By Jim Burns. CNS Senior Staff Writer.
CNS News. April 03, 2001
(CNSNews.com) - The House Tuesday is expected to act on a resolution that
would express the sense of the House regarding the human rights situation in
Cuba. Specifically, the measure would urge the United Nations Human Rights
Commission now meeting in Geneva to condemn the human rights abuses being
committed by the Castro government.
The House International Relations Committee approved the resolution last
Wednesday. Thus far, Poland and the Czech Republic have indicated they will
support the resolution when it comes before the U.N. commission.
Radio Havana reported Saturday that Cuban Leader Fidel Castro, addressing an
outdoor rally in Havana, criticized the United States for pushing the human
rights resolution before the United Nations commission.
"These are the enslaved people," Fidel Castro ironically remarked
about thousands of Cubans taking part in the rally. He said these were the
people "whose human rights are being questioned in Geneva by the United
States."
Castro also said the campaign against Cuba in the U.N. Human Rights
Commission has more fervor than ever, after what he termed the "fraudulent"
U.S. elections and the "scandalous theft of the presidency which brought to
power the current president, George W. Bush."
Late last week, Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), himself a Cuban
exile, proposed the "Cuban Internal Opposition Assistance Act of 2001,"
which would give "democracy assistance" to the Cuban internal
opposition.
"Democracy assistance" means humanitarian assistance such as food,
medicine and communications equipment such as telephones and fax machines. The
bill has almost 100 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle.
"A central focus of American policy toward Cuba must be to assist the
brave internal opposition struggling for democracy inside the enslaved island,"
Diaz-Balart said in a statement on Capitol Hill.
Diaz-Balart said the bill would give Cuba's internal opposition support
similar to what the United States extended to Poland's internal opposition
during the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was president.
Rep. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, said he supports the measure
because, "the Cuban people want change, but they need help from (outside)
the island to struggle against the smothering repression on the island." | 