Menendez hopes Trump will fight for Cuban human rights

Cuban-America New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez held a news conference in Union City, New Jersey on Saturday (November 26) to react to the death of Fidel Castro.

Asked what President-elect Trump should do about the U.S.’s relationship with Cuba, Menendez said: “It depends which President Trump, President-elect Trump shows up, The one that started off saying that he thought maybe relationships with Cuba was good or the one towards the end of his campaign that spoke about democracy human rights and ending the unilateral concessions and requiring of the type of conditions that I helped write in the law.”

Menendez said the conditions to normalize relationships with Cuba are simple and were not followed by the Obama administration.

“You have to release political prisoners, all of you have to hold free and independent elections, you have to permit a free press to take place like we are enjoying here today and if you do that and if you have those elections internationally supervised and there are fair then you can have a relationship with the United States,” he said, adding that in Burma those conditions were held but not when it came to Cuba.

Castro, the Cuban revolutionary leader on the doorstep of the United States and for five decades defied U.S. efforts to topple him, died on Friday. He was 90.

A towering figure of the second half of the 20th Century, Castro stuck to his ideology beyond the collapse of Soviet communism and remained widely respected in parts of the world that had struggled against colonial rule.

He had been in poor health since an intestinal ailment nearly killed him in 2006. He formally ceded power to his younger brother Raul Castro two years later.

Wearing a green military uniform, a somber Raul Castro, 85, appeared on state television on Friday night to announce his brother’s death.