a federal penitentiary. He was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, espionage and other illegal activities. Another one of the spies, Juan Pablo Roque, fled to Cuba shortly before the two unarmed Cessna aircraft were shot down.

Today we face a well-financed and orchestrated campaign calling on President Obama to set all of the Castro brothers’ spies free. And American companies selling to Havana believe that “selling” to Cuba equals getting paid, and that they are simply engaging in a business deal. Havana, however, is broke, and Spanish investors on the island are not permitted to withdraw their own funds from Cuban government banks, because of Cuba’s liquidity crisis.

Furthermore, trading with Cuba is not like trading elsewhere: There are no Cuban businesses independent of the government, and the Castros believe that when they purchase American grain, they also purchase influence by American companies. Havana believes that those who sell to Cuba have a duty to advance the regime’s interests.

The intersection between justice, American deaths and profits, is lethal to the U.S. national interest. BP played its part in the release of the man who murdered so many Americans over Scotland. American corporate interests would like to conduct business with Havana, as if the Castro brothers’ hands were not soiled with American blood.

The headline in the Times of London read, “Lockerbie bomber `set free for oil.’ ” It remains to be seen whether the murderers of Americans in the Florida Straits will be “set free for grain.”

Frank Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Arlington, Va.

The Center for a Free Cuba’s Frank Calzon appears on CNN Latino to discuss recent developments in US-Cuba relations.

Re Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega’s announcement that five political prisoners were being released by the Cuban regime and 47 others will be released within the next few months:

It is always good when political captives are released. It is encouraging that after all these years, Cardinal Ortega bears witness to the suffering of the Cuban people.

It is discouraging, however, that Raúl Castro’s government is not releasing immediately, as requested by Amnesty International, the 47 prisoners mentioned by the cardinal. All of them are Amnesty International prisoners of conscience, and none of them engage or advocated in any acts of violence.

Besides the 52 prisoners mentioned, there are about 200 other Cubans in prison for “crimes” that are not criminal offenses in the civilized world. From “dangerousness,” meaning the person has not committed any crime, but is believed by the regime to be inclined to do so, to “propaganda enemiga,” which includes the possession of books such as George Orwell’s Animal Farm or speaking in support of sanctions against Havana by the European Union or the United States.

In 1957, the hated dictator Fulgencio Batista released all political prisoners, including Fidel and Raúl Castro, and allowed them to remain in Cuba and reinsert themselves into Cuba’s civil society. The government of Raúl Castro is not releasing all political prisoners, and for many of those who, hopefully, will be released, it will be on the condition of going into exile.

The Center for a Free Cuba calls on the international community to continue pressuring the Cuban regime to release all political prisoners, including Alan Gross, an American in prison in Cuba since December for giving a laptop and a cellphone to Cubans. The international community should also insist that the Cuban government allow the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to visit the island.
FRANK CALZON, executive director, Center for a Free Cuba, Arlington, Va.
frank.calzon@cubacenter.org

by Frank Calzon

On the eve of this 4th of July, I think about our servicemen and women whose lives are at risk defending U.S. interests and the cause of freedom around the world. I also think about Cuba, so close to the United States, where a despotic regime continues to misrule; and about the Ladies in White, a group of women—mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives of Cuban political prisoners, punished for desiring the same freedoms that Americans will celebrate this weekend.

Again, this Sunday the Ladies in White will walk together to mass, all dressed in white, calling attention to the plight of their loved ones and the lack of freedom in Cuba. The women have been harassed, spat upon and insulted by mobs organized by the regime. Their mistreatment, detention and abuse by Cuban police has earned the condemnation of world leaders, including the First Lady of France, former Czech President Vaclav Havel and President Barack Obama.

Less known today, although they played a noble role in the war for American Independence, is another group of Cuban women, the “Ladies of Havana,” who helped George Washington at a most critical moment.

