Venezuela: Fiber-optic cable to Cuba is working
Posted on Thursday, 05.24.12
Venezuela: Fiber-optic cable to Cuba is working The Associated Press
CARACAS, Venezuela — An undersea fiber-optic cable that was laid last year between Venezuela and Cuba is working, a Venezuelan government official said Thursday.
The cable was rolled out starting in Venezuela and reached eastern Cuba in February 2011. But 10 months after the system was supposed to have gone online, Cuba's government has not recently mentioned the cable, and the Internet on the island remains the slowest in the Western Hemisphere. The link had been expected to promptly improve the speed of the Internet in Cuba.
Jorge Arreaza, Venezuela's science and technology minister, said that "a few months ago we signed all the remaining protocols, all the necessary security measures with the Cuban government."
"It's absolutely operational. It will depend on the Cuban government what it uses it for. Of course that's their sovereign matter, but we know that the undersea cable is in full operation," Arreaza told reporters.
The project was carried out last year by the company Alcatel-Lucent SA of France for the state telecommunication companies of Venezuela and Cuba. The cable stretches about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from Venezuela across the Caribbean Sea to Siboney in eastern Cuba. From Cuba, an extension of about 150 miles (240 kilometers) was also laid from Cuba to Jamaica.
Arreaza said officials are considering the possibility of another branch stretching to the island of Hispaniola, which is shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
He said Venezuela's telecommunications system benefits from the new link to Jamaica because it offers additional connections to other undersea cable systems running toward the United States and Europe.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/24/2816168/venezuela-fiber-optic-cable-to.html
Policía política impide reunión de Red de Comunicadores en cuarto aniversario
Policía política impide reunión de Red de Comunicadores en cuarto aniversario [25-05-2012] Lucas Garve Fundación por la Libertad de Expresión
(www.miscelaneasdecuba.net).- La represión contra la Red de Cubana de Comunicadores Comunitarios se efectuó esta vez por cumplirse el cuarto aniversario de la Red. Oficiales de la seguridad del Estado mantuvieron una turba de seguidores gubernamentales que impidió a los comunicadores el acceso a la sede de la Red en el apartamento de Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello sito en la calle Luís Estévez entre Cortina y Figueroa en el barrio de Santos Suárez, municipio 10 de octubre en La Habana.
Además, otra acción tomada en contra de los miembros de la Red es la de restringir las comunicaciones mediante servicio telefónico, lo que logran porque controlan la empresa estatal ETECSA que tiene el monopolio del servicio telefónico en Cuba.
En el presente mes solamente han suspendido el servicio durante los miércoles 16 y el pasado 23 junto a la suspensión de los servicios telefónicos. En los primeros cinco meses de este año, suman ya unos quince días sin servicio telefónico aunque se pague el servicio y la existencia de un contrato legal con la mencionada empresa. A pesar que el gobierno cubano insista que lucha contra la corrupción ejemplos como este desmienten lo que la propaganda oficial pregona.
http://www.miscelaneasdecuba.net/web/article.asp?artID=36071
Cuba se defiende de las denuncias de la ONU por torturas
Publicado el jueves, 05.24.12
Cuba se defiende de las denuncias de la ONU por torturas Juan O. Tamayo jtamayo@elnuevoherald.com
El gobierno cubano se defendió el miércoles de las denuncias de un panel de Naciones Unidas sobre la tortura, negando "todas y cada una" de las alegaciones de malos tratos, pero midiendo cuidadosamente sus palabras cuando se trató de otros presuntos abusos.
Cuba no tiene centros de detención ilegales, ni cárceles hacinadas, y no ha habido ni una sola muerte en la prisión de las que se puede culpar a las autoridades, dijo una delegación cubana ante la Comisión de Naciones Unidas contra la Tortura en una audiencia en Ginebra, Suiza.
Las negativas coincidieron con la publicación de un informe de la organización de derechos humanos Amnistía Internacional que acusó al gobierno de Raúl Castro de abusos masivos, incluyendo el arresto, el hostigamiento y la intimidación de cientos de disidentes pacíficos.
El Fiscal General Adjunto, Rafael Pino, encabezó la delegación que se presentó ante la comisión para responder a las difíciles preguntas que ésta planteó el martes acerca del cumplimiento de Cuba con la Convención contra la Tortura y Otros Tratos o Castigos Crueles, Inhumanos o Degradantes.
