Ban on travel to Cuba creates ‘enforcement and public relations dilemma’

[Mika]

Ban on travel to Cuba creates ‘enforcement and public relations dilemma’

What if travel to Cuba is banned, but people exercise their rights and go there anyway? “An enforcement and public relations dilemma” is created!

So says a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, “GAO-08-80 Cuba Embargo,” released in November 2007. Buried on page 56 of the 91-page document, the U.S. agencies responsible for enforcing the tightened travel restrictions on U.S. residents admit they are failing. Their cruel measures have turned into their opposite and the solidarity movement is winning!

A section titled “Divided U.S. Public Opinion Presents Enforcement Challenges” reports that, “Lack of public support for the embargo, coupled with the controversial nature of recent rule changes, has contributed to widespread, small-scale violations.”

Cuban-Americans in particular are outraged by new rules that further divide families, allowing visits to Cuba only once every three years, defining and limiting who is considered a family member and restricting financial remittances and baggage weight when travel is allowed.

Academics, whose educational programs and research with their counterparts in Cuba are now blocked; religious organizations like the National Council of Churches, whose license to travel was canceled; and the persistent annual travel challenges that are publicly traveling to and from Cuba contribute to that “enforcement and public relations dilemma.”

U.S. representatives Barbara Lee and Charles Rangel asked the GAO to study government rule changes from 2001 to 2005 and the impact on exports, travel, cash transfers and gifts to Cuba; U.S. agencies’ activities and workloads related to the enforcement; and factors affecting the enforcement of the blockade of Cuba.

The report documents the history of the U.S. blockade from 1960 to 2007. It proves the sanctions and restrictions on Cuba are unprecedented and are applied only to Cuba and not to any other country.

Significantly, the report shows that as the sanctions tightened, international support for Cuba grew. In 1992, 59 countries voted in the United Nations against the U.S. blockade, but by 2007 that number had increased to 184. Throughout all those years no more than three other countries voted with the U.S., the only consistent U.S. ally against Cuba being Israel.

Although mentioning the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the 1978 bombing of the Cuban Mission to the U.N. in New York and the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., the report is otherwise silent on the U.S.-backed and funded war of terror against the socialist government of Cuba and the Cuban people. This has included hotel bombings, assassination attempts, biological warfare and the first midair bombing of a civilian aircraft, Cubana 455, killing 73 innocent civilians in 1976.

The U.S. government refused to stop these violations of international law organized from bases in Florida, necessitating five dedicated Cuban men to observe and give early warning of attacks planned in Florida against their homeland. These men, known as the Cuban Five, are unjustly imprisoned in the U.S. while the CIA agent who planned the bombing of Cubana 455, Luis Posada Carriles, walks free in Miami today.

The enforcement and public relations dilemma faced by the U.S. Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and other U.S. government agencies is a victory for Cuba and all the world’s peoples in a battle of ideas between a socialist economic system that provides doctors to the world, and a capitalist one that sends occupation armies and bombs around the world and turns every human need and want into a commodity for sale and profit.

This victory is being won by the brigadistas and caravanistas who travel every year to Cuba, carrying computers or medical supplies across the border from Texas into Mexico and returning past U.S. government agents at the Mexican and Canadian borders, openly declaring their travel to Cuba. It is won by every person who received a letter from OFAC and did not negotiate a settlement, but requested a public hearing instead.

The local demonstrations, meetings, film showings, resolutions, letters to the editor and efforts to free the Cuban Five and expose the double standard that protects Posada Carriles—every step that breaks not only the travel ban but the media blockade with facts about Cuba helps to expand that “dilemma.”

The 2008 travel challenges will return from Cuba on July 14. Go to www.pastorsforpeace.org for more information on the caravans. For the Venceremos Brigade, e-mail [email protected] or call 212-560-4360. For the Labor Exchange, e-mail [email protected].

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Articles copyright 1995-2008 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

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[Judi Lynn]

1. It's never been easy for these great people to get the useful materials all the way to Cuba,

calling attention to the brutal embargo, taking computers, medical equipment, bicycles, cars, buses, as you mentioned, etc. across the north and south borders, and getting the materials seized by U.S. government officials.

They call out to Americans to wake up and recognize what the embargo means, and to end it, and they travel without permission in order to highlight the fact they should not need government permission to conduct humanitarian outreach programs to Cuba.

The government's agents did this to them during Clinton's administration long before _Bush ever got really rotten toward them.



