[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 21 (Wednesday, March 2, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 2, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                    UPDATE ON THE SITUATION IN HAITI

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to update the situation in 
Haiti. I want to talk about our Haitian policy and the fact that that 
Haitian policy, and all of the activities surrounding Haiti presently, 
represent a mushrooming United States foreign policy and domestic moral 
crisis.
  Mr. Speaker, it is a foreign policy crisis, it is a human rights 
crisis, and it is a crisis which is producing an erosion of the moral 
authority of the United States. Haiti is just a small country compared 
to the United States and the industrialized nations of the world. Haiti 
has a population of 7 million. Haiti has no great amount of natural 
resources, no oil, nothing of great desirability with respect to the 
industrialized nations and their needs for raw materials. Haiti is not 
militarily a strategic location for any United States military 
concerns.
  However, Mr. Speaker, Haiti is in the Western Hemisphere, and Haiti 
has a long history of being dominated by the United States policymakers 
like every other nation in the Western Hemisphere. The United States 
does consider what happens in Haiti important. The United States would 
never allow another power, even a friendly power like France, or Canada 
or Japan, to begin to dominate in the relationship with Haiti, dominate 
the making of foreign policy in Haiti or dominate the economic 
situation, as meager as it may be, as insignificant as Haiti's economy 
may be.
  Mr. Speaker, I assure my colleagues that if the Koreans were to come 
in with an economic development plan, or the Japanese were to come in 
with an economic development plan and all that leads to, because the 
great competition in the world right now is an economic competition, 
not a military competition, I assure my colleagues if any 
industrialized nation were to come in and to begin to work with the 
Haitian leaders, or begin to work to return the democratic leaders to 
Haiti with the expectation that they would have a great role in the 
making of future policy and economic development in Haiti, I assure my 
colleagues the United States Government would not sit by quietly and 
say, ``Great. Go right ahead. We wash our hands of the Haiti situation 
and the problems.''
  No, Haiti is important to us, and therefore we must look at the 
situation and determine a new course of action with respect to the 
return of democracy in Haiti. We can take no other route as a great 
nation. We can take no other route as a leader of the free world, as 
the last superpower. Haiti represents a mushrooming crisis, and we 
should deal with the crisis right now.
  As a result of our lack of a cohesive and well-directed foreign 
policy with respect to Haiti, as a result of our lack of an honest and 
morality based, morally based policy with respect to Haiti, Mr. 
Speaker, we are being backed into a position that this Nation has never 
been in before. We are being backed into a situation where we are 
behaving like one of the greatest totalitarian nations on the face of 
the Earth. There are very few totalitarian powers lacking morality of 
concern for morality. There are very few powers that never subscribe to 
human rights that are behaved in the way we are presently behaving in 
Haiti. We have backed into a situation which is totally untenable.
  First of all, Mr. Speaker, we are in a situation where our asylum 
policy represents a double standard. The United States has always had a 
policy for treating refugees in a very liberal way. The Statue of 
Liberty is not the symbol of this country for no reason. It is because 
of the fact that we have always had open doors to those who were 
suffering or persecuted. Our asylum laws have been very generous and a 
great outreach for those who were in need. Only in the situation that 
presently exists with respect to Haitian refugees have we behaved in 
this way. Only now have we refused to follow our own asylum traditions, 
our traditions of granting asylum. Only now have we imposed a double 
standard on a particular nation.
  Mr. Speaker, the Haitian refugees are alone in the way they are 
treated by the United States Government. What are the implications of 
that? The Haitian Government is alone, and it stands out in bold 
relief.
  There is nothing subtle about the fact, or secret about the fact, 
that we have put the Haitians in a special category. If there was 
anything subtle about it before, then certainly an incident that took 
place several months ago where Haitian refugees came ashore in Florida 
in the same boat with Cuban refugees--somehow they had gotten together 
in the Bahamas, and I do not know the full story--but it was clearly 
documented that the Cuban refugees in that boat were welcome and given 
the usual asylum treatment, the same one we would give to refugees 
coming from Hungary years ago, the same one we are giving now to 
refugees from the Soviet Union, the same one we gave to refugees from 
Vietnam. They were treated in accordance with our regular, established 
asylum policies and traditions. In the boat, the same boat as the 
Cubans, the Haitians were arrested, taken into custody and treated 
totally different.

