FREEDOM LAW: GREAT ATTRIBUTE OF CONSCIENCE OF HUMANITY Print

FREEDOM LAW: GREAT ATTRIBUTE OF CONSCIENCE OF HUMANITY

Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet

President of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights

Presidential Medal of Freedom

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Senator Jesse Helms introduced the Law of Liberty and Democratic Solidarity with Cuba for approval by the United States Senate in the final days of 1995. To support their important proposal showed his colleagues a list with the signatures of several dissidents living in Cuba. I was honored to be among the pro-democracy activists who risked their lives to find political and moral support and a viable solution for the freedom of the Cuban people.

He was also honorable and patriotic for me to provide testimony a few days directly to the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Subcommittee on Africa, General Health, and Human Rights of the House of Representatives of the United States. I was glad to talk to congressmen intellectual and moral stature of Chris Smith, David Rivera, Albio Sires, and Mrs. Smith. It was also exciting to listen to my countryman and brother cause Hernández, as well as knowing the testimony in favor of the prisoners of the communist regime by that great friend of freedom of Cuba who is the representative Dan Burton.

Despite several interruptions by phone calls cuts could explain our need for global solidarity and boost with refreshing blast measures leading to permanent changes designed to achieve democracy and freedom for all Cubans. To expose the importance of the Law of Freedom and its application without exception is a fitting tribute to the spirit of discretion and security of people not only in Cuba but throughout the world.

From the moment I gave my first support for this law knew it would be a precedent and an essential barrier to prevent confiscation of property of a political and / or without compensation by any government in the world. This reaffirmation of support from the moral positions, political, ideological, economic contained in the presentations of numerous academic and scientists of international renown.

ACADEMIC THOUGHTS

Jaime Suchlicki, Professor of History and Director of the Institute of Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, told the Senate Finance Committee of the United States that lifting the trade embargo and travel ban to Cuba not report benefits of transition to democracy to the Cuban people. The title of his testimony was: "The impact of lifting the embargo and travel ban to Cuba." It was featured on December 11, 2007. Only I will refer to his conclusions and I invite you to read it for its great importance.

"The embargo is not the cause of Cuba's economic misery. What suffocates the Cuban economy is a failed economic system similar to what existed in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and lack of productivity and incentives. "

"Tourism will not take American democracy to Cuba. During the past decade hundreds of thousands American tourists, Canadians and Europeans have visited the island, but Cuba today is not democratic but totalitarian in any case because the state machinery and its control have been strengthened by the influx of tourist dollars. "

"Limited economic reforms took effect in Cuba in the early 1990's. Castro reforms ceased once the economy began to stabilize in 1996 as a result of tourism, foreign investments and remittances of money from Cuban exiles. "

"The embargo and travel ban should remain in negotiating with a future government in the island. Deleting not received any significant concessions in return, the U.S. will be without any influence on events in Cuba. "

"They should keep the embargo and travel ban on Cuba until there is a regime willing to grant concessions irreversible human rights, democratization and market economy. Castro brothers give concessions unilaterally without any real changes on the island is a gift that they do not deserve or have earned. "

SCIENTIFIC THINKING

Gene Sharp, Ph.D. in political science and director of the Albert Einstein Institute in the United States, has written many books on civil disobedience or nonviolent civic struggle. This intellectual scientific icon nonviolent mass political defiance. Those who want to break up a tyranny with nonviolent methods should study his book "From Dictatorship to Democracy." I am sure that, through its domain and implementation, the Cuban people can open up paths of freedom in the course of their actions not possible by any other method.

Nonviolent struggle is a technique that uses varied and complex political weapons, economic, social and psychological, applied by the people and institutions of society. Governments alone can govern when they have cooperation, submission and obedience of the population and other institutions of society. This in direct terms, there can be no government without consent of the governed. Therefore, the political challenge is the ideal instrument for denying access to the scheme to these sources of power.

Nonviolence requires on the one hand, citizens who have lost their fear and gained greater control over itself. This strengthens their effectiveness against the government and its brutal repression. This loss of fear, or control over himself, is a key element to destroy the power that dictators have on the general population. Keeping non-violent discipline against violent opponents facilitates the work of the four mechanisms of change in nonviolent struggle (conversion, accommodation, nonviolent coercion and disintegration).

The mass noncooperation and defiance can change the political or social situation, so that dictators lose the ability to control the economic, social and political aspects of government and society. Meanwhile, Sharp, lists more than two hundred non-violent methods of struggle reflected in three broad categories:

Method of Protest and Persuasion (54).

Method of Non-Cooperation (social, 16; economic, 49, not political cooperation, 38).

Nonviolent intervention method (how psychological, social, economic and political: 41).

To increase the chances of success, resistance leaders will need to formulate a comprehensive action plan to strengthen the capacity of people suffering, weaken the dictatorship, then destroy, and eventually build a true democracy.

Moreover, the Law of Liberty and Democratic Solidarity with Cuba and Helms-Burton is a paradigm of action for the American people with the Cubans. This law takes the non-economic cooperation on the part of governments that has several sub classifications: domestic embargo, blacklist merchants, vendors Embargo international buyers however, international trade embargo.

Today there are favorable conditions for implementing the political cooperation not communist tyranny in Cuba such as denying the invitation to the Conference of the Americas until they respect the basic freedoms of its people. The dictatorial regime of Castro was in total collapse that led to the paralysis of the country to disappear their economic and political supporters of the European communist camp in the early nineties.

Given this irreversible crisis currencies were provided by capitalist countries that saved the Castro regime and its failure lasted for two decades. Today, despite Chavez's Venezuela is the main financial supporter along with China and various nations of the Western world, the Cuban economy is in stagnation and the edge with possible collapse will be reflected in all spheres of social life .

The supporters of the dictatorship of Havana should think more about the Cuban people and imitate the most successful man among entrepreneurs in real estate in the world, Donald Trump. Fidel Castro invited him to invest with extreme facility unseen elsewhere in the world that violated the fundamental right of ordinary citizens. Trump rejection of the privileged business for not exploiting the misery of the Cuban and further enrich the Castro. These are the real business people that uplift human life.

This is the time to take the Reaganites postulates applied to the Soviet Union. An opportunity to compete in freedoms to overcome this horrible nightmare of the Castro dictatorship.

In the same way for decades there are people who have stood by the Cuban in condemning his government by adhering to the embargo at the United Nations. The U.S. and Israel are the two nations that advocate for freedom and democracy in Cuba. All free nations should emulate these examples.

These two countries make me recall the famous nonviolent activist Mahatma Gandhi: "In a matter of conscience, no place for the majority rule."