OPINION:
Two weeks ago, 114 Democratic Congressional representatives signed a letter to President Biden asking his administration to reverse sanctions against Cuba’s communist regime. Although many Democrats cling to former President Barack Obama’s Cuba thaw policies by opposing such sanctions, not all of them have a history with Cuba’s leaders like the letter’s four leading signatories — U.S. Reps. Barbara Lee, Bobby Rush, James McGovern and Gregory Meeks.
All four of these members of Congress have personally visited Cuba and met with its high-ranking leaders as part of an ongoing effort to build a bridge between the U.S. and its brutal communist military dictatorship. Three of them have offered praise to Castro regime officials.
Ms. Lee, who, as early as of 2018, boasted on her congressional website she had visited Cuba more than two dozen times in the past four decades, also exchanged public praise with deceased dictator Fidel Castro since she first visited the island in 1977. In a 2009 memo, “Reflections by Comrade Fidel,” Castro said there was “unbeatable proof” of Ms. Lee’s “moral courage,” for casting “the sole vote against Bush’s genocidal war in Iraq.” In 1984, former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick criticized her as someone who “always blames America first.”
In 2016, when Castro died, Ms. Lee offered her condolences, saying, “We need to stop and pause and mourn his loss,” adding, “I was very sad for the Cuban people. He led a revolution that led social improvements for his people.” Ms. Lee’s signatory allies, Reps. Gregory Meeks, Bobby Rush and James McGovern have also visited Cuba and met with high-ranking communist officials.
Mr. Rush, who personally met both Castro brothers with Ms. Lee in 2009, compared America to the Cuban dictatorship, “I’m a person who can bear witness to significant human rights violations right here in America. In my own state, there is strong, convincing evidence that there were people on death row who were tortured.” After meeting with Castro, he said, “It was almost like listening to an old friend.”
Mr. McGovern has made similar comparisons. In 2016, was quoted by the Worcester Sun as saying, “They all complain about the lack of democracy in Cuba. I’m concerned about the lack of democracy in Congress.”
A Dec. 14 press release published by the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, which Mr. Meeks chairs, says the four representatives led a call for “human rights and humanitarian aid in Cuba,” yet the letter says nothing of the hundreds of democracy activists — including ailing minors between the ages of 14-17 — languishing in cells as political prisoners from the July 11 uprising that called for regime change. Mr. Meeks accompanied Mr. Obama to Cuba in 2016 when he met with former President Raul Castro.
The American people are no stranger to Democrats’ call to end sanctions against Cuba’s communist military dictatorship. However, few of them are probably aware of the personal interaction those leading the charge have developed with the regime’s leadership, their bizarre criticism of America and their apparent sympathy for the Castro regime. This raises serious questions about their judgment and objectivity.
Cuba is a communist military dictatorship that has engaged in the oppression and torture of its people. Contrary to these Democrats’ false assertions, the Cuban people don’t want the U.S. to engage with their oppressors. They have repeatedly made it clear — never more so than now, as evidenced by the July 11 uprising in which cries for freedom were recorded — they want complete eradication of the communist regime.
The Democratic legislators pushing for the warming of relations with Cuba’s dictatorship are not helping the Cuban people reach their goal of flourishing under democracy. They are encouraging their oppressors’ determination to remain in power and continue what is nothing short of a legacy of cruelty.
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