The battle of Yorktown was about to start, and the British General Charles Cornwallis, believed he would defeat the Americans. According to Washington’s aide, Count de Rochambeau, “the Continental troops [are] almost without clothes. The greater number [are] without socks or shoes. These people are at the very end of their resources. Washington will not have at his disposal half the number of troops he counts on having.” The story is told by historian Stephen Bonsal in the book When the French Were Here, published in 1945.

In 1781, things did not look good, when General Washington sent French Admiral Francois De Grasse to seek funds in the Caribbean. What happened is told by Charles Lee Lewis, in his Admiral De Grasse and the American Independence, published by the United States Naval Institute.

Unfortunately, as Jean-Jacques Antier writes in Admiral de Grasse: Hero of L’Independence Americaine, when De Grasse got to Havana the Spanish fleet had left for Spain. There was no gold to be had, and the colonial government could not help. The Cubans, however, liked Washington and private contributions flowed in. “Ladies even offering their diamonds. The sum of 1,200,000 livres was delivered on board,” Antier wrote. De Grasse sailed back toward Philadelphia, where Rochambeau took a boat to Chester, Pennsylvania, in September 1781.

“We saw in the distance Gen. Washington, shaking his hat and a white handkerchief and showing signs of great joy” when he saw their boat approaching Chester, according to De Rochambeau’s account in J.J. Jusserands’s With Americans of Past and Present Days. “De Rochambeau had scarcely landed,” Jusserand wrote, “when Washington, usually cool and composed, fell into his arms; the great news had arrived, de Grasse had come.” And there was enough money to fund to continue fighting. .
The campaign in the fall of 1781—and the war—ended with Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown. As Bonsal noted, “The million that was supplied by the ladies of Havana may be regarded as the ‘bottom dollars’ upon which the edifice of American independence was erected.”

Back in 1781, there was no United States, no United States Agency for International Development and no Cuba democracy program. While the worthiness of current U.S. efforts to promote a transition to democracy in Cuba are sometime questioned, on this Fourth of July let’s pray for our soldiers abroad, and remember the help given to George Washington by the “Ladies of Havana” so long ago.

http://cubacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/Is%20the%20Cuban%20Govenment%20a%20Threat%20to%20the%20United%20States.pdf

by Frank Calzon
Executive director,The Center for a Free Cuba

Executive Summary
At the end of July, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on two amendments, each approved by 95 vote margins, to end restrictions on travel and lift restrictions on financing exports to Cuba. The Senate will consider the legislation soon.

While the White House has threatened to veto any legislation that would ?bolster the Cuban dictatorship,? the anti-Embargo lobby argues that US tourism will benefit Cubans without strengthening Castro, and that trade with Havana will mean substantial American profits. These arguments are misguided at best and disingenuous at worst.

Fidel Castro is broke, and at issue is not trade, but extending American export credit and export insurance to his regime, both of which are funded by American taxpayers. Since last year, American companies are allowed to ?trade? with Castro?s government on a cash and carry basis. But when Castro defaults on his purchases, under the proposed policy American taxpayers will have the burden of picking up his tab.

Agriculture Subsidies
Nine American presidents, from both political parties have supported restrictions on travel to Cuba. And while the anti-Embargo lobby and many editorial pages across the nation try to explain away this long-lasting U.S. policy in terms of domestic political considerations (i.e., the Cuban American vote), the facts prove otherwise.

In a July 11th letter to the House Committee on Appropriations, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of the Treasury Paul O?Neill said that: ?Trade by other nations with Cuba has brought no change to Cuba?s despotic practices, and it has frequently proved to be an unprofitable enterprise.?

Unprofitable, indeed. France, Spain, Italy and Venezuela have suspended official credits to Castro?s Cuba — not because of the Cuban communities in those nations — but because Cuba has failed to make payments on its debt, including debt incurred on agricultural purchases. Powell and O?Neill wrote that, ?two governments have approached the U.S. to complain that Cuba?s payments of cash for U.S. agricultural products have meant that they are not getting paid at all.?

