Mostly by "travel writers".
The first to complain about the streamlining of these regulations was Ellen Creager of the Detroit Free Press.
We've widely documented how these trips are essentially "people-to-Castro" tours, fully-hosted and controlled by the dictatorship. The travelers stay at the Cuban military's hotels, eat at their restaurants and, for the most part, their interaction is limited to Castro regime officials.
So much so, that U.S. participants in these trips even come back using the same rhetoric as Castro regime officials.
Case and point is Ms. Creager herself, who last week wrote:
"Then came a roadblock. In May, anti-Cuba legislators in Congress, suspicious that some trips were vacations in disguise, forced renewal applications to become so long and complex that nobody could get a renewal."
"Anti-Cuba legislators"?
That's the label the Castro regime uses for freely and democratically elected Cuban-American Members of the U.S. Congress.
So now for Ms. Creager, just like for Castro, U.S. legislators that support human rights and freedom for their homeland, who want to see an end to the Cuban dictatorship's violence against peaceful activists, including women, are "anti-Cuba".
Thus, by implication, the 53-year old dictatorship responsible for the torture, imprisonment and murder of hundreds of thousands of Cubans must be somehow "pro-Cuba"?
Travelers on these "people-to-people" trips should be required to be briefed by Cuban pro-democracy activists, independent journalists and former political prisoners on the tragic reality they live.
Otherwise, these remain nothing but shameful propaganda trips.
