Washington, D.C. --
Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL) sent the following letter
Wednesday to the Governor of Illinois, George H. Ryan, with regard to
his upcoming visit to totalitarian Cuba:
Dear Governor Ryan:
I was deeply
disappointed to learn of your trip to Cuba. From what I have read,
this trip has been in the planning stages for some time. Working with
officials of the Castro dictatorship as you have, and meeting with the
Cuban tyrant, as you apparently will, clearly indicates a profound
insensitivity toward the suffering of the Cuban people.
Talk of trade with
Cuba may sound humanitarian to you, but in reality all transactions
take place through a government which oppresses its people. Castro
directly controls -- and exploits --
the distribution of
all goods and services in Cuba. For instance, there are no
privately-owned pharmacies in Cuba, access to medicine and medical
services is severely rationed by the regime, and yet the dictatorship
operates well-stocked, modern medical facilities for foreign
"health-tourists" (with services denied to Cubans) who pay
in dollars.
The Cuban
dictatorship is bankrupt and in debt to more than a dozen nations.
Free expression and all labor rights are prohibited in Cuba.
Furthermore, the Cuban regime is a Terrorist State
responsible for
murdering American citizens during your tenure in politics.
It is hard for me to
believe that you would have supported business deals by Illinois-based
companies with Hitler's regime, and yet press reports indicate that
you will dine with and promote
business with a
corrupt and oppressive tyrant who maintains thousands imprisoned
because of their support for freedom and democracy.
Rather than promoting
business with the dictatorship, you would do better by supporting the
inevitable transition to democracy in Cuba. You should insist on
meeting with the imprisoned future leaders of Cuba, with other members
of the brave internal
opposition and with the thousands of former political prisoners now in
exile who languished for decades in Castro's gulag. And when you feast
with Castro, you should ask the tyrant to
release all political
prisoners, legalize all political parties, labor unions and the press,
and schedule free and fair, internationally supervised democratic
elections.
Though you may not
wish to realize it, Governor Ryan, Cuba will be free. And since you
seem to be so concerned about promoting business, rest assured that it
is bad business policy and that there will be an inevitable price to
be paid for having promoted deals with the jailers of the future
leaders of Cuba.
Sincerely,
Lincoln Diaz-Balart
cc: Republican
Governors Association