  Mr. Speaker, with respect to Haiti we have a double standard. Is it 
because the Haitians are black? What other reason can there be? For the 
first time we have a nation of black people seeking asylum in large 
numbers, and our response has been a different kind of response, a 
different standard. Is it because the Haitians are black?
  We have gone further than just have a different standard with respect 
to asylum. We also have a policy of searching out Haitian boats on the 
high seas that are trying to get to this country, boats that are 
bringing people who are seeking to escape the terror in Haiti.
  We all admit that there is terror. Nobody had disputed the fact that 
the present Government of Haiti is a brutal regime, that the present 
Government of Haiti has no philosophy of government, has no purposes, 
has no goals. The only purpose of the present Government of Haiti is to 
drain out of the Haitian economy as much as they can get for their 
personal aggrandizement for their own greed. Everybody agrees that drug 
running and the drug trade is a large part of what is propping up this 
regime in Haiti. Everybody agrees that there is terror and that many 
people have been killed.
  So, Mr. Speaker, here is a situation where a whole nation has been 
placed under a kind of quarantine by the whole world. Nobody in the 
whole world, no nation in the whole world, recognizes the present 
military thugs who are in control of Haiti. We do not recognize them, 
so clearly here is a nation where people are being persecuted 
politically.

                              {time}  2120

  But we take the position that we will stop the boatloads of people 
coming from Haiti, load them upon our Coast Guard ships, and carry them 
back to the terror and the persecution.
  At one time we said it was a humanitarian position, that we were 
merely doing this to make certain people didn't drown on the high seas. 
If you don't want them to drown on the high seas, save them, put them 
in the boats, and give them the usual treatment with respect to asylum. 
Let them be interviewed, let them follow the same procedures, that all 
other refugees follow. But not with the Haitians. We load them into 
boats and we take them back to the illegal, unlawful, unrecognized 
military regime that has power in Haiti.
  Why do we do this? We would not do this if they were French. We would 
not do this if they were Vietnamese. We would not do this if they 
Hungarians. We would not do this if they were Jewish. We have examples 
where we have opened our borders for people who are under that kind of 
pressure. We have good examples. We have a good tradition. We should be 
proud of that tradition. But in the case of the Haitians, the American 
tradition ends, breaks down, and we impose something new, an 
interdiction, which is something very different from anything else we 
have ever done to any other group of people. Why? Is it because they 
are black? is it because this is a black nation, these re black people, 
these are black refugees?
  We have gone even further than interdiction. First, we don't give 
them the same treatment with respect to asylum. Then we have imposed a 
unique interdiction policy on the high seas. We have gone one step 
further and we have established a blockade. We have ships around Haiti 
that are not there only to enforce an embargo. Before the embargo was 
tightened, we had ships around Haiti to keep the people in Haiti. We 
don't want the boats to even leave.
  We have a blockade around a sovereign nation to keep the people in, 
to hold them in and let the persecutors reign supreme. They cannot get 
out. They cannot even venture on a boat to get on the high seas.
  If they want to risk their lives, if they feel they are under such 
tremendous pressure that they want to risk their lives on the high 
seas, then perhaps as human beings they have the right to make that 
choice. But we won't even let them make that choice. Never before have 
we put a blockade around a nation to keep the people in. This is 
unique. It applies only to Haiti and Haitians. Is it because the 
Haitians are black? Have we set up a double standard because they are 
black?
  This is a question that every person of African descent anywhere in 
the world has to ask. We cannot go any longer with posing the question. 
For a long time following President Clinton's election, we were 
willing, we have been willing, to accept the President's explanation 
that all of this represents a temporary policy, a temporary set of 
procedures, to deal with a crisis situation. And the president pledged 
to solve the situation and to solve the problem by doing what all of us 
know is the right thing to do, the one thing that will produce a 
solution, which is the return of the rightfully elected President of 
Haiti, John Bertrand Aristide. Aristide was elected by 70 percent of 
the voters. Seventy percent. When have we had that kind of election in 
this country?
  So the approval of Aristide by the masses is clearly understood. We 
know who the masses want. For the 7 months that Aristide was allowed to 
govern, before the U.S. trained army threw him out of power, before the 
army that is in league with the CIA, their leaders were on the payroll 
of the CIA, an army with leaders who were on the payroll of the CIA, 
before they threw Aristide out of power, during that seven months the 
number of people trying to get out of Haiti and get into the United 
States went down to zero. The Coast Guard will document this fact. No 
people were found trying to get out of Haiti and get into the United 
States via the high seas during that 7-month period.
  Why? Did John Bertrand Aristide have an economic development program? 
Was he able to overnight do miraculous things? No, he was not able to 
do miraculous things overnight for the economy of Haiti. What he did 
bring was an honest government for the first time in the history of 
Haiti, a government that cared about the people, a government that 
proposed simple things, like maybe the rich should pay taxes so we will 
have some money to pay for our schools. Simple things like no matter 
what it is, we ought to have some kind of minimum wage. It may be far 
lower than it is in the United States or other countries, but we ought 
to make people pay a decent wage. We ought to have some kind of 
restrictions on the exploitation of workers. We ought to have a cushion 
the power of certain political figures in the rural areas. We ought to 
do some basic honest things that bring Haiti into the 20th century with 
respect to government. That is all he proposed.
  He gave hope by just proposing, let us do things in a civilized way. 
Let's do things in the way in which all modern nations operate. Let's 
do the basics. The people rallied to his aid. They stopped trying to 
get out of the country. Many Haitians who lived in the United States 
and in other parts of the world were returning to Haiti. There is a 
large Haitian population outside of Haiti, very skilled people, very 
knowledgeable people. If they were to return in large numbers, they can 
turn the country around.
  All they ask for is an honest government that is real, a government 
that wants to live by the law, a government that wants to abide by the 
Constitution, and they would do that. John Bertrand Aristide offered 
that hope. And the Haitians wanted not only total stay in, but others 
who were outside wanted to get back from.
  That is a solution. The solution to the Haitian problem is very 
simple: Return the rightfully elected, democratically elected 
President, to Haiti, and take away the threat, take away the 
exploitation and the oppression, of the military government. The 
military government who is trained by the United States, the military 
whose leaders were once on the payroll of the CIA. We have the numbers. 
We can do it. But we have not done that.
  So because we have not done the right thing, because we have not done 
the practical thing, because we have not done the obvious, we instead 
find ourselves enveloped in a byzantine policy of evil. We have an evil 
policy radiating around the Haitian situation. It is evil to have a 
different set of standards for one group of people. And when you can 
find no other reason than they are black, it becomes racist. This is 
not a racist nation. Our policies of government do not reflect racism. 
In this particular instance, we have allowed ourselves to drift into 
racism. We have a different set of standards,  different standards with 
regards to interdiction, a blockade to hold people in. All of it is un-
American. It is un-American. We have backed into an un-American racist 
policy.

