The “Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act of 2003,” introduced today by Senators Max Baucus, Byron Dorgan and Michael Enzi, would lift travel restrictions that have been a key component of the United States’ forty-year-old policy of isolation and embargo toward Cuba.
The embargo’s travel ban, which contains narrow exceptions for journalists, people with relatives in Cuba, and certain other groups, has not proved to be an effective tool for promoting human rights in Cuba.
“The Cuba travel embargo has been in place for four decades and it hasn't done a bit of good,” said José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch. “Allowing Americans to travel freely to Cuba would be much more helpful in encouraging reform."
President Jimmy Carter, when he visited Cuba in May 2002, spoke openly about human rights and the need for democratization.
"Visitors may often be in a position to add new perspectives to the public debate in Cuba’s relatively closed society," Vivanco said.
Human rights conditions in Cuba have recently deteriorated. Over the past month and a half, the Cuban government has carried out a full-scale offensive against nonviolent dissidents, independent journalists, human rights advocates, independent librarians and others brave enough to challenge the government’s monopoly on truth.
Seventy-five people were convicted of violating laws that criminalize a broad range of nonviolent statements of opinion, infringing fundamental rights of free expression. Their sentences range from 6 to 28 years of imprisonment, with an average sentence of more than 19 years.
“When it comes to promoting reform in Cuba, the United States has undermined its own influence by pursuing a policy condemned by the rest of the world,” said Vivanco. “In its efforts to isolate Fidel Castro, it has only isolated itself.”
