Tougher on Cuba: President Obama speaks up at the right time.
The Washington Post, Friday, March 26, 2010; A24
PRESIDENT OBAMA issued a statement Wednesday that forthrightly described what has become of his effort to reach out to the Castro regime in Cuba. "Instead of embracing an opportunity to enter a new era," he said, "Cuban authorities continue to respond to the aspirations of the Cuban people with a clenched fist”.
It was a good moment for the president to speak out. Cubans have been stirred, and the regime has been rattled, by a new movement of hunger strikers. On Feb. 23, the imprisoned Afro-Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after refusing food for 83 days. The next day, opposition activist Guillermo Fariñas began a strike, demanding relief for 26 political prisoners needing medical attention. He is now reportedly in a hospital near his home in the central Cuba town of Santa Clara and is being fed intravenously. If he dies, other dissidents are ready to replace him.
The response of Raúl and Fidel Castro to the strikers and the international protests they prompted has been uncompromising. They refused to prevent Mr. Zapata's death; last week, a protest in Havana by the Ladies in White, a group of relatives of political prisoners that includes Mr. Zapata's mother, was violently broken up by police and pro-regime thugs.....