  United States Government, this present administration, has a failed 
Haitian policy. I use the term failed Haitian policy because one highly 
placed person in the State Department spoke to newspaper reporters and 
said that Haiti was a failed nation. Haiti was a failed nation.
  Well, Haiti is a failed nation, and without Aristide it will continue 
to be a failed nation. But our Government has never referred to any 
other nation in that way. By implication they were saying Haiti is a 
failed nation and we should wash our hands of Haiti. Forget about 
Haiti. That was the tone of the statement made by this highly placed 
person in the State Department.
  Why do you use that tone with respect to Haiti? Germany was a failed 
nation that did great harm to the rest of the world. They killed 
millions of people, the Germans. But when the war was over, we took 
that failed nation and we brought all kinds of aid to that failed 
nation, and we rebuilt that failed nation.
  Japan was a failed nation, and they did great harm to this country in 
the process of failing. They killed 3,000 people in 1 day at Pearl 
Harbor. This failed nation we did not write off and say it is a failed 
nation, therefore the implication is the United States should not waste 
any time trying to rebuild or resuscitate this failed nation.

                              {time}  2130

  The Soviet Union is a failed nation. The Soviet Union failed in a 
mission which was designed to wipe us out, to wipe us off the face of 
the Earth as a nation. They had missiles aimed at us to do it 
physically. That failed nation now we are working in harmony with to 
salvage, trying to salvage the Soviet Union. So why would anybody in 
the State Department who supports our policy toward Russia and the 
Soviet Union and the former nations of the Soviet Union, why would 
anybody who supports our policy toward Germany and Japan, why would 
they make a point that Haiti is a failed nation, and therefore Haiti 
does not deserve any of our attention?
  We have a failed foreign policy. We have failed diplomats in the 
State Department, but we do not need to dwell on the fact that Haiti is 
a failed nation. Our failed foreign policy is based on a faulty 
analysis given by the CIA from the very beginning. An analysis of the 
election which catapulted John Bertrand Aristide into power was a 
faulty analysis.
  In the first place, the CIA and its bungling, blundering intelligence 
operations in Haiti as usual did not know who Aristide was at the time 
that he was elected. It was a great surprise to our CIA, and there were 
agents who were in on this situation, I assure you, agents who had been 
in that country for years, so why is it they were totally surprised 
that Aristide was elected by 70 percent of the vote? That was a first-
rate failure. They had egg all over their faces about that, and they 
became very bitter about it and proceeded to produce faulty analyses of 
the situation.
  The CIA had picked somebody else to win the election, but the United 
States Government was spending money via the CIA and other entities, 
spending money for another candidate to win. Not only did he lose, but 
he lost big. There was no way to patch it up, so the CIA proceeded to 
try to smear, assassinate the character, of John Bertrand Aristide.
  They were very upset because their alliances in Haiti, the alliance 
with their political figures and the alliance with the military 
leaders, was being threatened, jeopardized. They began a vendetta 
against John Bertrand Aristide, a vendetta which was totally 
unprofessional, and of course the CIA is an unprofessional 
organization, the CIA is a bungling organization, the CIA is a very 
expensive organization, probably a very corrupt organization, and we 
cannot prove any of this because the CIA is a very secret organization. 
It is only when things bubble to the surface that we get a glimpse of 
what is going on.

