Dr. Hilda Molina, a top neurosurgeon, had it all in Castro's Cuba. She was honored in the medical profession, wrote for international medical journals, got invited to a lot of conferences, took a seat in Cuban parliament, and was a confidant of Fidel Castro.
 
She threw it all away over two things, though:

1) Her objection to Cuba's two—tier medical care system that enabled rich foreigners to come in for treatment at first—class facilities in Cuba, paying in dollars, while ordinary Cubans got some of the most atrocious medical care on the planet.  
 
2) Her objection to Castro's fetal stem—cell research program on conscience ground. Knowing enough about it up close, she refused to participate. Castro would have none of that. She lost her job, her parliament position, her livelihood and everything she'd worked for. But she would not back down.
 
Last December, she tried to leave Cuba to visit her Argentinian son, his wife and their children. There was a showdown at the Argentinian Embassy and much to its disgrace,  the Argentines refused to give her a visa, shoving her back to Castro's waiting agents on the outside. Nothing has been heard from her since.
 
Until now. Yesterday, CADAL, a pro—democracy, pro—free market think tank in Buenos Aires, got hold of a letter she wrote a month ago, and forwarded it to its e—mail list. Dr. Molina, in her letter, described to human rights organizations her own plight of being separated from her family, but she also extended the issue to Cuban families in general. She wrote how family separation affects hundreds of thousands of Cuban families who are jailed, separated and torn apart by Castro's regime and the wall of separation it imposes on the world. Every Cuban family is affected by this. She notes that families are the pillar of society and this fundamental attack on family unity strikes at the heart of basic human freedom and the rights of man. And then she places the blame for this exactly where it belongs: on communism itself.
 
She might be easy to dismiss because it's known that she wants to visit her grandchildren in Argentina. But bear in mind that she is writing this on behalf of more than just herself on an issue that has been hurting Cuba for more than 40 years, an issue so big and so widespread that no one thinks about it as something that can be changed. And remember that she is writing it from Castro's Cuba, where she is certain to draw further spiteful penalties. And that she is only in this position at all because she had a conscience willing to give up big things for the sake of elemental human rights in the first place.
 
Castro, meanwhile, has publicly made much of his family—reunification concerns — in the case of Elian Gonzalez. Dr. Molina's letter shows for the world the colossal fraud of Castro's Elian stance, because of his forced separation of millions of Cuban families in the name of his island communism. The monstrous hypocrisy of Castro's regime is exposed in full by this letter.
 
If the United Nations and any of these other human rights groups are to be taken seriously for all their pious declarations on the human rights, the rights of women, or the rights of children, all of which she cites, they would do well to pay attention to this woman of conscience. And so should we.