§6065 Requirements and Factors for Determining Transition Government

Summary

A transition government in Cuba must do several things to be recognized. It must allow all political activity, free all political prisoners, and let international human rights groups inspect prisons. It must dissolve the current State Security forces, including the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and the Rapid Response Brigades. It must promise to hold free and fair elections within 18 months with multiple independent parties that get equal media access (including equal radio and TV time) and let international observers such as the Organization of American States and the United Nations watch. It must stop interfering with Radio Marti and Television Marti broadcasts, work toward an independent judiciary, respect human rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, allow independent trade unions under ILO conventions 87 and 98, permit independent social, economic, and political groups, not include Fidel Castro or Raul Castro, and guarantee that aid can be distributed quickly to the Cuban people. The President must also consider whether the government is clearly moving from a communist totalitarian system to representative democracy and is making real progress on free speech and a free press (including permits for private media and telecom companies), restoring citizenship to Cuban-born people who return, protecting private property, returning or fairly compensating United States citizens and entities that are 50 percent or more owned by United States citizens for property taken on or after January 1, 1959, extraditing or otherwise handing over to the United States people wanted by the U.S. Department of Justice for crimes in the United States, and allowing independent, unfettered international human rights monitors to operate throughout Cuba.