Dissidents decry US bill to end Cuba travel ban
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100617/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_cuba_us_travel
By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer Will Weissert, Associated Press Writer Thu
HAVANA – Five days after his release for health reasons, a former Cuban political prisoner added his name to a letter signed by nearly 500 opposition activists decrying proposed legislation that would lift the U.S. travel ban to their country.
The letter, e-mailed to foreign reporters in Havana on Thursday, took the opposite approach of a statement last week supporting the same bill and signed by 74 dissidents, many with international notoriety — including Cuba's top blogger Yoani Sanchez, and Elizardo Sanchez, who is not related to Yoani but heads the island's top human rights group.
The bill in question was introduced Feb. 23 by Rep. Collin Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat, and would bar the president from prohibiting travel to Cuba or blocking transactions required to make such trips.
It also would halt the White House from stopping direct transfers between U.S. and Cuban banks. That would make it easier for the island's government to pay for U.S. food and farm exports, which have been allowed for a decade, despite Washington's 48-year-old trade embargo.
Thursday's letter said, "to be benevolent with the dictatorship would mean solidarity with the oppressors of the Cuban nation." It featured 492 signers from all over Cuba, but most were little-known, even among the island's small and divided dissident and political opposition community.