BY LAURA GARZA
"The right to travel is a fundamental aspect of individual liberty protected by both international law and the Constitution. It is also essential to the exercise of First Amendment freedoms," states a friend of the court brief submitted by a wide range of organizations in support of a suit challenging current U.S. government restrictions on travel to Cuba.

The brief was filed on behalf of the Northern California and the national American Civil Liberties Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Association of American Publishers, Center for National Security Studies, and Human Rights Watch. They are supporting a challenge to regulations restricting travel to Cuba being brought by several individuals and the Freedom to Travel Campaign, which has organized educational trips to Cuba since October 1993.

The brief outlines the interest each group has in seeing the travel ban ended, while it also notes several of the groups have taken no position on the U.S. embargo against Cuba as a whole. It states, "The ACLU has long worked to end the travel ban to Cuba as part of its larger project to ensure the Free Trade in Ideas between Americans and persons overseas.

Adversely affected by travel ban
"The Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the largest private association of scientists in the United States and the world, representing over 140,000 individual members of the scientific community, and nearly 300 affiliated scientific and engineering societies," explains the court document.

"AAAS has made the issue of freedom to travel a major policy focus. Special attention has been given to the U.S. policy restricting travel to Cuba because of the experiences of a number of our members and affiliated scientific groups who have been directly and adversely affected by these policies, including a number of psychologists and mathematicians who were denied the right to travel to Cuba to attend scientific conferences recognized and sanctioned by the International Council of Scientific Unions."

The document further explains, "AAAS is a party to this amicus brief because the concrete experiences of mathematicians, engineers and other scientists who have been subjected to the U.S. government's travel licensing procedure demonstrate how this process is inherently arbitrary, inconsistent and capricious, imposing prior restraints and other unreasonable restrictions on the exercise of the rights of freedom of speech, association and travel, in violation of the U.S. Constitution and comparable provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by the U.S. in 1992."

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) is the principal trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry. The organization watches over copyright issues, First Amendment rights, international freedom to publish, and funding for education and libraries.

"The President of AAP, Ambassador Nicholas A. Veliotes, testified regarding the travel ban before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He also led a delegation of publishers who exhibited their books in Cuba in February 1995," explains the statement to the court. "The Association strongly believes that exchanges of ideas, books and informational materials among the peoples of the world must be encouraged, not impeded, especially where non-democratic societies are involved."

The Center for National Security Studies is a civil liberties organization that monitors actions taken by the government under the rubric of national security interests to insure that constitutional rights are not undermined or violated. It has long advocated ending the travel ban.

Critical right for public debate
Human Rights Watch monitors human rights abuses and has published 11 reports on conditions in Cuba, the most recent of which sharply criticized U.S. restrictions on travel to Cuba. It stated, "In the context of Cuba-U.S. relations, the right of Americans to travel abroad is critical to their ability to participate fully in public debate on foreign policy and international security matters, to share information with Cubans who are largely isolated from American viewpoints and opinions, and to return to the United States capable of informing their fellow citizens of conditions abroad."

The brief outlines the history of attempted restrictions on the right of U.S. citizens to travel, including an effort in the 1950s that was eventually struck down to ban the issuing of passports to members of the Communist Party. Because of previous rulings protecting the right to travel, the U.S. government in 1982 resorted to imposing currency restrictions under the Trading With the Enemy Act in order to render travel to Cuba illegal.

The document notes the government currently argues that constitutional rights can be restricted, in spite of laws and regulations protecting them, if the executive branch deems the restriction an "appropriate" response to national security interests. By this logic, the brief states, "it sets a standard that would sustain all restrictions on international travel because by definition there would always be some foreign policy nexus."

The Freedom to Travel Campaign has not complied with government requirements to apply for a license to organize trips to Cuba. The group has continued to successfully organize such visits. The government froze their bank account at one point, and individuals taking part in Freedom to Travel trips have been questioned, harassed, and subsequently received letters warning them of possible violations of the currency restrictions.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home