In recent months, the international media has been overwhelmed by stories of oppression and violence in countries around the world. News about violent oppression and rebellion in Syria and throughout the Middle East, as well as by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Central Africa, have circulated like wildfire. In spite of the massive outcry in response to such humanitarian atrocities, there has been a considerable absence of attention to the oppressive regime just 90 miles off the coast of Key West.

This past week, Pope Benedict XVI visited the island-nation of Cuba for the first time since his ascension to the papacy. There, he called for increased openness and freedom for the Cuban populace and the Catholic Church. During the Pope’s first mass in Santiago de Cuba, a man screamed out, “Down with communism,” and he was subsequently beaten and arrested by the Cuban authorities. The United States is always trying to encourage — while avoiding overstepping its bounds — peaceful transitions in oppressive countries around the world to more open societies that protect human rights. It seems to afford little attention to violations in Cuba, however, which has for over half a century consistently stood in the face of everything for which the United States claims to stand.

The oppression and repression of the Cuban regime was initially met with active response by the United States, as evidenced by the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the ongoing economic embargo. However, since the early days of the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the American population has become increasingly apathetic. It seems that, while Americans push for interventions in areas half a world away, they ignore a situation that has continued to plague the Western hemisphere since 1959.

The leaders of the Cuban Revolution, specifically Ernesto “Che” Guevara, have become symbols of the overthrow of oppressive regimes despite the widespread atrocities and mass murders that they committed in the name of a false ideal. This is not to say that the images of these men should be banned or that the opinions of those who idealize the image of Guevara as a symbol of revolution, ironically or not, should not be met with respect. On the contrary, there is great value in the plurality of publically expressed opinions in the U.S., something we take for granted that is blatantly absent under the Castro regime.

The response to the “KONY 2012” video illustrates the ability that popular media has in shaping the focus of public opinion. An issue that had gone unnoticed for years was brought to the forefront through social media. The arrest and beating of the Cuban dissident this past week, one example out of many of the dangers of the oppressive regime, seems to have gone unnoticed by most Americans. Though the incident may be of a far smaller scale than the mass violence occurring now in Syria or the similar trials of the Egyptian and Libyan people, it is reflective of the half-century fight that Cuban dissidents have been living with, a fight receiving little support since the failed attempts to overthrow the Castro regime in the early 1960s.

Since the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961, Cuba has been a thorn in the side of American regional and global policy. The Castro regime has continually resisted pressures to liberalize and accept greater openness. For many Cuban refugees living in exile in South Florida and throughout the United States, the lack of initiative that recent administrations have enacted toward Cuba is both frustrating and disappointing.

While it is not time to invade Cuba, which would have disastrous consequences for both the United States and the Cuban people, it is time for renewed efforts to liberalize Cuba and return it to the community of nations, holding as a prerequisite the reformation of the Cuban government and the elimination of the mass terror institutions that have maintained the tyrannical rule of the Castro brothers for the latter part of the 20th century and into the current one.