The House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman slammed Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff for backing the Castro regime and criticizing the U.S. embargo at the United Nations General Assembly today.
“It is disconcerting that Brazilian leader Dilma Rousseff, a self-proclaimed human rights advocate, decided to use her speech at the United Nations General Assembly to support the Cuban dictatorship while ignoring the plight of the Cuban people and attacking U.S. policy toward the Castro regime,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who came to America from Cuba when she was 7 years old.
“It is time to end this anachronism, condemned by the immense majority of U.N. member countries,” Rousseff said today of the decades-long embargo.
“The Brazilian president should stand in solidarity with the brave human rights activists in Cuba who have courageously put their own lives at risk in order to bring attention to the tyranny’s gross human rights abuses and the Cuban people’s struggle for freedom and justice. Reports indicate that just a few days ago, dozens of members of the Ladies in White, an organization comprised of the mothers, wives, and sisters of many of those unjustly imprisoned by the Castro regime, were again detained without cause by Cuban state security agents,” Ros-Lehtinen said.
“Leaders of democratic nations, such as Brazil, should use international forums to condemn the actions and systematic abuses of the Castro regime, not praise this brutal dictatorship. Their focus should be on supporting the democratic aspirations of the Cuban people and urging the Castro brothers to unleash their iron grip on the island.”
Rousseff opened the General Assembly today, speaking before President Obama.
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