Why We Support Sanctions

Excerpt from Humberto Fontova's editorial in The Miami Herald:

Why we remain resolute against traveling to Cuba

“More travel to Cuba means more freedom for Cubans,” goes the anti-“embargo” mantra.

Now here’s what a recent story by Reuters out of Havana said: "Cuba just completed its best year for tourism with 2.7 million visitors in 2011. Hotels are full to the brim and Old Havana, the capital’s historic center, is teeming with tourists from around the world... ‘We are at capacity... totally full,’ said the manager of a foreign hotel company.”

Now here’s a recent report by The Cuban Commission for Human Rights as reported by Marti Noticias: “December 2011 was the worst month for political arrests in 30 years. Elizardo Sánchez said ‘all signs are indicating that... the regime has greatly ramped up its repressive machinery’... This indicates that the regime has granted top priority to the institutions of repression.”

In the 1950s when Cuba hosted an average 200,000 tourists annually, it was billed as a “tourist playground.” Well, for two decades now Cuba has been hosting from five to ten times the number of tourists annually as it hosted in the 1950s. Result?

The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom shows no loosening in Cuba’s repression during this tourism windfall. For over a decade Cuba has consistently ranked as the most economically repressive regime in the hemisphere and among the four most repressive on earth, consistently nudging North Korea for top honors.

“But if Americans can legally travel to North Korea,” comes the reflexive retort, “why not to Cuba?”

Because tourism represents a tiny source of income for North Korea’s terror-sponsoring regime, whereas it represents the main life-support (right behind Venezuelan subsidies) of Cuba’s terror-sponsoring regime. So the United States applies a different type of sanctions to Stalinist North Korea than to Stalinist Cuba.

As shown earlier, the evidence, proof and verdict on Cuba-travel are all in. Rather than soothing the savage beast of Castroism, travel to Cuba enriches, entrenches and thus emboldens the regime to shrug off criticism and sharpen its fangs.

Read the whole editorial here.