La delegación respondió pocas de las preguntas específicas de la comisión, según un informe de 3,400 palabras sobre la sesión del miércoles publicado en internet por el Servicio de Información de Naciones Unidas en Ginebra.
El informe, titulado La Comisión contra la Tortura escucha las respuestas de Cuba, había desaparecido de las páginas de internet del servicio en la noche del miércoles. Pino se había quejado de la presencia de cámaras durante la sesión del martes.
Copias del informe mostraron que los cubanos no dieron detalles específicos sobre la muerte de los disidentes Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Wilman Villar o Juan Wilfredo Soto, por ejemplo, y no mencionaron a las Damas de Blanco o la bloguera Yoani Sánchez.
En su lugar, montaron una amplia defensa del récord de derechos humanos en su país, y desestimaron algunas de las denuncias como obra del gobierno de Estados Unidos "y los mercenarios que trabajaban para él".
"Todas y cada una de las denuncias presentadas a la comisión sobre supuestas torturas o malos tratos, eran falsas", declaró la delegación. Y no hay hacinamiento en las cárceles del país, agregó, sin dar más detalles.
Los tribunales cubanos impusieron a 46 guardias de prisiones sanciones de uno a ocho años por abusos contra los reos, agregaron los cubanos. El informe señaló que un miembro de la comisión había comentado que la delegación no proporcionó detalles sobre ninguno de los abusos.
Ninguna negligencia o acción de los agentes del orden causó muertes en las prisiones, de acuerdo con la delegación. Hubo 113 muertes en las cárceles y celdas de hospitales en el 2010, y 89 en el 2011, en su mayoría resultado de enfermedades, peleas o accidentes.
Pero los cubanos le dieron la vuelta a otros presuntos abusos, incluidos los 2,400 arrestos a corto plazo de disidentes reportados en el 2011, y el uso en los tribunales cubanos de la vaga acusación de "peligrosidad predelictiva" contra los disidentes.
El concepto de "peligrosidad" es aplicado por "jueces independientes bajo las reglas del debido proceso, de acuerdo con pruebas suficientes", declararon, "y ciertamente no a causa de las creencias políticas de los individuos".
Lo que es más, no hay tal cosa como detenciones a corto plazo, generalmente utilizadas para prevenir o romper las actividades disidentes. La isla tiene sólo "detenciones adecuadamente registradas para un ciudadano o un grupo que quisiera alterar el orden público", argumentaron los cubanos.
Evitando cuidadosamente decir que Cuba no permite que el Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja inspeccione las prisiones, la delegación señaló que La Habana tiene buenas relaciones con este organismo y podría invitarlo a visitar la isla cuando fuera necesario.
El informe también señaló que Cuba invitó al máximo funcionario de Naciones Unidas a cargo del tema de la tortura en el 2009, pero no le permitió entrar debido a problemas de programación. Cuba está considerando una nueva solicitud para una visita, a pesar de que "no tenía fe en la fuente de información utilizada por el comité".
La presentación de la delegación cubana fue cuestionada casi punto por punto por el informe de Amnistía Internacional sobre la isla, hecho público el miércoles como parte del informe anual sobre el estado de los derechos humanos en todo el mundo.
Amnistía Internacional señaló que en el 2011 Cuba puso en libertad al último de los 75 disidentes pacíficos encarcelados durante una feroz represión en el año 2003, así como a cerca de 62 presos políticos como parte de un acuerdo con la Iglesia Católica.
Pero la mayoría de los liberados fueron obligados a exiliarse, agregó, y el gobierno siguió negando a los cubanos el derecho a la libertad de expresión y asociación, y sigue controlando todos los medios de información.
http://www.elnuevoherald.com/2012/05/24/v-fullstory/1210734/cuba-se-defiende-de-denuncias.html
Preocupa incidencia de VIH en universidad élite
Preocupa incidencia de VIH en universidad élite Miércoles, Mayo 23, 2012 | Por Yaremis Flores
LA HABANA, Cuba, 23 de mayo (Yaremis Flores, www.cubanet.org) – El número de casos de estudiantes infectados con el virus del sida y otras enfermedades de transmisión sexual es motivo de preocupación en la Universidad de Ciencias Informáticas (UCI), ubicada al oeste de la capital habanera, según declaró una doctora del policlínico Ernesto Che Guevara, situado en ese centro docente.