Reuters reported on July 8, 2002 that, ?Direct foreign investment in Cuba plummeted to $38.9 million in 2001 from $488 million the year before.? And earlier in the year, despite Castro?s tantrum, Russia closed its spy facility near Havana, thus denying his government $200 million per year in rent payments.

Castro?s current creditors are far from happy with these circumstances, as many have not received payment on interest or principal credit since 1986. Without even counting Castro?s debt to Russia, which he will not pay because he declares his debt as to a country that ?no longer exists,? Havana owes billions of dollars to western banks and former socialist countries.

The situation in Cuba is thus much more a problem of policy than politics. President Bush announced his ?U.S. Initiative for a New Cuba? on May 20, 2002, and declared that, ?Cuban purchases of U.S. agricultural goods … would be a foreign aid program in disguise.? And who pays for aid to foreign governments, but the American taxpayers who will eventually foot the tab for the defaults on his debts.

If this is not enough evidence, those lobbying for American credits and imminent subsidies should ask the Canadians for their advice. On August 7, 2002, the Montreal Gazette reported that, ?Lilac Islands, a 15,000 ton Cuban-owned ship, has been held in the port of Conakry, the Guinean capital, for the past month while an Ontario company, armed with legal judgements, pursues Cuba for more than $3 million U.S. Last week, Guinea?s Court of Appeals upheld the continuance of the steel-laden ship?s detention-pending the payment of more than $275,000 in debt to Adecon Ship Management of Mississauga. Adacon claims the total debt on several judgements exceeds $3 million.? Imagine U.S. companies chasing down Cuban cargo ships in international waters to collect payment, while American taxpayers sit on the sidelines knowing that they?ll pick up the bill when the debtor doesn?t pay.

Trade with Cuba does not represent trade with Cuban business owners, entrepreneurs or consumers; Trade with Cuba is trade with the Castro government itself, which monopolizes virtually all enterprises and exploits Cuban workers as their sole employer. Said Condoleezza Rice, President Bush?s national security advisor, In Cuba, Fidel Castro is still the one man through whom everything has to go. Any trade that goes through Cuba is going to strengthen Cuba?s regime.

Regime Supporting Terror
While the anti-Embargo lobby insists on the right of American tourists to travel to Cuba, they ignore other rights and national security considerations. Each right must be weighted against its impact on other rights. As John Stuart Mill once said, ?one man?s right to swing his arm ends where my nose begins.? And in the case of Cuba, the desire to travel must be weighed against the risks inherent in subsidizing a regime that poses a national security threat to the United States.

Consider: In their July 11th letter to the Appropriations Committee, Secretary Powell and Secretary O?Neill said that, ?A relationship of continuing hostility exists between Cuba and the United States;? that ?Cuba has long been listed by the State Department as a state-sponsor of terrorism;? and that, ?[Cuba] continues to harbor fugitives from the American justice system, and it supports international terrorist organizations.? Castro has provided a safe haven for more than 70 fugitives from U.S. justice, including several accused of killing American police officers.

Due to the end of Soviet subsidies and his disastrous economic policies, Castro is bankrupt. His lack of cash restricts his ability to engage or support anti-American actions around the world.

But his anti-American commitment remains. On May 10, 2001, Agence France Presse quoted Castro?s speech at the University of Tehran, where he stated: ?Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees.

What, specifically, does Castro have in mind? In a May 6th speech, John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, warned Americans that ?Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort … [and] has provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states.? Few are demanding that the administration produce a ?smoking gun? to prove its assessment of the threat posed by Iraq, Iran, or North Korea, but the evidence is surely in on Castro, who needs American tourism to make up for Soviet money lost, so he can once again pursue a more active anti-American role in the world.

What Opening the Travel Ban Will Do
Some say that the opening of U.S. tourism to Cuba will bring the two cultures together, but the reality is far different. Currently, Castro sets aside hotels, beaches, stores, restaurants, and even hospitals for foreigners, and prohibits his own people from staying in those hotels and patronizing those facilities. U.S. tourism under current conditions would freeze in place Castro?s tourist apartheid, and likely exacerbate it. People-to-people contact under Castro?s regime is far from likely.