  Any organization that can have a person in a high level, one of the 
highest ranking officers in the CIA, the person in charge of Soviet 
counterintelligence, any organization that can have a person in that 
position, and that person be a spy for Russia, for the Soviet Union, 
for 8 years, 8 years, and they not be able to detect it, not be able to 
discover it for 8 years, is an organization that is in great need of 
overhaul. Something is radically wrong with the CIA. There is a culture 
of buddyism, a culture that cannot see their colleagues. There is 
something radically wrong.
  The people who have been charged with espionage for 8 years, the man 
who headed the Soviet counterintelligence desk, the man who they 
charged probably has caused the death of at least 10 agents in Russia 
who were working for the United States. That man was living off of his 
CIA salary, as if he was a multimillionaire. The man and his wife were 
living like multimillionaires, and the CIA could not see that something 
was wrong for 8 years, for 8 years. Something is radically wrong with 
the CIA.
  How can we believe their analyses of anything? This is the same CIA 
which did not predict the collapse of the Soviet Union's economy. Their 
No. 1 priority was the Soviet Union. This CIA could not predict that 
the Soviet Union's economy was going to collapse. It came as a great 
surprise. We have thousands of people in that operation studying it 
from every angle, as well as agents on the ground, with large expense 
accounts which have been wasted paying counterespionage agencies.
  Recently they had been boasting that, ``Well, we caught one spy here 
in our country that the Russians were employing, but we have employed 
many of theirs. We have turned many of their agents,'' and can you 
imagine the millions of dollars we must have shelled out to Russian 
agents, people who were giving us information about Russia?
  Can you imagine that? It does not take much, I am sure, any sophomore 
listening and any kid can understand the game. Can the Members imagine 
how many Russians swindled the United States out of millions of 
dollars, giving us secrets that were not secrets? We had all these 
agents that were turned in by the CIA and were spying on Russia for us, 
and we could not predict the collapse of the Soviet Union's economy, so 
then they must have been giving false information in exchange for the 
millions of dollars they were paid.
  What I am saying is that the CIA is not in a position to be the 
kingpin, the core of making policy for any nation, until it is 
revamped, until the President puts leadership in the CIA which belongs 
to his generation.
  I think a large part of the problem in the State Department and in 
the CIA is that there are men who do not belong to Bill Clinton's 
generation, they do not think like Bill Clinton. They come from a 
different era. They come from an obsolete line of thinking. They are 
the proteges, more in the line of Oliver North, than they are modern-
thinking activists like Bill Clinton.
  To base our policy in Haiti on an analysis done by the CIA, on 
information supplied by the CIA, is to get off on the wrong foot. They 
chose to fight back and to wage a vendetta against the man that they 
could not predict would win the election, Aristide, so they have waged 
a war on Aristide, assassinating Aristide's character at every turn.
  Where are we right now? They are saying right now that the best thing 
that could happen to Haiti would be for Aristide to make another 
concession to the military, to the thugs, to the drug smugglers, one 
more concession they want. They say that would solve the problem, but 
Aristide allowed them to name people in a cabinet, appoint a prime 
minister, name a cabinet, and the military people have lined up a 
cabinet for him to name.
  That is what we are saying now, that Aristide is a bad guy because he 
will not agree to a total sell-out, a sell-out that any sophomore in 
high school could understand. It is not a subtle sell-out, it is a 
total sell-out, an obvious sell-out.
  They would just say, ``We surrender.'' If what is being proposed by 
the State Department and the administration's negotiators were to be 
put in place right now, it would be the end of democracy forever in 
Haiti, for a long, long time in Haiti, because what they are saying is, 
``Turn over your government to the enemy, turn over your government to 
the military thugs that threw you out in the first place. Turn over 
your government to the people who have always exploited the 7 million 
people in Haiti. Tell the Haitian people to forget it, there is no 
hope, and the future will be like the past, surrender.''
  In answer to that President Aristide said no, and we have a movement 
underway now to just jettison President Aristide. I expect sometime 
soon we are going to hear some kind of proclamation that makes 
President Aristide persona non grata in this situation.
  Aristide's answer is the following. I just want to sum it up. 
Aristide's answer in summary is that, ``Yes, I will cooperate in a new 
initiative, but the new initiative must be consistent with the 
following eight steps.'' There must be a departure of the leaders of 
the September 30 coup as foreseen in the Governor's Island Agreement, 
an agreement that Aristide signed many months ago. It called for the 
departure of the military leadership October 15, 1993. They did not 
abide by the agreement. They did not leave.
  Everything that Aristide agreed to, everything that he signed that he 
would do, Aristide has done.

