What did the virtual summit for democracy organized by the United States of America achieve?

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy again criticized US policy toward Cuba on Monday.

“As someone who has watched the development of relations between the United States and Cuba for nearly 50 years, particularly since I first traveled there in 1999, I find the situation between our two countries today worrisome, tragic and infuriating,” the senator said. Foreign Committee.

Here is the rest of Patrick Leahy’s statement:

It is troubling because senior administration officials, who have publicly and privately acknowledged that the United States’ 60-year policy of unilateral sanctions, isolation and threats have failed to achieve any of its goals and have harmed the Cuban people, have embraced the same. Politics.. failed as if it were his.

Tragically, because politics emboldened hardliners in Cuba who further repressed citizens who dared to protest peacefully over shortages of food, medicine, and electricity, and against government repression, exacerbated the unfolding crisis. The island has been taken over by the COVID pandemic and dysfunctional government economic policies.

Madness, because anyone who understands Cuba could have foreseen what has happened since the Trump administration reversed the Obama administration’s settlement policy and would have taken steps to ease it. Instead, the current policy is making the situation worse.

Over the past ten months, I have urged the White House not to repeat the mistakes of the past when it comes to our relations with the Cuban government and the Cuban people, and to pursue a policy based on our long-term national interests. I’m so sorry that hasn’t happened yet.

Instead, this administration’s policy, thus far, has been dictated by a small but vociferous group of voters in a country that has always opposed US rapprochement with Cuba. It is a policy that history has shown is doomed to failure.

Currently, the United States and Cuba have diplomatic relations, but to what end? There is no meaningful diplomacy, and our embassy in Havana and the Cuban embassy in Washington are barely functional. Consular operations ceased. The dialogues we had with the Cuban government on issues of mutual interest, from law enforcement to human rights and public health, which the Trump administration cut short, have not resumed. How can this be in our national interest?

Since Cuba remains on the list of state sponsors of terrorism due to a last-minute politically motivated and retaliatory decision by the Trump administration that cannot be objectively defended, we still have diplomatic relations. Isn’t this irreconcilable? And what happened to the management review of this deeply flawed designation that was promised months ago?

Cultural, scientific and educational exchange is largely over. This is not justified nor is it in our national interest. The COVID pandemic provided a clear opportunity for collaboration between American and Cuban scientists, but this opportunity, like so many others over the years, was lost due to politics, distrust, and hatred.

The US Treasury continues to block transfers from Cuban Americans to their relatives on the island, even though it is their money and not the Treasury. Shouldn’t Cuban Americans have the right to decide for themselves whether to send their own money to their family members, rather than having that decision made by the White House? Remittances help Cubans become less dependent on the government, improve their standard of living, and provide seed capital for Cuba’s growing private sector, which currently comprises a third of the Cuban workforce.

The volume of remittances remitted by the Cuban government is a small fraction of what some have falsely claimed, and is no more than what other governments charge. Let’s base our policy on facts, rather than hearsay, and what works well nationally.

And Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida, is the only country other than North Korea where American travel is severely restricted, despite our shared history and cultural traditions. It is as absurd as it is counterproductive.

The White House has repeatedly said that “democracy and human rights” are at the heart of its Cuba policy. These are laudable aspirations and aspirations, but they are not politics. We all want to see a Cuba where political freedom and fundamental rights are respected, especially freedom of expression, and where an independent judiciary protects the right to due process. These rights are as severely restricted in Cuba today as they are in many countries, including some recipients of hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid.

What we do not agree on is the best way to support the Cuban people’s struggle to obtain those rights.

I asked, but I have no idea what the administration’s practical goals in Cuba are, or how it intends to achieve them. After we were told six months ago that the State Department is conducting a policy review, have we yet to see any changes from the policy it inherited from the Trump administration a year ago? What did he say?

Several administration officials have justified the continuation of the punitive sanctions that President Trump imposed due to the July 11 public protests in Cuba. They say “everything has changed” on July 11th.

Cuba is changing. Access to social media and mobile phones has increased dramatically. Attitudes among younger generations are changing. The Cuban government is implementing historic, albeit reluctant, reforms to ease restrictions on private businesses. President Obama’s openness to Cuba, which lasted only two years, was a key factor in helping bring about these changes.

Rather than acknowledging the unprecedented progress during that short period, advocates of sanctions policy say Obama’s policy of openness has failed because Cuba remains a repressive one-party state. They are completely unaware that the same thing happened in the fifty years before Obama and in the five years after Obama. When it comes to helping bring about positive change for the people of Cuba, President Obama wins.

But today America is once again on the sidelines, clinging to an outdated policy that history has shown will not work. & nbsp; In fact, it has the opposite effect by depriving both Cubans and Americans of opportunities.

US policy toward Cuba is full of contradictions, hypocrisy, arrogance, and missed opportunities. Cuba is a poor country that poses no threat to the United States, yet we treat it as if it did so in large part because of our actions. While we maintain a complex web of unilateral sanctions that all countries in this hemisphere oppose, the Russians and the Chinese are powerfully filling the void, as anyone visiting Cuba today can easily see.

Adhering to a government whose policies are anathema to us does not legitimize that government’s leaders or accept its oppressive policies. If this is the case, we should stop dealing not only with Cuba, but with dozens of governments around the world, including many US partners such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

We condemn arbitrary arrests, sham trials, laws criminalizing civil society, and the mistreatment and imprisonment of political opponents. These violations are common in many countries, we apply specific penalties and restrict aid. But for purely domestic political reasons, we continue to impose a wide web of broad sanctions against Cuba, even when the administration knows they have not worked.

I have said it many times: our policy towards Cuba must be guided, above all, by what is in our national interest, not by what is in the interest of a small national group, and not by making demands that we know Cubans do not. We will agree.

Engaging with Cuba gives US diplomats and citizens an opportunity to build relationships with their Cuban counterparts and to identify issues of mutual interest that can move forward. We saw this during the Obama administration, although some did not dare to admit it.

Over time, this is how we can begin to address the toughest issues that divide us, knowing that it is the Cuban people, not the United States, that will ultimately determine their country’s future.

This administration has had ten months to show that the continuation of Trump’s failed policy of trying to pressure the Cuban authorities to submit can produce positive results. There is no evidence that this can be done. did not happen. Will we lose another year and another after that?

I hope it won’t, but that’s what will happen if the White House doesn’t change course and show the kind of thoughtful leadership toward Cuba that we saw during the Obama administration, and that appealed to the vast majority of the American people. As Einstein said and many have repeated, “Madness does the same thing over and over again and expects different results.” This administration can do better. It should do better, concludes Senator Patrick Leahy’s statement.