Lincoln Diaz-Balart: “March 8 is commemorated as the International Day of Women's Rights. With that motive and also because of what has been…”

“March 8 is commemorated as the International Day of Women's Rights. With that motive and also because of what has been going on in Cuba since the Pope's visit in January, an urgent appeal went out from Cuba yesterday, March 9, signed by a very distinguished group of women dissidents and independent journalists. And their urgent petition to the international organizations for human rights and all women, which went out yesterday, I would like to read at this point. It reads as follows: ``The so-called `pardons' that the government of Fidel Castro has instrumented in the last few months as an attempt to obtain the good graces of international heads of State have not been acts of clemency or goodwill. ``It is an outrage that within two years of the next millennium Cuba maintains in its prisons more than 100,000 prisoners and another significant number of detainees at adjacent interrogation facilities. In proportion to population, the penal population on the island is perhaps the largest in Latin America, and even more criminal still is the cruel and brutal treatment that is suffered by political prisoners, especially women.…”