                              {time}  2140

  But the military has not. Aristide says you can get the military out 
if you would really seriously impose severe sanctions by the Security 
Council of the United Nations, and accompany that with adoption of 
measures to train Haitians to participate in the United Nations 
technical assistance project. If you take measures to end the flow of 
goods coming into Haiti from the borders of the Dominican Republic, and 
if you allow an informational campaign for the Haitian population, in 
other words, the rightfully, legally elected Government of Haiti, 
headed by President Aristide, which would like for the United States 
Government to assist it in just beaming television and radio messages 
into Haiti.
  You know, we had Radio Free Europe, we had Radio Havana, the U.S. 
Government has sponsored and passed many radio information operations, 
many operations to jump over the borders of a totalitarian government 
and bring the message. There is nothing now.
  We know how to do that. But as elementary and inexpensive an 
operation as that, we have refused to carry out for the Government of 
Haiti headed by President Aristide.
  He has just asked for these simple things. And that is step one.
  Step two, the adoption by the Haitian Parliament of the laws that 
were foreseen in the New York Pact. The Governor's Island Agreement was 
signed by President Aristide and called for Haitian amnesty for the 
leaders of the Haitian coup. He agreed to that, and it is up to the 
Parliament to adopt what he agreed to.
  Step three is the deployment of a technical assistance mission of the 
United Nations to Haiti.
  Step four is name a new prime minister. Aristide is willing to name a 
new prime minister assisted by the State Department, if they take these 
other steps first.
  Step five is the return to Haiti of President Aristide in 10 days 
after the naming of a new prime minister. Now, in the plans being 
proposed by the failed diplomats who are in charge of our Haitian 
negotiations or Haitian policy, the failed diplomats do not want to 
mention the return of Aristide at all. They want Aristide to take 
certain steps to compromise with the military, to name a new prime 
minister, put people in the cabinet who are his enemies, but they are 
not willing, even if he does that, they are not willing to say that we 
shall support your return by a date certain and set a date.
  As any intelligent being would request, President Aristide says, 
``Say when I can return. If you will not say it, I will say it, 10 days 
after the naming of a new prime minister.'' That is step five.
  Step six, the lifting of the sanctions on Haiti. The embargo would be 
lifted, because once Aristide is returned, it is no longer necessary to 
have those sanctions and the embargo. The rightful democratic 
government would be back in place. There would be confirmation then of 
a new prime minister, step seven.
  And step eight is reinstatement of economic aid to Haiti suspended 
some time ago when the coup took place.
  These are the simple steps that President Aristide has proposed.
  The Congressional Black Caucus supports them. Numerous other 
organizations support them. We will probably be moving to make certain 
that all of the American people understand the significance of those 
steps.
  The Congressional Black Caucus, at this point, has a position which 
states, and the President has been made aware of this position, which 
states clearly that we are in favor of protective military intervention 
if necessary. We are on record as saying that there are times when only 
force can resolve the situation, and we do not recommend an attack on 
anybody in Haiti. But we do recommend in the Congressional Black Caucus 
position that a force of people be used to return President Aristide to 
Haiti, that that force of military people be large enough to make 
certain that President Aristide is protected, all of the members of the 
legislature are protected, all of the members of the cabinet are 
protected, everybody who is in any way connected with the government is 
protected. If someone chooses then to attack their protective force, 
then the protective force would have to respond likewise. But we are 
not proposing an invasion. This is the Congressional Black Caucus 
position at this point.
  I might say that it is also the position of the overwhelming number 
of Haitian people, Haitian-Americans in this country, and it is the 
position at this point of the Haitian people.
  Now, the people of Haiti and the Haitian-Americans in this country at 
the beginning of this process when Aristide was first overthrown were 
adamant about the fact that they did not want an invading army to 
return Aristide. Aristide certainly has not called for an invading 
army. Aristide has said he wants the Governor's Island Accords 
enforced. Aristide has said that drug smuggling and the drug industry 
base in Haiti, that the United States certainly has a right to do 
something about that. But he has not called for an invasion.

