The tragic death of Cuban dissident Wilman Villar after a 50-day hunger strike should make clear that the Cuban people seek freedom and are increasingly willing to defy a repressive regime to get it.
They deserve outside moral support, which is best expressed by a repudiation of the regime that brutalizes them, not by establishing relations that would only legitimize the dictatorship of the Castro brothers.
The Obama administration has already begun to take steps in the direction of progressively establishing links with Cuba.
It has relaxed travel restrictions and remittances to Cuba, therefore replenishing the generals’ hard-currency coffers and helping to validate their unelected, illegal and repressive regime.
Mr. Villar’s death, however, makes a sad mockery of many of the arguments used by those who want U.S. ties with the island’s communist leaders.
Among these arguments: that 80-year-old Raul Castro, Fidel’s little brother and successor, is liberalizing his island fiefdom.
We also hear that the docile Cubans don’t care that they lack political freedom anyway and that American companies should go into Cuba headfirst and transact with the tormentors of 11 million Cubans.
The more than 4,000 political detentions and arrest in Cuba in 2011, and Mr. Villar’s death, are powerful reminders that none of these premises are true.
Outside the administration, no man has taken up the cudgel of the defense of normalization more than one senior official who, ironically, served in the Bush administration -- Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario