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Editorial of the Voice of America
about the last mesuring of the United States goverment against the
Castro´s regime.
The Commission for Assistance to a Free
Cuba has issued its report. It makes clear the objectives of U.S. policy
toward Fidel Castro’s Communist regime. The Commission was set up in
October and comes after Castro’s brutal March 2003 crackdown that
resulted in long prison terms for seventy-five Cuban dissidents and
members of civil society.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says that the U.S. hopes that the
release of the report will encourage “nations across the globe [to]
better support the efforts of the Cuban people to secure their right to
democracy and realize their dreams for a better future.” This is in
keeping with the Inter-American Charter, approved in 2001, which says
that the peoples of the Americas have a right to democracy, and their
governments have an obligation to promote and defend it.
One of the proposals in the report is a plan to use U.S. planes, flying
in international waters, to transmit signals from U.S.-funded Radio and
T-V Marti broadcasts. This is aimed at overcoming the information
blockade the Cuban government has imposed on its own people by jamming
the broadcasts and preventing access to outside sources of news. The
report also calls for reducing trips to Cuba by Americans and limiting
gifts of money and goods to immediate family members in order to limit
the amount of hard currency that ultimately ends up in government
coffers. All gifts would be banned to Communist Party members and Castro
regime officials.
President George W. Bush says that the U.S. is committed to a Cuba “free
of tyranny”:
“It is a strategy that will prevent the regime from exploiting hard
currency of tourists, and of remittances to Cubans, to prop up their
repressive regime. It is a strategy that says we’re not waiting for the
day of Cuban freedom. We are working for the day of freedom in Cuba.”
The report calls for spending fifty-nine-million dollars over the next
two years to encourage the pro-democracy movement in Cuba. A large
portion of the funds will be used to support efforts to help Cuban young
people, women, and Afro-Cubans take their place in the pro-democracy
movement. For nearly half a century, the brave people of Cuba have
endured tyranny and repression, says President Bush. “Dictatorship has
no place in the Americas.”
Source: Journalist Boris Luis Santa
Coloma, Europe
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