MIAMI, United States. – A dozen US congressmen and senators, including several Cuban-Americans, published a statement of condemnation to package of measures announced this Friday by the Biden administration to “grant concessions to the brutal Cuban dictatorship.”
The text was signed by congressmen Mario Diaz-Balart (Florida), Michael McCaul (Texas), Mark Green (Tennessee), María Elvira Salazar (Florida) and Carlos A. Gimenez (Florida); as well as Senators James Risch (Idaho), Marco Rubio (Florida), Ted Cruz (Texas), Rick Scott (Florida), and Bill Cassidy (Louisiana).
“During last year’s historic protests against the regime in Cuba, President Biden said: ‘America. The US stands with the brave Cubans who have taken to the streets to oppose 62 years of repression under a communist regime.’ Yet today, while hundreds of activists remain illegally imprisoned, the White House is resurrecting President Obama’s failed policy of unilateral concessions to the criminal Castro/Díaz-Canel dictatorship.
“Instead of supporting the Cuban people’s pleas for freedom through the expansion of democratic programming, broadcasting, global diplomacy and sanctions against their oppressors, the Biden White House is rewarding the longest communist dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere not only with high-level talks, easing sanctions, increasing travel, access to the US and our financial institutions. Appeasing Cuba’s murderous regime fails to meet the legal requirements of US law and undermines US support for Cuba’s democratic opposition,” they also said.
Finally, they lamented “the repeated concessions of the Biden administration to the Cuban dictatorship” and said that they are “a betrayal” of the US commitment “to human rights and freedom, and to the Cuban people who are fighting for a transition democratic”.
One by one against the measures
Many of the Cuban-American politicians mentioned above also reacted individually on their Twitter account to the measures announced this afternoon.
“I am outraged that the Biden administration has decided to weaken sanctions and support the brutal Cuban dictatorship. As hundreds of political prisoners, including minors, languish in Cuban jails, the Biden administration seeks ways to keep its oppressors in power. wrote Mario Diaz-Balart.
For her part, Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar said what the Biden administration was “making a historic mistake by going back to Obama’s failed Cuba policy.”
“Secretary Blinken promised me – and it was recorded – that they would apply the Helms-Burton Act and consult the Cuban community in exile before normalizing relations with the regime. Biden has officially failed on both promises,” Salazar said.
He also added that “by doing business with the Cuban dictatorship, a weak president is giving power to a failed regime that starves, oppresses and murders its people.”
Along the same lines, Congressman Carlos A. Gimenez pointed: “I have said it before and I say it now: you should never listen to what Biden says; you have to see what he is doing. His message to the Cuban exile community is clear ―Biden does not care and will not advance the cause of freedom and democracy in Cuba. Biden is a disgrace.”
Democratic Senator Bob Menéndez (New Jersey), although he did not sign the official statement cited above, said that while the Díaz-Canel regime continued “its ruthless persecution of innumerable Cubans for participating in last year’s pro-democracy demonstrations”, with the announcement of the new measures there was a risk “of sending the wrong message, to people wrong, at the wrong time and for all the wrong reasons.
“I am very disturbed to learn that the Biden Administration will authorize group trips to Cuba through visits that have always been equivalent to regular tourism. To be clear, those who still think that increased travel to Cuba will foster democracy on the island are brazenly denying the reality of the situation. For decades, the world has traveled to Cuba and nothing has changed,” he lamented.
Despite his criticism of the package of measures, Menéndez assured that he was pleased to see that the Biden administration will keep Cuba on the State Department’s Restricted List.
“As we have seen in Putin’s Russia, the Diaz-Canel regime is also using its power to perpetuate the rise of a new class of oligarchs with ties to the Cuban military, and the United States must take significant steps to advance the demilitarization of the Cuban economy,” he pointed out.
He also welcomed “the administration’s decision to restart the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program, a much-needed step to strengthen ties between Cuban families on the Island and in the United States.”
Lastly, Senator Marco Rubio he pointed that the Cuban regime had threatened Biden with mass migration and that he had “supporters” within the administration. “The result is that today we see the first steps towards Obama’s policies on Cuba,” he lamented.
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