  The people of Haiti have called for and made it clear that they are 
desperate, that they are certain that there is no other way to deal 
with the situation. Negotiations will not do it.
  There is a certain class of human being that knows no other language 
except force. We saw the SS in Hitler, we saw Saddam Hussein, we have 
seen in Bosnia murderous slaughter going on and on until force was 
introduced as a counterbalance to the murderers.
  There are some situations which can only be handled by countervailing 
force, and I consider myself as much of a peace advocate as anybody in 
the world. I consider myself a follower of Martin Luther King. 
Nonviolence is always the way you go when you can go that way, but 
there comes a time when it is impossible to deal with a situation using 
nonviolent techniques alone. Haiti is one of those situations.
  We are dealing with thugs. We are dealing with criminals. They have 
uniforms on, but they are thugs. They are criminals. They are in 
control of a drug trade which produces $1 million a month. They are not 
going to turn loose of that unless it is dislodged by a countervailing 
force greater than they are.
  An army of 6,000 has all the guns, machine guns, hand grenades, all 
the armored cars, and the population has nothing. So they are in 
control.
  We have the policy. We have proposals which would change the failed 
United States policy into a policy for returning Haiti to democratic 
rule.
  We are considering further actions. I will quickly summarize those.
  We are considering a request from the leadership of the Congress. We 
have been dealing with the President, the administration, but the 
leadership of this Congress needs to answer the question: Should we 
have a separate asylum policy for Haiti? Should we have separate and 
unprecedented interdiction policies for Haiti? Should we have a 
blockade around Haiti?
  Our Democratic leadership and our Republican leadership, we want 
their support for the human rights in Haiti, for a return to American 
principles driving our policy. We want their support. We want support 
from the leadership. We want support from the total Congress. We want a 
sense-of-the-Congress resolution that would tell the President that 
this Congress stands for a policy which treats Haitians as they treat 
everybody else in the world.
  We want a sense-of-the-Congress resolution which says we want an 
asylum policy which applies to the Haitians the way it applies the the 
Cubans. We want an end to interdiction on the high seas and the return 
of people to the terrorists in Haiti. We want an end to the blockade 
which keeps people inside. We want an end to all of these un-American 
acts. We want an end to the erosion of the moral authority of the 
United States of America. We want an end to it.
  We want a sense-of-the-Congress resolution which tells the President 
where we stand.
  We want to go further and call a summit on all the people who are 
interested in justice for Haiti, and by implication interested in 
having all nations treated equally in this hemisphere, all nations 
treated equally throughout the world. So that means anybody can come to 
the summit, not just black leaders, not just American leaders. We want 
to reach out to the moral leaders of the world. We would love to invite 
Mikhail Gorbachev to conference and to get involved as a world figure 
and as a man who is the winner of a Noble Peace Prize and get him 
involved. We would like to invite him. Michael Manley from Jamaica, we 
would like to invite him. We would like to invite any world leader of 
stature who looks upon this situation and says, ``Here is a moral 
problem first of all,'' and then want to get involved.
  We would like to call on the nations of the United Nations, other 
than the United States, to deal with the moral issue.
  There are four friends of Haiti that have been involved in this 
situation on a regular basis, Canada, France, Venezuela, and the United 
States. They have been working cooperatively to try to resolve the 
problem, but they have been ineffective. We need more than four 
obviously. Other nations should join.
  We call on Japan to join the effort to restore democracy in Haiti. We 
call on Israel to join. We call on Germany to join the effort. We call 
on all the nations of the world. We call on Russia to join the effort 
to restore democracy in Haiti. It should not be confined to just the 
four friends. They have reached the point where they are paralyzed.

                              {time}  2150

  We have a failed policy, and we need other nations to come to the 
rescue of the four who have failed.
  We need a moral crusade for the restoration of democracy in Haiti. 
That moral crusade should begin in the streets of America. Certainly 
among African-Americans, the issue of double standard, the issue of 
separate treatment, the implication that people of African descent can 
be singled out for separate treatment, is a reason to go to war--
nonviolent war--but a war against this administration. This 
administration must move forward on Haitian policy and confront 
African-Americans of this Nation who have every reason to feel that 
this is not just racism that will stop with black Haitians but will be 
carried forward to black Americans. The danger is there, the danger is 
clear and present, and we have to have a response to the fact that we 
have pointed out we understand this danger. A moral crusade for the 
restoration of democracy in Haiti is not just a foreign policy issue, 
it is a domestic issue, it is an African-American agenda issue. The 
spirit of Martin Luther King must rise and march again in order to deal 
with an evil situation. This is an evil situation.
  Aristide is the key to the solution. It is a simple solution, as I 
said before. The CIA analysis is totally wrong. The CIA analysis would 
like to have the American people believe that Aristide is some kind of 
egomaniac. Since when does an egomaniac become a priest and as a priest 
take the poorest church in the hills of a rural area as his beginning 
church and as a priest move on to one of the poorest churches in the 
slums of Port-au-Prince? That is not the behavior of an egomaniac.
  Since when does an egomaniac lecture to youth groups, try to convert 
prostitutes, and day in and day out live with his parishioners to try 
to console their suffering, their poverty? This is not the behavior of 
an egomaniac. But that is the beginning of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
  He began as a priest, he came under suspicion by the church merely by 
quoting from the Bible revolutionary statements, in their opinion, 
statements that called for justice for the poor. His church peers 
considered that revolutionary in the context of Haiti. So they began to 
watch him. They sent him all over the world to study, to get him out of 
Haiti. He studied in Canada, in Israel. Jean-Bertrand Aristide speaks 8 
languages. He speaks Hebrew very well, better then he speaks English. 
He does speak English, Spanish, on and on. .
  Jean-Bertrand Aristide is a scholar. Jean-Bertrand Aristide is a 
poet. Jean-Bertrand Aristide is a writer, he is a theologian. Jean-
Bertrand Aristide is a philosopher. Jean-Bertrand Aristide is a honest 
man who inspires the confidence of millions. Jean-Bertrand Aristide 
never trained to become a politician. He did not seek public office. 
There was no game plan that he had.
  And the one criticism of Jean-Bertrand Aristide that is true is that 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide knows very little about politics. He knows very 
little about statecraft. These are the things that you have to buy, 
statecraft; many experts, good, well-qualified people in Haiti, can be 
pulled in to run the details, do the micromanagement of the state. That 
can be done if you establish an honest government. What Jean-Bertrand 
Aristide has is vision, what Jean-Bertrand Aristide has is compassion. 
He inspires trust. A nation of people who had given up hope, 7 million 
of them, looked to him for leadership. He gives hope.
  The only person who can bring Haiti together and make Haiti function 
as a nation instead of as a pirate cove--that is what it has always 
been, a cove, a bandit cove where a handful of elite families owned the 
top plantations and had almost a situation where the rest of the 
population was enslaved. They shared power with the military, who used 
drugs and other kinds of corrupt practices to rake off as much money as 
they could from the population.
  So this is what Haiti is today, and this is what it was in the past. 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide can break that pattern. Jean-Bertrand Aristide 
has certain qualities possessed by George Washington. George Washington 
was an unselfish man without a drive toward power. When the crown was 
put on George Washington's head by his officers and they wanted to make 
him a king, he refused. If he had been an egomaniac, if he had been 
power-driven and accepted the crown, he would have thrown the infant 
nation of the United States into a moral turmoil that probably would 
have lasted for decades. But that unselfish act by George Washington 
was probably his greatest act, probably the greatest thing he ever did. 
He refused to be crowned king.

