BY JACK WILLEY
NEW YORK - At its June 22 national meeting, the U.S. Organizing Committee for the 14th World Festival of Youth and Students launched a protest campaign against the U.S. Department of Treasury's denial of licenses for young people planning to participate in the gathering.

The international conference will take place in Cuba July 28 - August 5. More than 5,000 delegates from 112 countries are expected to participate. Topics of discussion include anti-imperialist and antiracist struggles, women's liberation, protection of the environment, and how to stand up to rising fascist movements.

As of June 19, more than 900 people had applied to go from the United States. They include 435 with the U.S. Organizing Committee and 135 with the Venceremos Brigade. The brigade will travel to Cuba a week before the festival for other activities and then join the youth gathering. In addition, the National Preparatory Committee, which was initiated by the Young Communist League and the Communist Party, has signed up 311 people.

About 60 people are planning to go to Havana with the U.S.- Cuba Labor Exchange to attend the International Workers Conference Confronting Neoliberalism and the Global Economy. The trade union meeting, sponsored by the Central Organization of Cuban Workers, will take place August 6-8, immediately after the festival. A good number of those traveling with the Labor Exchange plan to participate in the festival as well.

The U.S. Organizing Committee, the National Preparatory Committee, and Venceremos Brigade have agreed to mount a unified protest campaign. So far, several congresspeople have called the Treasury Department or issued protest letters. They include Reps. Ron Dellums, Jesse Jackson Jr., and Nydia Velázquez.

Activists plan to reach out to other elected officials, academics, civil libertarians, trade unionists, religious figures, and student and other groups and ask them to join in demanding the government grant the licenses.

In early April, Bob Guild of Marazul Tours submitted the first applications for licenses to travel to the conference in Cuba on behalf of young people who requested it. Nearly two months later, Washington denied the request. In a letter dated May 30, Stephen Pinter, the Chief of Licensing at the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Department of the Treasury, turned down granting licenses to the first 50 applicants, stating "the statements submitted by the individual applicants reflect optional self-directed activities which do not fall within the scope of clearly defined educational activities."

Guild subsequently appealed the decision, pointing out that government regulations on travel to Cuba state U.S. residents will be licensed if they show an established interest in participating in an international conference in Cuba "organized by an international institution or association that regularly sponsors meetings or conferences in other countries." The World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), one of the initiators of the festival, has sponsored 13 previous such festivals in other countries.

As part of its 37-year-old economic war against the Cuban people, Washington has imposed severe restrictions on travel to Cuba. The Trading with the Enemy Act does not allow U.S. residents to spend money in Cuba except under a few restricted categories such as full-time journalists, in effect, imposing a travel ban. According to the law, the government can seek prison sentences of up to 10 years and fines up to $50,000 against people it accuses of violating its restrictions. According to Guild, not a single case is known where someone has been fined that amount or sent to jail so far. In the last two years, the Clinton administration has tightened the restrictions, banned direct flights from Miami to Havana, and has made it easier to impose administrative fines on people the government claims violated its regulations.

Over the past 18 months, Washington has levied fines of $1,500 - $4,000 on several dozen people for such alleged infractions, Guild told the June 22 meeting participants. In addition, hundreds of people have received threatening letters from the Department of the Treasury upon their return from Cuba, Guild said, among the estimated 70,000 who have traveled to the island without a license since early 1996.

Meeting participants from Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and other cities are setting up local festival committee meetings and encouraging groups in other cities to do the same to discuss the denial of licenses and organize the protest campaign. Ray Harris, from the Chicano rights group MEChA at the Dominguez Hills College near Los Angeles, said the Treasury Department denial was unconstitutional. "They are trying to intimidate young people from going to Cuba to talk about Chicano liberation and other freedom struggles with young people from around the world. But they will not succeed."

In addition to launching a protest campaign, representatives from local organizing committees in Boston and Los Angeles reported that several people in their areas plan to go as journalists. A number of youth going to the festival are regular contributors to campus newspapers or other media and will go on the trip on editorial assignment, which does not require a license.

Meeting participants concluded the best way to minimize possible government harassment is to carry out the largest and broadest protest campaign possible.

There was also quite a bit of discussion on fund-raising over the next several weeks to maximize the number of people who can go to the festival. The U.S. Organizing Committee extended the deadline for the full $600 payment to July 3. Local committees are also fund-raising to augment the costs of plane tickets from their cities to Cancún, Mexico or Nassau, Bahamas, the two meeting points for U.S. participants.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home