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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 27, No. 2. 1964.

Yanks Defy Cuba Travel Ban

Yanks Defy Cuba Travel Ban

To get to Cuba, 59 American students were forced to fly half way round the world because of U.S. State Department interference reports the International Union of Students magazine (Communist).

An American government ban operates against U.S. citizens travelling of Cuba. If this ban is contravened the State Department threatens to invalidate travellers' passports.

The group of 59 students detied the ban and have undergone several disciplinary actions by the American government and other bodies such as the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee.

When the students returning from Cuba landed at Idlewild Airport, New York, after being forced to travel via Spain, Federal officials tried to stamp their passports "Not Valid-Tentatively Withdrawn."

However, the students, according to the Communist-run World Student News, "decided to stay on the airport premises until their right to travel freely was recognised."

The officials gave In but the students didn't get away from the airport unmolested. H.U.A.C. subpoenaed 10 of them to attend one of it's notorious hearings.

When students in the audience at the hearing "indicated their support for the students' right to travel," as the Communists put it they apparently received strong treatment by policemen in attendance.

The following day of the hearing saw some students banned from the "public" hearing with the result that five were arrested after a sit-down and brawl outside an H.U.A.C. building.

Students who managed to get in to the bearing Were expelled after applauding a student witness who accused the H.U.A.C. of "despicable conduct" and said he thought it was his duty to break the State Department's ban on travel to Cuba.

Other demonstrations were held and four student leaders of the 59 strong Travel to Cuba group have been indicted on "charges of conspiring illegally to organise and promote such trips." The Communist magazine also reports that the maximum penally for this "crime" is 15 years and 20,000 dollars.

The students Indicated earlier that they proposed to "collect funds for our legal defence and to make a tour of the United States to proclaim the truth with which we have been in touch in Cuba."