Thousands of other freedomloving Cubans. many friends or relatives of those who have fled. are still in Cuba with no way to leave now that the freedom flights have been discontinued. They are prisoners in their own nation. much in the fashion of the Jews and the intellectuals in the Soviet Union. In the past year. there has been a great deal of rhetoricmuch of it right here in this chamberabout the persecution of Soviet intellectuals and the refusal of the Soviet Government to permit Jewish citizens to emigrate. Both the House and the Senate have passed amendments barring the granting of mostfavorednation trade status to the Soviet Union as long as it restricts emigration and there has been some suggestion that the whole concept of detente might not be workable in view of the repressive attitude of the Soviet regime. I have supported this position. yet. here we are. talking about the possibility of renewing trade and furthering detente with a regime which still has at least 20.000 political prisoners in its jails and which has done its utmost to see that only those citizens emigrate that it wants to emigrate and that they do so after paying the heaviest type of taxsurrender of all their property. This strikes me as a classic case of doublethink. a classic example of a dichotomy that needs to be unraveled if we are to present an effective case for the right of people to express their views and live their lives as they please. If we are going to make the point with the Soviet Union. and accept the consequences. then there is certainly no point in considering a change of policy toward Castro whose regime represents not only the antithesis of freedom. but total subservience to the policies of the Soviet Union.
Keywords matched
emigrate emigration