Según la facultativa, que pidió el anonimato por razones de seguridad, dijo que hasta la fecha se han detectado treinta y seis casos de contagios con el VIH, el virus del sida. También indicó que el número de casos por otras Infecciones de Trasmisión Sexual (ITS), como gonorrea y sífilis, han aumentado "debido a las relaciones sexuales desprotegidas y promiscuas entre los alumnos".
La UCI acoge a más de 4 mil estudiantes, entre las edades de 17 y 25 años Fundado en 2002 por decisión del ex gobernante cubano Fidel Castro, la institución ha sido escenario de diversos escándalos por la difusión de videos pornográficos, filmados entre los estudiantes.
Bárbara, enfermera de la UCI, desconocía la existencia de seropositivos en su área de atención. Grande fue su sorpresa al escuchar la confesión de un alumno de cuarto año de la carrera, que desde el segundo curso fue diagnosticado con el VIH. El interno le comentó que, por su padecimiento, tiene alimentación especial en el "comedor de la dieta" de la facultad.
"Todo el personal médico debe conocer quiénes son los contagiados con el virus, para extremar las medidas de precaución. En ocasiones no tenemos ni guantes ni otros materiales antisépticos para atender a los pacientes", dijo preocupada la enfermera.
Creada como parte de la "Batalla de ideas", la Universidad de las Ciencias Informáticas (UCI) es un centro de estudios universitarios en el municipio habanero de Boyeros impulsado por el gobierno cubano para formar "ciberpolicías" que espíen y censuren las comunicaciones electrónicas, sobre todo, las conexiones de internet en la isla.
En ese mismo lugar estaba emplazada desde 1964 la base de radares soviéticos, Centro de Exploración y Escucha Radioelectrónicos, popularmente llamado Base Lourdes, que le permitía a Moscú espiar las radiocomunicaciones de Estados Unidos.
En febrero de 2008 representantes estudiantiles de la UCI sostuvieron una reunión con el presidente de la Asamblea Nacional de Cuba, Ricardo Alarcón, donde el funcionario salió muy mal parado tras los cuestionamientos que se le hicieran, incluyendo los de Eliecer Ávila, castigado más tarde por sus planteamientos en el encuentro.
http://www.cubanet.org/noticias/preocupa-incidencia-de-casos-de-vih-en-universidad-elite/
Alan Gross vs. the Cuban Five?
Alan Gross vs. the Cuban Five? May 23, 2012 – Ron Kampeas, Jewish Telegraphic Agency Washington
Advocates for Alan Gross, who is serving prison time in Cuba, say that talk of a trade for five Cuban spies is a non-starter. But they acknowledge hopes that the Obama administration will consider lower-level concessions in exchange for Cuban considerations for the jailed American. Gross with his wife, Judy, at the Western Wall in the spring of 2005 Photo courtesy of the Gross family
Insiders say that Gross' advocates want the U.S. government to consider, among other things, more family visits for the "Cuban Five," agents who were arrested in 1998 and convicted in 2001 on espionage-related charges, and the permanent return home for the one among them who is now out of jail and serving probation.
The Cuban government recently came closer than ever to making explicit that the fate of the Cuban Five factors into its considerations of whether to release Gross, the State Department contractor who was convicted on charges stemming from his efforts to connect Cuba's small Jewish community to the Internet.
Gross, who is Jewish and from Potomoc, Md., was arrested in 2009 and sentenced last year to 15 years.
"We have made clear to the U.S. government that we are ready to have a negotiation in order to try and find a solution, a humanitarian solution to Mr. Gross' case on a reciprocal basis," Josefina Vidal, the top official in the Cuban Foreign Ministry handling North America, said in a May 10 interview on CNN.
Vidal would not offer specifics, but prompted by interviewer Wolf Blitzer, she said the Cuban Five were a concern. "Cuba has legitimate concerns, humanitarian concerns related to the situation of the Cuban Five," she said.
The State Department immediately rejected such reciprocity. "There is no equivalence between these situations," Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, said in remarks to the media the day after the interview. "On the one hand, you have convicted spies in the United States, and on the other hand, you have an assistance worker who should never have been locked up in the first place. So we are not contemplating any release of the Cuban Five, and we are not contemplating any trade.
"The continuing imprisonment of Alan Gross is deplorable, it is wrong, and it's an affront to human decency. And the Cuban government needs to do the right thing," she said.
On background, a source apprised of the dealings among Gross' advocates, the U.S. government and the Cubans says that Gross' advocates are willing to press for visits by the wives of two of the Cuban Five, Rene Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernandez. The United States has refused visas multiple times for the women, and Amnesty International has taken up their cause.
