Pro-democracy Cuban activists addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere affairs on Tuesday. Haley Hinkle/MNS
WASHINGTON – While supporting President Barack Obama’s decision to normalize relations with Cuba, Cuban human rights activists told a Senate subcommittee Tuesday that opening trade and tourism between the U.S. and Cuba won’t end the Castro regime’s civil rights abuses and tight control over the country.
Rosa Maria Payá, a member of the Cuban Christian Liberation Movement and daughter of a slain Cuban dissident, said Cuban citizens didn’t choose to be isolated.
“We urge you to open up to Cuba,” Payá said.
But she and other pro-democracy Cuban activists cited the country’s long history of human rights abuses as evidence that Cuba has a lot of progress to make to loosen the stronghold of the Castro dictatorship.
Berta Soler, president of pro-democracy group Cuban Ladies in White, said members of her organization have been arrested while peacefully for speaking for democratization in Cuba. “Separation of powers does not exist in Cuba,” Soler said.
Sen. Marco Rubio, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere affairs, said the U.S. should be cautious in what it offers as it rebuilds relations with Cuba. Before the hearing, Cnn.com published an editorial by Rubio in which he expressed deep concerns about the Obama administration’s approach to ongoing negotiations with Cuba.
Rubio implied that the U.S. has already been too conciliatory with Cuba in the weeks since the new relationship has been announced. “When dealing with tyrants, you can’t wear them down with kindness,” he wrote in his editorial.
But Sen. Barbara Boxer, the top Democrat on the subcommittee, repeatedly emphasized that the U.S.’ previous strategy in Cuba has not worked. “We know this policy isn’t going to change Cuba overnight,” she said, adding that she agrees with Obama that the best strategy is to engage in conversations with the Cuban government.
Rubio and several other senators expressed concern about the ties between industry and government in Cuba.
Rubio asked Roberta Johnson and Tomasz Malinowski of the State Department about connections between Grupo Gaesa, the company that effectively controls the Cuban hotel market, and the Cuban government. The CEO of Gaesa is Raul Castro’s son-in-law and a general in the Cuban military, Rubio said.
Paya, Soler, human rights activist and journalist Miriam Leiva and activist Manuel Cuesta Morúa all traveled from Cuba to speak at the hearing about the problems with the Castro regime. Testifying in the Senate hearing alone would likely put the speakers at risk of retribution by the Cuban government, Rubio said.
