A Courageous Act: Cuban student speaks truth to power

"You can only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power-he's free again."

‡ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I am a regular reader of Jay Nordlinger's Impromptus column over at Nation Review Online. Often, he writes about the heroism of political and religious dissidents in places such as China and Cuba. Today, he noted this:

"Be sure you know the name of Eliécer Ávila Sicilia. He is a computer-science student in Cuba, and amazing. He did something unthinkable: He questioned Ricardo Alarcón, head of the sham legislature known as the Cuban National Assembly, in a public forum. This young man asked Alarcón why Cubans are not allowed to travel abroad. He also asked why they are forbidden to enter certain hotels on the island. (They are foreigners-only.)

Alarcón, disturbed, both ducked the questions and lied. He said that, in the U.S., Hispanics are kicked out of stores, because of their appearance. In any case, how does that address the “tourism apartheid,” as it’s known, in Cuba?"

Eliécer Ávila Sicilia may well find himself in one of Castro's prisons one day, but if people like him were to stop standing up against this totalitarian regime, with the chattering class calling for normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba, then it would be almost impossible to think of a day when Cubans can taste the freedom that we take for granted. It's easy to 'speak truth to power' when absent is the possibility of consequences, which is why Mr. Sicilia's act is so courageous and inspiring.

You may find Mr. Nordlinger's complete column and more on Mr. Sicilia's story here.