Another possible "give," according to the source: a permanent return to Cuba for Gonzalez, who is out of jail and serving probation in the Miami area. It's not clear what the Cubans would offer in return for such concessions, but it is likely they would draw protests from the Cuban-American community, including among stalwart pro-Israel lawmakers, such as Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the powerful chairwoman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, who has rejected any leniency for the Cuban Five.
Ronald Halber, who heads the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and has directed much of the national activism on Gross' behalf, said he understands the "intensity" of the Cuban-American community's response, but said that Obama also should take into account the national interest.
"I do not believe that U.S. policy to Cuba can be held hostage by the Cuban community in Miami," he said. "It's American national interests that are at stake. They should be part of the conversation, I understand the intensity, although this intensity is more among the older generation, not the younger generation. Our government has to do what is in our interests."
Gross' family and his advocates in the organized Jewish community emphasize their agreement with Nuland's premise: There is no equivalency between a contractor installing and training others in the use of communications equipment and five spies believed to be instrumental in the 1996 shooting of two small aircraft leafleting Cuba with pro-democracy messages, resulting in the deaths of four Cuban-American activists.
Three of the five were sentenced to life and one to 19 years. Gonzalez, sentenced to 15 years, was released last year on a three-year probation.
"We're not in a position to negotiate that and I don't think the U.S. government is inclined to do so," said Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the community's foreign policy umbrella.
Instead, he said, "we are continuing to press the case in various fora directly and indirectly."
That included the Presidents Conference's recent requests that Pope Benedict XVI raise Gross' plight during his March trip to Cuba.
Gross, who is held in a medical facility, has been visited by family, friends and Jewish leaders. He is allowed weekly calls to the United States.
Most recently he spoke with leaders of the JCRC of Greater Washington to thank them for leading U.S. advocacy on his behalf.
Gross, his family and his advocates want him to make a two-week visit to his 90-year-old mother, who is dying of cancer in Texas, after which he has pledged he will return to Cuba.
His family had voiced support for allowing Gonzalez to return home for two weeks to visit his brother. Gonzalez made the visit in March and has since returned.
Vidal said the two concessions were not equivalent.
"The cases of Mr. Gross and Mr. Rene Gonzalez, I have to tell you, are different," she told CNN. "First, Mr. Rene Gonzalez, who is one of the Cuban Five, he served completely his term until the last day. Rene Gonzalez was not detained and was not imprisoned for attempting against U.S. national security."
Those are the charges against Gross; Cuba says the Cuban Five were guilty only of spying on groups it considers as extremist and not on the U.S. government.
Cuba maintains that Gross' activity on behalf of the Jewish community was a cover for installing sophisticated communications equipment. Gross has said the equipment is freely available in U.S. electronic goods outlets and online.
Halber of the Washington JCRC noted a new openness to Cuba under the Obama administration, which has facilitated travel between the two countries. President Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela, is attending a conference this week in San Francisco.
Halber said the primary fault lies with the Cuban government for attempting to leverage Gross' freedom to secure concessions for the Cuban Five.
"He is a man who is being used as a hostage, who is being used as a pawn," Halber said. "The Cubans are using a man as a bargaining chip to get back five correctly convicted folks who committed crimes on U.S. soil."
http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/25921/Alan_Gross_vs_the_Cuban_Five/
Cuba tells the U.N. it does not torture or abuse human rights
Posted on Wednesday, 05.23.12
Cuba tells the U.N. it does not torture or abuse human rights
Cuban officials told a U.N. panel on torture that all complaints of mistreatment were false By Juan O. Tamayo jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com
The Cuban government put up a stout defense before a U.N. panel on torture Wednesday, denying "each and every" complaint of mistreatment but delicately parsing its words when it came to other alleged abuses.
Cuba has no illegal detention centers and no prison overcrowding, and not one prison death can be blamed on authorities, a Cuban delegation told the U.N. Committee Against Torture at a hearing in Geneva, Switzerland.
The denials coincided with the release of a report by human rights organization Amnesty International that accused Cuba's government of massive abuses, including arresting, harassing and intimidating hundreds of peaceful dissidents.
Deputy Attorney General Rafael Pino led the delegation that appeared before the panel to answer tough questions it posed Tuesday on Cuba's compliance with the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
The Cubans answered few of the committee's specific questions, according to a report on Wednesday's session posted on the Internet by the U.N. Information Service in Geneva. The report, "Committee Against Torture hears replies of Cuba," had disappeared from the service's web pages by Wednesday evening.
