President Obama’s ‘betrayal’ of Cuban democrats

President Obama's 'betrayal' of Cuban democrats
By Editorial Board December 19 at 7:46 PM

PRESIDENT OBAMA said he decided to normalize relations with Cuba because
"we can do more to support the Cuban people and promote our values
through engagement." So it's important to know the reaction of those
Cubans who have put their lives on the line to fight for democracy and
human rights. Many have supported engagement and opposed the U.S.
embargo. But they are now pretty much unanimous in saying that the way
Mr. Obama has gone about this is a mistake.

Actually, "mistake" is the polite word used by Berta Soler of the Ladies
in White, an astonishingly courageous group of women who march each week
in support of political prisoners. "Betrayal" was the term used by
several others, who asked why Mr. Obama had chosen to lift economic
restrictions and dispatch an ambassador without requiring the
"significant steps toward democracy" he once said must precede
liberalization.

Guillermo Fariñas, the general director of the dissidents' United
Anti-Totalitarian Front, told reporters in Havana that Mr. Obama had
promised in a November 2013 meeting with himself and Ms. Soler that any
U.S. action on Cuba "would be consulted with civil society and the
nonviolent opposition. Obviously this didn't happen . . . they didn't
take into account Cuban democrats."

The negative response from the people whom Mr. Obama portrays as the
beneficiaries of his initiative is one reason to question his contention
that Cuba should be treated like China and Vietnam, two Communist
nations with which the United States normalized diplomatic and economic
relations decades ago. The United States was not able to join with
opposition movements in those countries in demanding democratic reforms
as part of a normalization process because, at the time, such movements
barely existed in either place. In Cuba's case, the opportunity was there.

Engagement with China and Vietnam also offered huge economic and
geopolitical benefits that don't exist in the case of Cuba, an
impoverished island whose main interest to the United States is the
freedom and prosperity of its 11 million people. In the past, the Castro
regime has hosted Soviet nuclear missiles and sponsored terrorism
elsewhere in the region, and it still harbors American criminals. But
its worst behavior has been the repression of its own people, which has
repeatedly driven waves of refugees to the Florida straits.

But even if the analogy were apt, we would argue that Mr. Obama should
have learned and applied some of the hard lessons of normalization with
China and Vietnam — most notably that engagement doesn't automatically
promote freedom. When the United States debated extending
"most-favored-nation" trading status to China, we shared in what was
then the conventional wisdom: Economic engagement would inevitably lead,
over time, to political reform inside that Communist dictatorship.
President Bill Clinton argued that no autocracy could control the
relatively new tool of connection known as the Internet, certainly not
while hoping to foster international trade and investment. Travel,
openness, exposure to the American example — all this would, inexorably
if gradually, push China to liberalize.

But the men who run China had other ideas. They were determined to reap
the fruits of foreign investment and trade — for themselves and their
families, first, but also for their country — without ceding power. So
far, confounding expectations, they have succeeded. The Chinese standard
of living has risen, and Chinese enjoy far more personal freedom than
they did under Mao — to choose where to live, say, or whom to marry. But
in the past decade, political freedom in China has declined — there is
less freedom of speech, of the press, of cultural expression. More
political prisoners have been locked up and tortured. Tens of thousands
of censors keep tight control over the Internet.

The same is true in Vietnam: more foreign investment, less political and
religious freedom, more bloggers in prison. And these are not anomalies:
In the years that Mr. Obama has been in office, freedom has receded
across the globe — without much protest or response from his administration.

What is the right reaction to this? Not to turn away from engagement,
which would be impossible and also, in our view, wrong: It is
unquestionably good that trade has helped lift many ordinary Chinese
into relative prosperity. Rather, practice engagement intelligently;
instead of simply assuming that it will help promote freedom, take steps
to increase the likelihood that it will do so.

In Cuba's case, that means listening to the brave freedom fighters Mr.
Obama spurned. Mr. Obama's prescription was not the only alternative to
what he saw as the failed policy of the past half-century. Opposition
leaders from throughout the island have agreed on four immediate demands
to put before the government: the release of political prisoners; the
end of repression against human rights and pro-democracy groups; the
ratification of international covenants on human rights; and the
recognition of Cuban civil society groups.

Mr. Obama could have linked a step-by-step normalization with Cuba to
the regime's satisfaction of these steps, which stop far short of
introducing democracy. Instead he settled for the release of 53
political prisoners — or about half the number that Cuban human rights
activists say are held — and a vague promise of greater access to the
Internet.

That leaves Congress with the obligation to hold the Castro regime
accountable. Currently, legislation allows the president to lift the
economic embargo only if full democratic elections are held and a
free-market economic system introduced. Under Mr. Obama's policy, which
aims to avoid the regime's collapse, that outcome is not likely. So
Congress could consider whether to link the Cuban opposition's agenda to
a partial lifting of U.S. sanctions, or perhaps to some of the measures
Mr. Obama is contemplating.

If U.S. policy is really to be revised and refocused on helping the
Cuban people, it would be well to promote the changes that their citizen
leaders are seeking — not just the ones sought by their totalitarian rulers.

Source: President Obama's 'betrayal' of Cuban democrats - The Washington
Post -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/president-obamas-betrayal-of-the-cuban-people/2014/12/19/6b59b708-87a4-11e4-a702-fa31ff4ae98e_story.html