http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/11/2009111916176494213.html
Thursday, November 19, 2009
21:15 Mecca time, 18:15 GMT
US debates lifting Cuba travel ban
Obama said earlier this year that he wanted to "recast"
relations with the island nation [AFP]
The United States Congress is debating a proposal to lift the travel ban
to Cuba, almost half a century after the US isolated itself from the communist
country.
Richard Lugar, a Republican senator, and Howard Berman, a Democratic
senator, said in a statement on Thursday: "It's time for us to scrap this
anachronistic ban, imposed during one of the chilliest periods of the Cold War."
Cuba is the only country to which the US has implemented a travel ban.
Lugar, the most senior Republican on the senate foreign relations
committee, and Berman, who chairs the house foreign affairs committee, said
that legislation to overturn the ban has been introduced in both chambers of
the US Congress.
The senators have charged that the travel ban, imposed in the aftermath
of the 1959 Cuban revolution that swept Fidel Castro to power, had hurt US
efforts to promote democratic reforms in the Socialist-run island.
Negative effect
They said the travel ban "has left Washington an isolated bystander,
watching events on the island unfold at a distance".
"Isolation from outside visitors only strengthens the Castro regime,"
they added.
Ending the restrictions would allow US citizens, "who serve as
ambassadors for the democratic values we hold dear," visit the island and would
"help break Havana's choke hold" on information, they said.
Raul Castro has been accused of employing repressive measures
against critics [AFP]
Tom Ackerman, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Washington DC said: " This is
the opening shot by the proponents of ending the ban. They think this is the
best chance they've had in years to drop the ban on all Americans travelling to
Cuba.
Juan Jacomino, a Cuban journalist in Havana, told Al Jazeera: "The
embargo in general needs to be changed. Cubans recognise this as a failed
policy. It's un-American to keep a policy in place that doesn't work.
"Specifically, the travel ban is one of the absurdities of the policy. We
are only 90 miles away and we have more than a million Cubans in the US.
"Americans are allowed to go to Libya, North Korea ... anywhere in the
world, and not to Cuba. There is no animosity for Americans, despite nearly
fifty years of hostility between the governments."
Cuban repression
Meanwhile, a rights group has said that conditions in Cuba under
President Raul Castro are much the same, if not worse, than when Fidel was
president.
Human Rights Watch said in a report issued on Wednesday that Raul Castro
has kept the system his brother Fidel used to repress critics, refusing to free
scores of people imprisoned years ago and jailing others for "dangerousness".
Fidel Castro temporarily ceded power to his younger brother Raul in July,
2006, and formally stepped aside as president last year because of illness.
Raul Castro has relied in particular on a Cuban law that lets the state
imprison people even before they commit a crime, Human Rights Watch said.
Barack Obama, the US president, has said that any further easing of
restrictions on Cuba would be tied to Cuban reciprocation by releasing
poliltical prisoners, allowing US telecommunications companies to operate on
the island and by dropping taxes on cash remittances to Cubans.
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