But contact between cultures of a different, and often nefarious, kind is much more likely. A March 2002 report released by Johns Hopkins University says that Cuba is ?increasingly reported to be a major destination for sex tourists from North America and Europe. The increase is attributed to a concurrent drop in political restrictions on travel to Cuba and a crackdown on sex tourism in Southeast Asia, causing sex tourists to seek out alternative destinations. According to general news reports, Cuba is one of many countries that have replaced Southeast Asia as a destination for pedophiles and sex tourists … Canadian sex tourism is also cited as largely responsible for the revival of Havana brothels and child prostitution.?
Conclusion
In their same May letter to the House Appropriations Committee, shortly before the body passed two amendments ending restrictions on travel and financing exports to Cuba, Secretaries Powell and O?Neill stated that, ?Current economic circumstances in Cuba do not support changing our position on trade with Cuba. Moreover, the lack of a sound economic rationale makes it more likely that Castro would use any liberalizing of our trade position for his political benefit.

Providing trade benefits to America?s enemies, especially those on the State Department?s list of terrorist nations, makes as much sense as selling U.S. scrap metal to Japan in the 1930s — some of which was used to build up the Japanese military and, later, attack Pearl Harbor.

But apart from security policy, one of the greatest advantages of the U.S. embargo on Cuba is that it has saved U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars in unappropriated export insurance and subsidies. American banks aren?t among the consortium of creditors, like those in France, Spain and Canada, who have been waiting for years to be paid what they are owed.
Fidel Castro is broke. He can?t pay his debts, and several of his most important trading partners have suspended credits and export insurance. Yet, like the second to last scene in a bad Hollywood western, some are out trying to muster a cavalry to save his regime. This time, it is a cavalry of American tourists and special interests whose objectives will only strengthen the Western Hemisphere?s most enduring dictatorship.

Capital markets lie only when con artists run the show. And forcing American taxpayers to subsidize Cuba, which has seen a 92% decrease in foreign investment (from $488 million in 2000 to $39 million in 2001) is a leap from a precipice trumping Enron and Worldcom combined. A policy of moving exports from a cash-and-carry basis to credit extensions is like sentencing taxpayers to investing in Enron or WorldCom right before those stocks plummeted. American taxpayers did not have to bail out those companies. And they should not be forced to bail out the head of an openly hostile government, especially when his default is more a question of ?when? than ?if.

If you are interested in contacting your senator or representative on this important issue, please write to:

Your Senator
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Your Representative
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

You can also call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 225-3121, and ask for your senator or representative by name.

The Miami Herald| Wednesday, May 21, 2008

By Frank Calzon

In a 77-page report just released, the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations presents a hodge-podge of recommendations to America’s 44th president — whomever he or she may be — in order to confront ”a critical opportunity to reframe and redirect U.S. relations” with Latin America. The report is based on an economists’ worldview of the hemisphere, which emphasizes improving access to market opportunities in Latin America, tax reforms, streamlining business regulations and U.S. economic interests. Almost nowhere to be found are the words ”freedom,” ”liberty” and “democracy.”

Among the recommendations for the new administration are calls for convening international conferences, a ”public-private summit” and other boilerplate suggestions. Others are simply the type of pie in the sky that often is the result of reports prepared by committees. In the case of emigration, the reports read: “The task force urges the next administration and Congress to negotiate and approve comprehensive immigration reform in 2009. Viable immigration policy must: improve border security and management; address the unauthorized work force already here; ensure employer security verification and responsibilities; and expand a flexible worker program to meet changing U.S. economic demands.”

The next president does not need a task force to identify those goals about which there already is something close to a national consensus. The devil, as usual, is in the details. What is the priority among the various goals, and who, how and for how much are those goals to be implemented? These questions are largely unanswered.

