**STATEMENT BY**

**ADOLFO A. FRANCO**

**ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR FOR LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN**

**UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT**

**BEFORE THE**

**SUBCOMMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND WELLNESS**

**OF THE**

**HOUSE GOVERNMENT REFORM COMMITTEE**

**OCTOBER 16, 2003**

Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to testify, on behalf of
the United States Agency for International Development (USAID),
concerning the continuing human rights violations of the Castro
dictatorship in Cuba, and the importance of a vigorous international
response on behalf of the Cuban people. I request that this statement be
submitted for the record.

Assistant Secretary Noriega, in his testimony to you this morning, has
well described the increasingly repressive actions of the Cuban state,
the recent summary executions of three young men who tried to escape the
island, and the imprisonment of more than 75 new political prisoners
whose only crime was to peacefully pursue their basic human rights.

The actions of the Cuban government are outrageous and indefensible. But
they are not new. Fidel Castro has systematically repressed the Cuban
people for the past 44 years. What is new is the growing strength of
Cuba's peaceful democratic opposition. An independent civil society has
begun to emerge in Cuba. It deserves the support of free people
everywhere. Certainly, we in the United States must do what we have
always done -- hold high the banner of freedom, and keep the flame of
liberty alive.

Since passage of the *Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD)
Act of 1996,* the United States Agency for International Development has
worked closely with the U.S. Department of State and U.S.
non-governmental organizations to promote a rapid, peaceful transition
to democracy in Cuba, by increasing the flow of accurate information on
democracy, human rights and free enterprise to, from, and within Cuba.

As authorized by Section 109 of the *LIBERTAD Act,* USAID has provided
25 million dollars over the past six years to U.S. non-governmental
organizations to build solidarity with Cuba's human rights activists,
give voice to Cuba's independent journalists, defend the rights of Cuban
workers, help develop independent Cuban non-governmental organizations,
and provide direct outreach to the Cuban people.

In spite of the active opposition of the Cuban government, USAID
grantees have delivered more than 150 thousand pounds of food and
medicine to the families of political prisoners and other victims of
repression in Cuba. They have provided more than ten thousand short-wave
radios to the Cuban people so they can listen to Radio Marti, Voice of
America, the BBC, Radio Netherlands, and other uncensored international
broadcasts.

USAID grantees have sent the Cuban people more than 2 million books,
newsletters, video cassettes and other informational material concerning
democracy, human rights, and free enterprise. USAID grantees have
published worldwide via the internet more than 9,000 reports from Cuba's
independent journalists.

Most importantly, grantees disseminate those reports in hard copy
throughout Cuba, so the Cuban people, from one end of the island to the
other, can learn the names of Cuba's opposition leaders debate their
ideas and draw strength from their courage.

Mr. Chairman, as you know, the Cuban people suffer the most basic
deprivations, of body as well as spirit, because of the failed policies
of the Castro government. Their thirst for freedom, their hunger for
truth is matched by physical hunger and thirst, by real malnutrition and
disease.

The President of the United States has repeatedly offered emergency food
and humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people, but Fidel Castro has
always rejected that assistance. Castro not only denies the Cuban people
the right to vote, the right to read, the right to speak. He denies the
Cuban people the right to eat!

Castro blames all of his government's economic failures on the U.S.
embargo, but it is not U.S. policy which is responsible for the dismal
failure of Cuban agriculture to feed its own people. A country rich in
agricultural potential, with plentiful supplies of labor, cannot supply
its population with meat, and has imported most of its rice, beans, and
even fish for the past 40 years.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates
that 13 percent of the Cuban population is chronically undernourished.
The World Food Program has found serious deficiencies in dietary intake
in eastern Cuba, where the average diet provides less than 80 percent of
the minimum level of proteins, less than 50 percent of necessary fats,
and insufficient vitamin and mineral intake for sustained health.

Perhaps the most common food-related public health problem in Cuba is
iron-deficiency anemia, primarily among pregnant women and small
children. According to the Pan American Health Organization,
approximately fifty percent of children from one to three years of age
are anemic in Cuba, as well as forty percent of women in the third
trimester of pregnancy and between twenty-five and thirty percent of
women of child-bearing age.

The Castro regime seems determined to deny its people a decent amount of
food, so they will be too physically weak and too busy trying to provide
for their families to demand other human rights.

As the President said in his speech last Friday, October 10, "clearly
the Castro regime will not change by its own choice. But Cuba must
change." In announcing new initiatives to hasten the arrival of a new,
free, democratic Cuba, the President announced he will establish a
Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, "to plan for the happy day
when Castro's regime is no more and democracy comes to the island.

Mr. Chairman, on behalf of USAID Administrator, Andrew Natsios, I pledge
the full support of the United States Agency for International
Development to the work of the Commission.

Andrew Natsios, in a paper he published several years ago, before
assuming his present post, discussed the need to plan now for
humanitarian assistance to a future transition government in Cuba. His
analysis, which represents his own personal views, concluded with a
number of specific recommendations that will help us and the new
Commission begin this work. I ask that a copy of his important paper be
placed in the record.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for your continuing support and that of the
subcommittee for our work to promote a rapid, peaceful transition to
democracy in Cuba. Now, more than ever, your support to the new
Presidential Commission will ensure vital assistance to the Cuban people
as they struggle to secure their most fundamental freedoms and as they
begin to hope for the day when they can begin to build a prosperous
economic future.

Mr. Chairman, thank you again for this opportunity to appear before you
this afternoon and I welcome any questions that you and present
Subcommittee Members may have for me.