  Aristide never wants to become king, he never aspired to assume power 
in Haiti. His concern has always been for the people on the bottom, the 
people in the slums, for the suffering that he wants to relieve in some 
way.
  They said Aristide was unstable, that is another big lie perpetrated 
by the CIA and repeated by certain people in the other body. Aristide 
is unstable, they say. They even believe--somebody got the details of 
documentation, and they said Aristide spent some time in a Canadian 
hospital for mental treatment. They gave the name of the doctor. The 
secret CIA suddenly let out some of their secrets. Well, once their 
secrets were let out, you could check them. They double-checked the 
documentation of the CIA and found that the hospital did not exist, 
there was no such hospital, and there was no doctor by that name.
  So the one thing that could be checked, that was checked, was found 
to be a total falsehood.
  All you have to do is sit in the company of President Aristide for 1 
hour and you know this is not an unstable person, this is not an 
egomaniac, this is a man of stature, the stature of Martin Luther King, 
Nelson Mandela, Mohandas Gandhi.
  What the CIA cannot see, what they are blind to, is greatness. 
Obvious greatness that everybody else can see, obvious greatness that 
millions of people who voted in Haiti could see. The CIA is blind to 
it. They are so corrupt, so caught up in their cultural secrecy, so out 
of touch with the world, such blunderers, such expensive misfists that 
they cannot see the obvious. But the obvious is true; Aristide is a 
great man. And it does not matter what the United States does, it does 
not matter what the United Nations will do in the future, you will 
never take away from Aristide the role that he has at this point and 
will continue to have in the lives of the people of Haiti.
  The man is moving toward sainthood. We do not want martyrs, but 
certainly he has been a candidate for martyrdom several times.
  If there is anybody in the world who deserves to be unstable or 
slightly mentally off, it would be Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Jean-
Bertrand Aristide has faced death three times, he has stared down death 
three times that have been documented, three times where there have 
been guns pointed at Aristide's face and head. That is three times.
  The most dramatic situation happened when the church that Aristide 
was pastor of was raided by the military thugs--this is before he 
entered politics, before he had become president--the church was raided 
by people with machineguns on a Sunday morning while Aristide ws saying 
mass. They came in with the machineguns, and they shot men, women, and 
children. They piled up at the edges trying to escape.
  A group of people in the church led Aristide upstairs into a room in 
the church. Of course, the bandits who came with their guns were 
primarily seeking him. They came into the room where he was, and while 
he lay on the bed and listened, not trying to escape, not doing 
anything, they debated who would kill him. They debated who would kill 
him.
  And you may call it a miracle, but they decided they would go away 
and not shoot him at all.
  If that did not unnerve Aristide, if that was not the kind of 
experience that would shake someone up and to make them a bit unusual 
mentally, then there is no other way to do it.
  He has every reason. That was just one of the three attempts where he 
was staring death in the face and he survived.