The report prescribes several courses of action for Latin American governments. It says that they ”must establish the institutional infrastructure necessary to boost public revenues if they are to confront social and economic problems successfully,” but it generally gives short shrift to the democratic process and to the need for democratic mechanisms such as those instituted in the ”Democratic Charter.” This accord signed by all democratic nations in the hemisphere is designed to ‘’strengthen and uphold” democratic institutions, yet it is mentioned only once, and that in order to criticize the alleged U.S. endorsement of a military coup against Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.

The report mentions the word ”business” 19 times, the word ”markets” 32 times, while it mentions ”freedom” one time, and ”elections” five times. In its 77 pages about the United States and Latin America the words ”freedom of the press,” ”political parties” and ”liberty” do not appear.

In the case of Cuba, the harshest military dictatorship in the region, the report credits Gen. Raúl Castro’s regime with implementing ”a number of measures designed to enhance the quality of people’s lives and personal freedom.” About the U.S. trade embargo the report recommends the ”repeal of the 1996 Helms-Burton Law” and to “initiate a series of steps, with the aim of lifting the embargo against Cuba.”

Absent from the report is that Cuba, whatever the regime says to its foreign apologists, remains a cruel dictatorship where there is no freedom of the press, where the right to strike and labor unions are prohibited, where most economic activity by private individuals, which is taken for granted around the world, is severely punished; and where as recently as late April, as reported by the international media, about 10 women dressed in white who gathered peacefully at a park to present a petition to the authorities were roughed up and arrested by some 100 government thugs and security officers.

Their group, the Ladies in White, mothers, sisters and daughters of Cuban political prisoners, was given the Sakharov Award by the European Parliament in 2005. After their detention in Havana, The Washington Post called attention to the ”apologists” of the Castro regime, who have renewed their calls for a lifting of the U.S. trade embargo . . . [while] unsurprisingly such Cuba buffs haven’t had much to say about [the Ladies in White].”

The report by the Council on Foreign Relations, while giving the benefit of the doubt to the almost 50-year-old Havana regime, fails to mention the women.

Frank Calzón is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, D.C.

Sun Sentinel, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida| May 11, 2008

By Frank Calzon
Gen. Raúl Castro, who has now officially taken over control of Cuba’s government from his brother Fidel, recently embarked on a campaign to put a more humane face on his communist dictatorship.
A series of reforms have been announced and widely reported. None have been fully implemented, and most are symbolic and of little significance to the “man on the street.” When Cubans are making $15 to $20 a month, it doesn’t much matter to them that the government will now allow them to check into a hotel built for tourists that charges six months wages for a one-night stay.
Likewise, the government’s announcement that Cubans, who are always paid in pesos, are now permitted to buy laptop computers with dollars. The regime would like people to spend the remittances that they receive from relatives abroad, but buying food or aspirin on the black market is a more practical choice. Besides, Cuba’s government still denies Internet access to all but a few of its favored officials.
Whatever favorable impressions Raúl Castro has been trying to make, they vanished when his government dispatched an estimated 100 police officers, security agents and thugs from Rapid Response brigades to rough up and detain 10 of the “Ladies in White.”
The Ladies in White are mothers, sisters and wives of Cuban political prisoners. Their offense – other than dressing in white on Sundays to go to mass at St. Rita’s and then parade through adjacent streets – was gathering to deliver a petition to the Ministry of the Interior seeking the release of their loved ones.
In 2005, the European Parliament bestowed its Sakharov “Freedom of Conscience” Award on the women. On the day the Cuban government set upon them, European reporters happened to be in the park. Their presence probably protected the women from serious injuries.
More important, the detention of the Ladies in White happened to coincide with an effort by Spanish President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to convince the European Union to lift what’s left of its sanctions against Havana.
The EU has scheduled a full review of its Cuba sanctions in June. It employed sanctions five years ago when Fidel Castro rounded up 75 pro-democracy activists and sentenced them to long prison terms. The charges and trials were uniformly decried by international human rights organizations, and Amnesty International adopted all 75 as “Prisoners of Conscience.” That means none of those imprisoned had advocated or engaged in violent actions. About 60 of these activists are still imprisoned, and there are more than 200 other political prisoners in Cuba.
Virtually everything that Cubans read, hear or watch is produced by the government or heavily censored. Some of Cuba’s prisoners of conscience were jailed because they possessed banned books about Martin Luther King Jr. and his struggle for social justice; Mahatma Gandhi, who advocated peaceful civil disobedience; or the Polish worker’s Solidarity Movement. These are books that circulate within the dissident community on the island, and Cubans are beginning to celebrate democratic victories anywhere as if they were their own.
As for what has changed in the Cuban government: In an interview with the foreign press, a Havana spokeswoman for the Ladies in White in Havana observed, “There is no difference between Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl.”
She then urged women throughout the world to call on Raúl Castro to release Cuba’s political prisoners – all of them.

