Cuban Democracy Advocate Accepts Nelson Invite to Meet Congress

Press Release

Opposition blogger Yoani Sanchez has accepted an invitation from U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson to share her views with members of Congress on ways to further promote freedom, democracy and human rights for the Cuban people.

Nelson invited the blogger to a Capitol meeting after she embarked on an international tour last month that will stretch nearly three months. During her world tour Sanchez plans to also travel to Latin America, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Peru, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Brazil was her first stop.

Her tour comes after she received a passport under Cuba's new travel and migration policy. Enacted last month, the law eliminated exit permits required of islanders for the past five decades.

Sanchez told Nelson she has set aside 10:30 a.m. to noon on March 19 for the meeting in Washington. The blogger has also announced plans to visit Miami April 1, and speak at the iconic Freedom Tower owned by Miami-Dade College.

"She is looking forward to this rare opportunity to visit the Congress in order to share her experiences as a member of Cuba's emergent, independent civil society and her ideas about the island's changing reality," Sanchez's representative in the United States wrote in a letter to Nelson (D-FL) and U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia (D-Miami), who also extended an invite on the House side.

Sanchez asked that Nelson and Garcia arrange a meeting of members of both chambers.

"I look forward to this meeting and her unique view of the realities of life in Cuba," Nelson said today.

The Cuban blogger has achieved international fame. Time magazine listed her as one of the world's 100 most influential people in 2008. "Under the nose of a regime that has never tolerated dissent, Sánchez has practiced what paper-bound journalists in her country cannot; freedom of speech," the magazine said.

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