Pushing the Political Envelope in the Cuban-American Community, Talks with Cuba

The Global Liberty Alliance Podcast with Jason Poblete

In this podcast, GLA's Jason Poblete speaks with former Ambassador Martin Palouš. Martin is currently a Senior Fellow at Florida International University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and Director of the Václav Havel Program for Human Rights and Diplomacy. Palouš was part of the movement that helped end the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe during the Cold War. The defense of fundamental individual and human rights has been at the core of his playbook ever since. Born in Prague on October 14, 1950, Palouš studied Natural Science, Philosophy, and International Law, and he has engaged in rich academic praxis for more than 25 years.

He was one of the first signatories of Charter 77 in defense of human rights and served as spokesman for the dissident human rights group. Charter 77 was an informal civic initiative in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members included a wide range of civil society leaders at the time, including Martin and the future President of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel. Their work and that of other civil society leaders supported by the U.S. laid a foundation for President Ronald Reagan's push to end the Cold War.

Palouš went on to have a rewarding career in international law and foreign affairs, including being elected to the Czechoslovakian Federal Assembly and a member of its Foreign Affairs Committee. Later he served as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in the newly formed Czech Republic and was then asked by President Václav Havel to travel to Washington, D.C. as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Czech Republic to the United States from September 2002 to November 2005. Dr. Palouš was designated as Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United Nations, where he served in New York from 2006 through 2010.

On November 19, 2022, Palouš said in an op-ed that ran in the Miami Herald that he disagreed with the view held by many in the Cuban diaspora that there "cannot be any dialogue with the current Cuban government as long as it pursues policies of systematic violations of human rights and imprisons and persecutes the members of Cuban democratic opposition." He also said, "I’ve always defended human rights and the bravery of those who oppose the Cuban regime, and I’ve had the mettle to act on my convictions as a dissident." What keeps these two communities apart? And why should the American taxpayer care about this?

Further Reading

• Publications and other resources for Martin Palouš
• "The Road to Freedom Grounded in the Rule of Law," a paper published by the FIU School of International and Public Affairs, Václav Havel Program for Human Rights and Diplomacy, prepared in collaboration with the Global Liberty Alliance (2022).
• La Patria es de Todos - The Nation Belongs to All of Us (1997).
• Jason Poblete and Jamie Suchlicki, “When Should the U.S. Change Policy Toward Cuba,” Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami, Cuba Brief, August 13, 2007

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