Frank Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, D.C.

The Miami Herald Wednesday, April 30, 2008
By Frank Calzon

In his book The Case for Democracy: The Power to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, Natan Sharansky, the former Israeli Cabinet member and one-time Soviet dissident, writes that three conditions must exist for people to break free of totalitarian rule:

People must want freedom enough to risk much of what they have to get it.

Other people in the world must believe that those who are seeking freedom deserve it and be willing to help them.

Democratic nations must be willing to condition their foreign policies to support political reform in an oppressive country.

Developments in Germany and Cuba this week, attest to Sharanksy’s wisdom on all three counts. In Cuba there was an episode reminiscent of Martin Luther King Jr.’s struggle for human rights. Ten Cuban women — mothers, wives and daughters of political prisoners in Cuba and part of a group known as the Ladies in White — gathered at a park to deliver a petition to the Interior Ministry seeking the release of their loved ones. Cuban government thugs set upon the women. A hundred police and security guards showed up, insulted the women, roughed them up and dragged away.

The incident touched Europeans. In 2005 the European Parliament awarded the Ladies in White the Sakharov Award for daring to assert their Freedom of Conscience.

Meanwhile, in Bonn a group of German human rights activists was picketing the Cuban government’s consulate. The Frankfurt-based International Society for Human Rights sponsored the demonstration, which came on the eve of the organization’s annual congress. The congress will focus on the abuse of human rights in Cuba, Tibet and several other countries with totalitarian governments.

So two of Sharansky’s conditions are being met. What remains to be seen is whether the European nations, which will be meeting in Brussels in July to review their common Cuba positions, will muster the will to link their political, economic and cultural foreign policies to substantive reforms by the Castro brothers.

As the courageous Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci once wrote, “There are times in life in which to remain silent is an error, and to speak up becomes an obligation.”

More and more men and women in the world seem willing to support the legitimate democratic aspirations of people living in Cuba, Tibet, Burma and other totalitarian states and to speak out against the world’s assassins and executioners.

Maybe that’s because there hasn’t been time enough for Germans to forget the suffering inflicted upon them by the East Germany STASSI and border guards who like Cuba’s border guards shot to kill anyone trying to flee. Much the same can be said about those who fled communism in Poland, although there, after declaring martial law, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski eventually resigned and opened the door to a rule of law and Solidarity.

Jaruzelski’s decision was good not only for the Poles but also for himself. Unlike other dictators, he continues to live in his country. The point to emphasis here is that most of Eastern Europe remembers communism and willingly supports democracy’s advocates in Cuba. The Ladies in White and the ever-growing numbers of political prisoners in Cuba are constant reminders that the struggle for human rights is universal. The presence of the international media in that Havana park provided some protection to the Ladies in White.

Perhaps one day, like the Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Spanish and other human rights activists, those who defend human rights in Cuba will obtain the freedom they seek and, then, lend support to efforts to defend human rights and liberty elsewhere.

