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President Barack Obama is to be commended for raising the issues of civil liberties and free elections with Ra\u00fal Castro on his Cuban trip, saying, for example, that Cubans should be free to speak their minds and protest against their government without fear of \u201carbitrary detentions.\u201d It must have been difficult for someone raised and educated by Progressives who have argued for nearly six decades that Cuba is a socialist \u201cparadise.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Obama did not go far enough. Here are some of the other questions he should have asked Ra\u00fal Castro:<\/p>\n
1.<\/strong> When will you allow free and open elections to be held in Cuba, as promised by your brother Fidel shortly after he took command of the country in 1959? How long will the Cuban people have to wait to exercise this basic right of a democracy?<\/p>\n 2.<\/strong> When will you open your government\u2019s archives to allow historians and others to document just how many Cubans have been executed at the order of your brother and other communist officials? The figure given in \u201cThe Black Book of Communism\u201d is between 15,000 and 17,000. Is that too high or too low an estimate?<\/p>\n 4.<\/strong> When will you allow the free market to truly operate in Cuba so that the average worker will be able to earn a decent wage rather than the penurious $20 a month he presently receives? When will you allow credit cards\u2014an essential instrument of modern commerce\u2014to be used and accepted?<\/p>\n 5.<\/strong> When will your brother Fidel admit that Che Guevara\u2014admired by many young Americans\u2014was not a high-minded revolutionary, but a cold-blooded murderer who functioned as Fidel\u2019s personal executioner? Isn\u2019t it true that he\u00a0was a great admirer of China\u2019s Cultural Revolution and that it was he, not Fidel, who invented Cuba\u2019s first \u201ccorrective labor camp\u201d\u2014i.e., a gulag?<\/p>\n 6.<\/strong> Isn\u2019t it true that Cuba is not a socialist \u201cparadise,\u201d but a troubled third-world country ruled by a communist regime that discourages religion, denies freedom of the press and of speech, bars legitimate elections, treats the judiciary as a lapdog, and reveres the Communist Party above all things?<\/p>\n Any meaningful and enduring relationship between Cuba and America must be based on the truth. And the truth about what communism has done to the Cuban people for nearly sixty years has yet to be told.<\/p>\n\n\n3.<\/strong> When will you release all political prisoners, especially the husbands, sons, fathers, and friends of the Ladies in White, who have provided you with the names of those who are in jail for speaking out for libertad<\/em>? \u201cThe Black Book of Communism\u201d estimates that 100,000 Cubans have been placed in prisons and forced labor camps for \u201cpolitical\u201d reasons. Is that figure too high or too low?<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n