JENKINTOWN PERSONAL INJURY ATTORNEYS

Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuba President Raul Castro, is not allowed to come to Philadelphia to accept the award she has been given for her gay rights activism. Mariela has been denied access by the State Department to attend the conference on civil rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.

Mariela is the director of Cuba’s national Center for Sex Education. She is being honored for helping create campaigns on behalf of the LGBT community, training police on relations with the LGBT community, and has attempted to get lawmakers to legalize same-sex unions in Cuba. Many people are upset that she will not be attending the conference because she has done so much for the LGBT community, and Philadelphia was hoping to recognize that.

Mariela will be in New York to work on a 20-year follow-up to the U.N. population conference in Cairo in 1994.  The State Department however has a ban on allowing Cuban Diplomats to travel farther than 25 miles outside of central Manhattan.

Philadelphia officials thought there would be no problem because Mariela was allowed to attend an academic conference in San Francisco in 2012. After she attended that conference, people were upset because the U.S. rules do not allow communist party members and other high-ranking Cuban government officials entry without special dispensation. Although Mariela’s only connection with the government is her family ties and the fact that the sex education center where she works is a part of Cuba’s public health ministry, people still were upset by her attendance.