Having witnessed the iron fist of Raúl Castro come down on the Ladies in White, it would be tragic should Europeans suddenly turn silent instead. The communist military regime in Havana will not last forever. The Cuban people will remember those like José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in Spain, who support the Castro brothers’ regime, as well as others like the demonstrators in Bonn, who embrace Europe’s heritage of freedom and offer support to Cubans in their time of need.
Frank Calzón is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, D.C.

The Miami Herald Thursday, March 3rd, 2008

By Frank Calzon

Everyday I check my Horoscope to know whether U.S. Cuba policy is about to change. The Horoscope is often more accurate than the news being generated by the coalition of Washington advocacy groups, “think tanks” and organizations promoting “better relations” with the Castros’ Regime. It is appalling how frequently their clamor for change in U.S. Cuba policy ignores the savagery of Cuba’s unchanging regime that systematically denies basic human rights, kills and imprisons its political opponents, and continues to support anti-American violence around the world. More about that later.

Readers should know, that I am executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, which sends to the island radios, books, pencils, pens, laptops, duplicating machines to Cuba trying to break the Castro brothers’ monopoly on information and to promote democracy, a rule of law and a peaceful transition to a free-market economy. That program is financed by a grant from the US Agency for International Development. On the other hand we can’t possibly match the spending the pro-Castro lobby is devoting to the support of policy changes that would prop up the Castro brothers.

The Center, however, made the news last week when a former employee working at the White House resigned. As reported by the Associated Press, “an aide to President Bush has resigned because of accusations concerning his misuse of grant money from the U.S. Agency for International Development.” The story quote White House spokesman Scott Stanzel saying that “[Felipe] Sixto took that step after learning his former employer, the Center for a Free Cuba, was prepared to bring legal action against him.”

I want the readers of The Miami Herald to know that in late January, we discovered some problems, initiated an internal audit within two hours of our discovery, and alerted the U.S. Agency for International Development, as regulations require. We look forward to the government’s investigation in order, as I told The Washington Post “to get to the bottom of it.”

Sixto left the Center for a Free Cuba last summer. I am confident on the basis of the available information that no other past or present employee at the Center is involved. I am disappointed and dismayed at the turn of events, and as Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz Balart put it in their statement, am also “deeply disturbed by any allegations of misuse of taxpayers’ funds.” We at the Center join them in urging the Administration to “move thoroughly and swiftly in investigating all the facts in this matter.”

I appreciate the messages and calls of support received as news spread. None of us can allow this nightmare to deter us from our work to restore democracy to Cuba. Some will attempt to turn this misfortune into their own political advantage. The Castros’ lobby will rejoice. Yet, anonymous predictions of change, whether attributed to bureaucrats, insiders in the administration or politicos on the campaign trail are almost always self-serving.

Years ago how much the United States was spending to support democracy movements in Poland and other Eastern Europe countries, was not publicly discussed. The numbers were classified.

The courage of people in Eastern Europe was the most important factor in defeating communism there, but undeniably international solidarity and U.S. support played important roles, as the former presidents of Poland and Czechoslovakia, Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel, repeatedly have attested.

Then, as in Cuba now, human rights were important U.S. interests and policy concerns. Today it is no secret that the Center for a Free Cuba has received money from U.S. government agencies to help promote democracy in Cuba. We report these expenditures but, by law, we cannot expend a penny of those government funds to suggest, promote or defend U.S. Cuba policy within the United States. When we do defend U.S. policy, whatever expenses we incur are paid by money raised from private contributors.

That raises a question: How much is being spent today in Washington to change U.S. policy toward Cuba, to lift trade sanctions unilaterally and with no agreement to hold elections, release political prisoners, or even acknowledge human rights? Who finances the pro-Castro, anti-embargo lobby?

I think it’s time to answer those questions in the news pages and on the public airways. I also think that it’s time to relegate anonymous “predictions” of Cuba-policy changes to the Horoscope and amusement pages where they properly belong.