National Post. May 19, 2000

A new photograph of young Elian Gonzalez is making the rounds. There are no gun-toting federal agents in this one, nor any glimpse of Juan Miguel, his father. This time, the six-year-old is dressed in the uniform of the Young Pioneers -- the Fidel Youth that all Cuban children are required to join. Its juvenile conscripts are taught, among other things, to report any counter-revolutionary statements by their parents to the secret police.

A spokesman for Cuba's interests section in Washington defended Elian's induction into the Pioneers as "part of our system of children going to school." Communist indoctrination is hardly surprising from a regime that has already described the child as "a possession of the Cuban government." (So much for the touted rights of the loving father.)

What sticks in the craw, though, is that the indoctrination of Elian Gonzalez is taking place not in Dr. Castro's prison state, but at the Wye Plantation in rural Maryland, within easy reach of the apparently untroubled capital of the free world.

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