US Homeland Security agents confiscating donations
from the caravan at the border on July 21. Pastors
for Peace is organizing an international campaign
to recover and deliver these donations.

Summer 2005 - 16th Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba
Press releases

PASTORS FOR PEACE CAMPAIGN ARRIVES IN WASHINGTON TO WIN RELEASE OF SEIZED COMPUTER AID FOR CUBA - PRAYER VIGILS AT THE COMMERCE DEPT, 14 ST NW, WED. 8/31, noon - 1:00pm and 5-6:00pm
Pastors for Peace has settled in to Washington, DC, to intensify their campaign to win the release of the donated computers and computer accessories that were seized from their humanitarian aid caravan in July by US Customs agents, acting on the orders of the US Commerce Department.

They have established an office in the United Methodist Building (100 Maryland Ave, NE), from which they will continue doing intensive outreach to members of Congress, to national and local religious and community organizations, and to the media.

They will also continue to hold weekly prayer vigils every Wednesday at noon and at 5:00pm, at the main entrance of the Commerce Department, on 14 Street NW, between Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues. And they are planning other events and actions to be announced.

Fr. Luis Barrios, board member of IFCO/Pastors for Peace, said, The Bible teaches us to practice social holiness. Justice, in all its dimensions, is the biggest expression of this holiness. Our work in support of the Cuban people is our way of responding to God's command and of demonstrating the social and political dimensions of our spirituality.

In 1996, when computer equipment destined for Cuba was seized from the sixth Pastors for Peace caravan, members of the caravan came to the Methodist Building in Washington. Their 94-day fast was the centerpiece of an international campaign, which won the release of the computers and educated millions of people in the US about the immorality, illegality, pettiness and absurdity of the US blockade against Cuba.

More:
http://www.ifconews.org/Cuba/caravan16/press_releases.htm

On edit, adding Pastors for Peace bus photos:

[Vogon_Glory]

2. Public Support For the Travel Restrictions Have Shriveled

I think it's increasingly obvious to everyone outside of the right wing-controlled Cuban emigre hothouses of South Florida (and certain parts of New Jersey) and to everyone who gets their news from someplace other than Radio Mambi that support for the US-imposed travel restrictions for Americans wishing to visit Cuba has shriveled. Even those of us who don't grow teary-eyed looking at vintage film from the early Cuban revolutionary era or who don't burst into spontaneous applause at each new pronouncement from the current Havana government are fed up with the travel restrictions. Most of us see the travel restrictions for what they are--an unnecessary infringement on the liberties of American citizens and resident aliens imposed on them by a politicized US treasury department for purely partisan political reasons. The rest of us resent the restrictions and increasingly chafe at their imposition. We may not like the current political structure of the Havana regime or become ecstatic at photos of either Fidel, Raul, or Che, but we do agree with the sandalistas on this one point--the travel restrictions should go. We don't give a rat's rump as to how useful Florida-based Cuban emigre hard-liners are to keeping the Republican Party in power in the Sunshine State--the travel restrictions should go.

Enough of the pandering to this bunch--end the travel restrictions Now.

[Mika]

3. There never really has been public support for the travel ban and embargo...

.. except in hard line exilio Miami.

Both houses of congress passed legislation that would either end the sanctions, or de-fund the enforcement of Cuba sanctions for 5+ years in a row - only to have all of the amendments stripped out of the bills in markup committee every time.

Even when our representatives vote to end the ludicrous policy against Cuba, their votes get sent to the trash bin by the anti Cuba extremists sitting on the house/senate committees.


Anti embargo votes are treated much the same way as Miami-Dade ballots ..




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[Vogon_Glory]

4. Cosmic Commie Killers

I suspect that much of the support for the travel restrictions outside the South Florida and New Jersey exile communities came from the old "anti-communist" right wingers, once a power to be reckoned with in very conservative congressional districts in Sunbelt and former Confederate states. This group also had (and still does, to an extent) ties to the radio and televangelical "Christian" right. The actuarial tables have carried off many of these people, as has popular boredom with their cause after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. I doubt any remaining cosmic commie killers could get many Texas Republican-controlled state senatorial or congressional districts' constituents riled about the "peril" from present-day Cuba. As for to the popularity of an "anti-communist" crusade in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia, I don't know.

What power the pro-travel ban people have these comes by lobbying solons and campaign contributions, not popular support, as well as policy dictated From On High by George W. What's-his-name.