[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 115 (Tuesday, August 16, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 16, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
          AMERICA'S FOREIGN POLICY CREATES MISERY FOR HAITIANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk very briefly. While we have 
been having these very important debates here in this country about 
crime and health care, and are fully engaged in the U.S. Congress in 
business for the people of this country, we have a foreign policy that 
is making life pretty darned miserable in a neighboring country, a 
place called Haiti.
  I have talked many times about this. We read about it almost every 
day. Today, Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to be on the telephone 
with some of the properly democratically elected members of their 
congress, their Chamber of Deputies, as it were, and got an update on 
what is going on down there.
  It is really sort of pathetic that we are not following up the option 
to negotiate with our colleagues, who were democratically elected, in 
the Haitian Chamber of Deputies. There are a great number of them. They 
have invited us to come down and try and work out a negotiated 
settlement, instead of this threat of invasion, this talk of invasion, 
all of these Navy ships and Coast Guard cutters we have steaming around 
down there at this point, and the sword rattling that is going on.
  Mr. Speaker, it is not working very well. It is costing us a lot of 
money. We have estimates of $1 billion or so, and boy, do we need that 
$1 billion. I would love to be able to plug that into more law 
enforcement officers for our Nation's streets, and to deal with some of 
these crime problems that we have been so engaged in.
  Mr. Speaker, be that as it may be, we have a very misguided foreign 
policy in Haiti. It is very expensive. It is probably ill-conceived. It 
is not going to get results anybody is going to want, in all 
likelihood, but it has another factor.
  Mr. Speaker, I think it is time we pause every so often here. We live 
very good lives in the United States of America, most of us. We are 
very fortunate and much blessed to be in this country.
  While we are here, Mr. Speaker, have an embargo which is absolutely 
strangulating Haiti. It is absolutely devastating the poorest people in 
that country and the middle class in that country. Supposedly the rich 
can do for themselves, and some of those who are the target of that 
embargo are actually not feeling the pinch anywhere near some of these 
other folks are.
  We heard today that we have a U.S. hospital up in Limbe, which is up 
near Cap Haitien, up in the northwest part of the country. That is 
completely now overwhelmed. They have no more supplies. They have 
nothing, no medical attention, which is desperately needed for HIV-
positive people, TB people, and so forth.
  All of this is on the rise. There are no treatments, there is no 
prevention. There is overcrowding. There is not even food. We cannot 
simply say, as we keep hearing from Bill Gray, who is the spokesperson 
for the administration on this, that ``We are addressing the food 
crisis in Haiti by feeding 1 million people a day.''
  Mr. Speaker, if we are feeding 1 million people a day, we are not 
feeding them very nourishing food, I understand. Sometimes it is just 
sort of one bowl of thin porridge. There are some 7 million people in 
Haiti, and we wonder what is happening to the other 6 million, if we 
are feeding 1 million. It is very bad times.
  Mr. Speaker, We understand that we have supplies that are rotting on 
the docks that are needed for food and medicine for places like this 
hospital in Limbe, or the 6 million or so that need the food so badly, 
and we discover that it cannot get anywhere because there is no 
gasoline, no transportation, because of the embargo.

                              {time}  1830

  We find infants are dying. We find that young women who had jobs 
before cannot have any jobs now because there is no manufacturing. They 
have had to shut everything down because of the embargo. Some have gone 
back to prostitution. Unfortunately, AIDS is a serious problem in Haiti 
and of course it is now on the increase as a result of all this.
  All of this is happening because of the United States policy. It is 
our foreign policy that is causing these results. The people down in 
Jacmel in Haiti, a city more on the southern coast, go to a TB clinic, 
people who have TB who are being treated, and when they go to this 
clinic, they are not able to get any medication, any treatment for 
their TB because there is not any because of the embargo. So they sing 
and they pray instead and they ask the good Lord to save them because 
there is no medical attention available to them.
  I admire that spirit, I admire that commitment, and I admire their 
trust in the Lord. But we could easily be providing them help for their 
TB to help correct the problem, and the medical attention that they 
need and had been getting up until this embargo came along.
  What I am saying is that we have a policy here in the wealthiest 
nation in the world of absolutely devastating a poor country and making 
life miserable for so many people. It is hard to go to bed at night and 
think there are 6 million people who are not getting the kind of help, 
treatment, food, compassionate relief, and attention that I know every 
American would want to give. If Americans could see the face of poverty 
and the face of misery that is being directly caused by our foreign 
policy in Haiti, I do not think it would stand up for 1 second. There 
would be a revolution here and people would demand that we change our 
policy and do the right thing for Haiti instead of trying to victimize 
the poor and the middle class.
  I have not spoken much about the middle class, but they are the 
people who make things work there. They are the managers, the 
manufacturers, the people who keep things running and provide 
employment for the working class. Those people are being devastated 
because there is no job, no investment, no employment for them, the 
factories do not work, no energy for the factories and so forth. So we 
are having a deterioration of the basic structure we need to rebuild 
that country while we are also starving the very poorest.
  This is not a policy that makes any sense at all. Why are we doing 
this? We want democracy in Haiti, we want to see them grow, we want to 
see them have some prosperity, we want to see them have jobs, we want 
to see disease eradicated, we want to see starvation eradicated, and 
everything we are doing is counter to those directions.
  I find it astonishing that our colleagues here who care so much about 
these things and will speak so eloquently and so much from the heart on 
these subjects when we are dealing with other countries that we talk 
about can somehow turn a blind eye toward what we are doing in Haiti, 
pretending it is not happening. It is happening. It is awful, it is 
happening, and we are responsible for it. How can we do this?
  I challenge our administration, Mr. Speaker, to come up with a better 
policy, and one would surely be to follow this program of dealing with 
the duly elected members of the Haitian Parliament who are our 
counterparts duly elected and find a middle road. It is possible to do 
it. We should do it.

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