Helms Boosting Cuban Dissidents ... Plan Colombia at the Pentagon ... Ruling on Amnesty

Helms Boosting Cuban Dissidents

Congressional supporters of a tougher policy toward the government of Fidel Castro plan to introduce bills next week to strengthen the Cuban opposition and support independent economic activities in the island.

According to the draft of the Senate bill by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate International Relations Committee, $25 million would be allocated to independent individuals and nongovernmental organizations in Cuba for food, medicine, office and educational equipment and other supplies.

The so-called “Solidaridad Act of 2001” would allow the United States to import crafts made byindependent Cubans, transfer up to $1,000 every quarter to assist micro-enterprises and independent nongovernmental groups in Cuba and reduce assistance to Russia to protest its support of Cuban intelligence installations.

Helms and Cuban American activists say the new measures were inspired by the experience of Poland and what was then Czechoslovakia during the 1980s at the end of the Cold War. “The economic and political transitions in Eastern European countries” the bill reads, “can serve as models for Cubans seeking to recover their country after the lost decades of the Communist dictatorship of Fidel Castro.”

Critics of tougher strategies say the Polish and Czechoslovak experiences are not comparable to Cuba’s. They say these proposals would only shore up a policy that has not been effective and guarantees that groups opposed to Castro in this country continue to receive federal funds.

“We have been promoting dissidents for 40 years without measurable results,” said former ambassador Sally Grooms Cowal, head of the new Cuba Policy Foundation which opens Monday in Washington.

During a recent visit to Washington, two pro-democracy Czech activists detained in a Cuban prison eariler this year, said it is “definitely worthwhile” to take a chance on helping Cuban dissidents and suggested that new resources be channeled through organizations in other Latin American countries.

Ivan Pilip, a member of the Czech parliment, and former student leader Jan Bubenik traveled to Cuba with supplies for dissident groups financed by U.S. funds channeled through Freedom House in Washington. Pilip and Bubenik were the first to be detained and accused of “counterrevolutionary” activities in Cuba since the approval of the Helms-Burton Law in 1996, which began this type of activity on a small scale.

According to the two Czechs, their interrogators indicated that an important reason for their detention was the Cuban government’s growing concern about the election of a Republican president with the help of Cuban Americans in Florida.

They also pointed out that important leaders in the transition to democracy in their country, such as Communist Marion Chalfa who became prime minister under President Vaclav Havel, were never dissidents.

Cowal, who headed Youth for Understanding which provided a home for Elian Gonzalez and his family before he returned to Cuba, said the Polish and Czechoslovak experiences are two cases where opening a dialogue helped make the transition to democracy peaceful. For this reason, she said, part of her work will be to discuss with the Bush administration and members of Congress, such as Sen. Helms and Otto Reich, the Cuban American nominated as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, the need to find “new common ground which avoids polarization.”

The foundation also will invite Jorge Mas Santos, head of the powerful conservative Cuban American National Foundation, to a series of debates over whether to lift the embargo against Cuba.

In Congress supporters of lifting economic sanctions and travel restrictions to Cuba have presented their own which they hope will be more successful than last year’s when the Republican leadership managed to reverse many of its principal proposals.

Helms’s new bill complements in many ways the “Libertad Act,” better known as the Helms-Burton Law of 1996. Just as in 1996, the bill would allocate up to $5 million to finance human rights observers, electoral observers and electoral support by the Organization of American States. The funds are expected to be approved for the 2002 fiscal year, which an OAS official, who asked not to be identified, interpreted as a way to put Cuba in the difficult position of refusing to allow international participation in future elections.A less detailed House version of the bill will be sposored by Rep. Lincoln Diaz Balart (R-Fla.).

The bill also calls for the introduction of a resolution in the U.N. Security Council asking the Cuban government to respect human rights, legalize independent political parties, allow unions and conduct free elections. A resolution condemning human rights violations on the island will be presented soon at the meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

A similar resolution was approved last year with 21 votes in favor, 18 against and 14 abstentions, but recently the Cuban government has been pressuring other countries, especially in Latin America, to reject it.

In addition, the effort by Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kavan to include in the resolution criticism of the U.S. embargo against Cuba has caused Poland to refuse to join the Czech Republic in presenting the resolution as it did in the two previous years.

Plan Colombia at the Pentagon

A bipartisan group of senators met last week with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to express their support for Plan Colombia and to remind him of the importance of the Pentagon’s role.

Rumsfeld, who is immersed in an extensive evaluation of the missions and structure of the Defense Department, has limited his comments on the fight against drugs to saying that it is a problem of demand more than supply. the senators reportedly found no reason in their meeting with Rumsfeld to fear a change in U.S. military support for Plan Colombia.

“There was nothing to cause concern about the administration’s commitment to continue the support,” said a spokeswoman for Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who attended the meeting. Other senators who attended were Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Bill Nelson (D- Fla.) and John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.).

The senators were members of a delegation that recently traveled to Colombia and the Andean region. A memo prepared for Rumsfeld before the meeting said, “According to the [delegation’s] report and conversations with staffers, members agreed it is in our national interest to continue strengthening, modernizing and professionalizing the Colombian military to break the narco stronghold on Colombian society, advance the rule of law, and protect human rights.”

Several military sources said Rumsfeld will take some time to make changes and name officials. But one Republican analyst said it would be a good idea to remove the deputy assistant secretary for inter-American affairs from the office of the assistant secretary for special operations and low-intensity conflict, because “all of the Americas cannot be reduced to anti-drug matters.”

Military analysts say they are concerned that U.S. military aid to Plan Colombia is limited to anti-drug programs while it is clear that the Colombian armed forces’ priority is to control the insurgency and the growing paramilitary forces. This discrepancy, they said, could be the reason for the cancellation of a $3 million contract for the defense contractor MPRI, which had been working on the reorganization of the Colombian Defense Ministry. Ed Soyster, a spokesman for MPRI, said the contract concluded in a routine way after fulfilling its requirements.

Ruling on Amnesty

A decision by the Inter-American Human Rights Court last week about a massacre in Lima, Peru, in 1991, will have repercussions in countries like Argentina, Chile and Guatemala, specialists in international law say.

The court ruled that amnesty laws adopted by the Peruvian government in 1995 exonerating members of the military and the police accused of human rights violations are not compatible with the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights and cannot be used to prevent the identification and trial of those who are responsible.

“In its last decision .‚.‚. the court established the doctrine that national amnesties do not end the responsibilities of states or individuals in international crimes,” said Claudio Grossman, dean of Washington College of Law at American University, and president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights which presented the case to the court.

“Impunity cannot be selective,” said Grossman who inaugurated a conference on the precedent set by the case of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on Monday. Grossman said recent court cases in Chile and Argentina show progress in the direction envisaged by the Inter-American court’s decision.

Soraya Long, a lawyer specializing in Guatemalan affairs at the Center for Justice and International Law, said that while the court’s rulings are directed at specific governments, the decision on amnesties is an important “argument” that judicial authorities can use to overturn defendants’ efforts to use amnesty or national conciliation laws to shelter themselves, as has happened in Guatemala.

Long said the decision could be especially useful in the trial for the murder of Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi which opened last week. Three military men are among the defendants accused of killing the bishop in 1998 for heading an investigation of abuses committed during Guatemala’s civil war.