Copies of the report showed the Cubans provided no specific details on the deaths of dissidents Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Wilman Villar or Juan Wilfredo Soto, for instance, and did not mention the Ladies in White or blogger Yoani Sánchez.
Instead, they mounted a broad defense of Cuba's human rights record and dismissed some complaints as the work of the U.S. government "and the mercenaries who worked for it."
"Each and every complaint brought to the committee on supposed torture or mistreatment was false," the delegation said. And there's no overcrowding in the country's prisons, it said.
The Cubans said courts sentenced 46 law enforcement agents to one to eight years over prison abuses.
Neither neglect nor actions by law enforcement officials caused any prison deaths, according to the delegation. There were 113 deaths in prisons and hospital lockups in 2010 and 89 in 2011 — mostly the result of illnesses, fights or accidents.
The Amnesty International report noted that in 2011 Cuba released the last of the 75 peaceful dissidents jailed in a 2003 crackdown, and 62 other political prisoners as part of an agreement with the Catholic Church. But the majority freed were forced to go into exile, it said, and the government continued to deny Cubans the right to free expression and association and to control all the mass media.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/23/2814861/cuba-tells-the-un-it-does-not.html
Capturados los dos cubanos que se fugaron de un centro de detención de Islas Caimán
Emigración
Capturados los dos cubanos que se fugaron de un centro de detención de Islas Caimán DDC Madrid 23-05-2012 – 4:29 pm.
Dos cubanos que escaparon el sábado de un centro de detención de Gran Caimán, Islas Caimán, fueron capturados, informó el sitio en internet Cay Compass.
Fuentes del Departamento de Inmigración de George Town dijeron que los emigrantes están nuevamente bajo custodia y a la espera de ser repatriados a Cuba, indicó la publicación.
Los fugados —identificados como Ángel Manuel Ramos Quiala, de 40 años de edad, y Yoandris Lahera Álvarez, de 32 años— forman parte de un grupo de 28 cubanos (27 hombres y una mujer) que arribó a la isla de Caiman Brac el pasado 18 de abril, después de que su embarcación sufriera averías y se quedara sin combustible.
The Brookings Institution
The Brookings Institution Rafael León Rodríguez, Translator: Unstated
The press and official propaganda organ of the Cuban government, Granma, published a report dated May 18 in Washington, on a lecture given by the City of Havana historian, Eusebio Leal Spengler, at The Brookings Institution think tank in the U.S. Capital. It dealt with the project of restoring the historic center of Havana, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. The note also makes reference to the comments of the noted intellectual with regards to the update of the Cuban economic model, which he described as irreversible, and added as a declaration of faith his plans for the country, and I quote, "I am not here by accident, but looking and working in the direction that I consider correct, the salvation of our national rights and our ancestral worship of our sovereignty, the establishment of normal relations between the United States and Cuba."
In April of 2009 The Brookings Institutions released a document titled "Report of the Brookings Project 'U.S. Policy toward a Cuba in Transition.'" This study, undertaken by a large group of American, Cuban-American and Latin American advisers, proposes a kind of road map in three stages — the short, medium and long term — to solve the differences between Cuba and the United States. Under the title "Cuba: A New Policy of Critical and Constructive Engagement," the study was intended as a foreign policy tool for the new President Obama, whom they assume, given his election campaign speeches, to be interested in changing the conflicted relations between the two countries.
It would be interesting were Mr. Eusebio Leal Spengler, who certainly knows of this study from The Brookings Institution, and enjoys the privilege of access to governmental center of power on the island, to promote the publication of this project for Cuba, on his return. In this way, Cuban citizens would have the opportunity to learn about a topic of interest to them, which directly affects them and which they are entitled to know about. It's clear that the declaration of the speaker to the Associated Press was not delivered on his own account. These references are associated, among others, with the speeches made by the co-chair of the Cuba Study Group, Mr. Carlos Saladrigas, in one of his recent visits to our country. Mr. Saladrigas served as an adviser to the Brookings Cuba project and was among the financial donors for the work.
If, as Mr. Leal said, the updating the so-called economic model is irreversible and this is nothing other than the recovery of a share of the right to work for oneself, and small private property rights we have enjoyed for fifty years, the right of all citizens to participate in the solution of the problem of Cuba, beginning, as well, with reclaiming universal information: free access to the media and the Internet. Above all, it is through this universal right that we begin to establish normal relations, not only with the United States but with the world.