                              {time}  2200

  As my colleagues know, Aristide is being treated by this 
administration and the failed diplomatic State Department as if he was 
a ward boss from one of our big cities, a tinhorn politician. They are 
so blind, and there is so much racism there, that they cannot see the 
caliber of the man they are dealing with. History will spit on them, 
and their judgment and their analysis, as a result of the way they are 
treating Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Our overreliance on the CIA analysis 
has generated an entrenched, wrong-headed policy starting from the CIA 
to generate our policy on Haiti. We have gone from one failure to 
another. We have gone down, down, down into a bottomless pit, but now 
we are watching the moral authority of the United States being eroded.
  Mr. Speaker, this little country and this little situation is taking 
a grip on the moral authority of the country. This little situation is 
mushrooming into a situation that will have African-Americans in the 
streets of our Nation because they understand the implications of a 
double standard where black people are concerned because black people 
are involved and they are treated a different way. They are not going 
to wait for the implications to play themselves out. They are going to 
protest and rise up now.
  Duplicity and deception permeate this failed policy toward Haiti. We 
say on the one hand we are for democracy, we want to return Aristide. 
On the other hand we have the officers who will overthrow him on the 
payroll of the CIA. We have done nothing really to send a message to 
those officers that we will not tolerate their staying there 
indefinitely. We are saying on the one hand we want them to go. On the 
other hand we are doing nothing to remove them. We are doing nothing to 
send a message to really remove those officers. The pressure is all on 
Aristide.
  So the duplicity and the fraud of our present policy must end. The 
failed diplomats who have perpetrated this policy must be removed. The 
people that President Clinton has in charge of the Haitian foreign 
policy are men not of his generation. They are men who are obsolete in 
their way of looking at the world. They are men who cannot solve this 
problem because they have blinders on, and they see the world through 
glasses that are tinted with the past, and they can do nothing more 
than fail.
  The President must strike out on his own and remedy this problem. I 
think my colleague, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy], has 
summed it up very well. Some of the points I already made he makes in a 
letter to the President dated February 18. He calls on the President, 
he urges the President, to lead an effort in the United Nations to 
impose a worldwide freeze on assets and visas of the entire officer 
corps and their civilian supporters. Some of us have been led to 
believe that that had already been done. They deliberately made us 
think that the United States had imposed a freeze on the assets of most 
of the officers and denied them visas a long time ago. We are seeing 
now that that was only on a few of the top leaders, so there was 
duplicity and some fraud in previous policy proclamations.
  Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy] goes 
further to ask the President to urge the United Nations to impose a 
total commercial embargo against Haiti, including financial 
transactions on air travel. The only exemptions should be for food, 
medicine and strictly humanitarian goods or services.
  Point three: Put additional pressure on the Dominican Republic to cut 
the flow of goods across the border with Haiti and allow an 
international observer at the border.

  Four: Increase radio and television broadcasts to Haiti to break the 
military's control of information and explain the steps the military 
must take to end the sanctions, and explain that to the Haitian people.
  And point five in Mr. Kennedy's letter to the President:
  Work with other countries to set the groundwork for reintroducing the 
U.N. and OAS technical mission and human rights mission as soon as 
possible.
  There are other people like the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. 
Kennedy], who are concerned about this situation who have written to 
the President, other Members of Congress. There are organizational 
heads. Recently a statement was signed by the head of about a hundred 
organizations asking for the same things to take place.
  And on January 3, Mr. Speaker, I wrote a letter to the President that 
I would like to close with. I think in the final analysis it is up to 
President Clinton. The people around here are not capable of solving 
this problem. The men in the CIA who have been handling the Haitian 
policy should be removed totally. The people in the State Department 
who have been handling Haitian policy should be removed. We should 
replace them with people of his own generation who understand the world 
as he understands it.
  I wrote a letter to the President making this plea, that he take this 
kind of action. I want to close with a quote from this letter.

       Mr. President, please be assure that we recognize that the 
     decision for new action to move the Haitian situation forward 
     will not be an easy one. We also recognize that you alone 
     will have to choose the course for United States policy and 
     action. Whether Haiti continues to be an island of seven 
     million human souls being trampled deeper into the mud of 
     poverty and disease by a murderous, heartless army and a 
     dozen feudal lords; or whether Haiti will have a new birth as 
     a nation can only be determined by you, Mr. President.
       We strongly urge that you act alone if necessary, Mr. 
     President. It is not exaggerating to say that you are 
     presently in a position comparable to the one occupied by 
     President Truman on the eve of his decision to recognize the 
     State of Israel. Public opinion was against the recognition 
     of Israel. The CIA strongly opposed recognition. The majority 
     of the members of Congress and the members of the President's 
     cabinet including General George Marshall opposed U.S. 
     recognition of Israel. President Truman was left alone to 
     meditate in communion with the wisdom of the ages. The 
     President decided to recognize Israel and thus set in motion 
     a chain reaction which gave birth to, and nurtured the 
     survival of a great nation.
       It is also not exaggerating to state that most of the seven 
     million people of Haiti are forced to exist in a state close 
     to slavery. As we all know, when Abraham Lincoln proposed the 
     issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation all of his cabinet 
     members voted no. To free the slaves Lincoln cast the only 
     yes vote.
       Mr. President, the fate of the Haitian nation is in your 
     hands. Please remember that history always applauds, 
     validates, and honors those leaders who take risks to help 
     the least powerful among us.

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