22 May 2012
Visa for Castro’s niece turns into political tempest in Florida
Posted on Tuesday, 05.22.12
Visa for Castro's niece turns into political tempest in Florida By ERIKA BOLSTAD AND MARC CAPUTO McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Florida's top congressional Democrats broke with President Barack Obama on Tuesday over his administration's decision to issue Fidel Castro's niece a visa to attend a conference this week in San Francisco.
The opposition of Sen. Bill Nelson and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz came just hours after Republicans had blasted away at the visa decision – while failing to acknowledge that Republican President George W. Bush's administration had allowed Mariela Castro to visit the United States three times a decade ago.
The fact that Republicans had remained silent over Bush's decision while criticizing Obama gave Wasserman Schultz a measure of political cover in breaking with Obama.
"The Bush Administration set a bad precedent by granting Mariela Castro a waiver in 2001 and 2002 as I believe that such visa requests should not be accepted because of the ongoing human rights abuses in Cuba," she said in a written statement to The Miami Herald. "While I respect my colleagues, it's important to note they did not criticize President George W. Bush for granting Ms. Castro a waiver in 2002. Politics has no place when we are standing up for human rights."
Nelson was more terse and more concerned with the plight of a jailed American.
"Allowing Raul's daughter to come to the U.S. when the regime still holds Alan Gross makes no sense," said Nelson, who faces a tough re-election campaign this fall.
Mariela Castro, a noted gay-rights activist who heads a sex-education center in Cuba, is the daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro. She is scheduled to lead a panel on sexual diversity at the Latin American Studies Association conference in San Francisco this week. She is among more than 70 Cubans who applied for visas for the event; the State Department has denied about a half dozen of the requests.
Both Wasserman Schultz and Nelson had remained quiet on the visa controversy until asked this week by The Herald.
Meanwhile, the Florida Democratic Party has been vigorously defending the Obama administration's visa decision since last week. That's when Cuban-American Republicans from Miami, including Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart and David Rivera, began criticizing the administration's move.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a vice-presidential short-lister for Republican Mitt Romney., said it was "shameful" to grant the visa. He described the Cuban president's daughter as "an arm of his regime" who's coming to the United States to "spread their anti-American propaganda."
Romney's presidential campaign took advantage of the issue to slam Obama. "The United States should be standing up for freedom, not coddling the privileged children of communist dictators," Romney's policy director, Lanhee Chen, said late last week.
On Tuesday, Republicans blasted out news releases all but calling Obama a communist. "Obama Lays Welcome Mat for Communist at U.S. Front Door" said one news release from the Hispanic Leadership Network. "Obama Rolling out the Red Carpet for the Castro Family," said one from the Republican National Committee.
The political tempest comes at a time when the Republican Party is attacking Obama's record at every turn to excite a crucial conservative voting bloc for Romney in Florida: Cuban-Americans, who overwhelmingly vote Republican.
In defending Obama, other Florida Democrats lashed out at Republicans for being hypocritical.
"Where was their criticism then?" said Freddy Balsera, an Obama supporter from Miami, speaking on behalf of the Florida Democratic Party. "Nowhere, because ultimately this is all about politics for them."
Balsera called on Republicans to "stop playing with people's emotions when it comes to Cuba."
The Hispanic Leadership Network, partly led by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, says there's a huge difference between the Bush-era visits and the most recent visa approvals by Obama. The human rights situation in Cuba has deteriorated since Castro's initial visit, said its director, Jennifer Korn. That includes Gross' detention.
Also, Mariela Castro, at the time of her initial visit, was the niece of the then-president, Fidel Castro. Now, she's the daughter of the Cuban president, Korn said.
"The situations are not the least bit similar as the human rights situation has deteriorated," she said. "An American citizen is locked up in a Cuban jail now for trying to provide Internet access to Cubans, and in the last few months since Pope Benedict's visit, Cubans have lived under even more fear as they cope with a large roundup of dissidents and activists."
By day's end, the conservatives had unexpected ideological allies in Nelson and Wasserman Schultz, who has long straddled the dual worlds of being a partisan Democrat and a Cuba hardliner.
After she was first picked by Obama to become DNC chair, a May 2011 Miami Herald story noted that the two differ over Cuba.
"It's not going to be something that creates any daylight between the president and myself," she said at the time.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/22/2812632/visa-for-castros-niece-turns-into.html
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