[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 24 (Tuesday, February 27, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H1258-H1259]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             FURTHER SANCTIONS AGAINST CASTRO ARE WARRANTED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Menendez] is recognized 
during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise as the Representative of the second 
largest concentration of Americans, Americans of Cuban descent in the 
Nation, to condemn a brutal and cold-blooded, premeditated killing of 
American citizens, two of them born in the United States, one of them a 
Vietnam veteran.
  I am tired of hearing the word ``exile.'' They are U.S. citizens.
  Our response to the killing of American citizens in international 
airspace has not been sufficient. I am amazed at Members of this House 
who come here and in essence by their comments brush aside those facts. 
And they turn against our own government and look to our government as 
the alleged cause of the death of American lives. There is only one 
person who has caused the death of these four U.S. citizens, and that 
is the Castro dictatorship and Fidel Castro himself. No one who studies 
Cuba will dispute that only such an order could be given at the highest 
levels of that dictatorship because of the international consequences 
that would flow from it.
  This is a brutal regime. It is a brutal regime. Castro can come to 
New York and he can wear an Armani suit. And he can sip Chablis with 
Madame Mitterrand, but that does not make him a respectable citizen of 
the international community. His actions would but his actions belie 
the appearance he tries to give when he comes to visit this country. 
This ruthless murder came at the end of a week of unprecedented 
repression in Cuba.
  I hear many of my colleagues who disagree with our policy say we want 
to see peaceful democratic change come to Cuba. So do we. There is a 
group within Cuba struggling to create peaceful democratic change. 
Their name is Concilio Cubano, Cuban Council. It is a group of 120 
different organizations who simply in the past week wanted to meet, 
committed to peaceful democratic change within the island, who wanted 
to meet and have the right to recognize under the Universal Declaration 
of Human Rights and the right that we as Americans enjoy every day to 
assemble and to have a redress of grievances.
  What was the Castro regime's actions? It was to create mass arrests. 
Over 50 of their national leadership were placed in jail. Dozens of 
others were placed under house arrest. Women were strip-searched so 
they would not participate with the organization. One of their leaders 
who I spoke to on the phone directly from the United States to Cuba, 
after I spoke with him, that evening he was arrested. He has been 
sentenced to a year and a half in jail. For what? For speaking out. 
Nothing less than speaking out, nothing more than that.
  Mr. Speaker, I flew with Brothers to the Rescue over a year ago. I 
was on one of those planes. Their mission has been a search and rescue 
mission of human lives. They have saved thousands of lives in the 
Florida Strait. On the day that I flew with them, we saved a dozen 
people who were on a tiny island who had been there for several 

[[Page H1259]]
days. No one knew that they were there. We threw food and water to them 
and then radioed their location to the U.S. Coast Guard who 
subsequently rescued them.
  Is there any more prolife efforts that one could have than those of 
Brothers to the Rescue? Mr. Speaker, the downing of unarmed defenseless 
civilian pilots calls for a strong response. The President has taken 
some actions. He has had our ambassador move in the United States, 
suspending all charter flights, agreeing to move on the Helms-Burton 
legislation, increasing Radio Marti's penetration into Cuba. But that 
is not enough.
  I expect the President to announce other measures in the days ahead. 
Among those measures I would like to see, Mr. Speaker, is to begin to 
limit all licenses for visits to Cuba, revoking the visas of the Cuban 
interest section here in Washington and making sure that we have a 
further economic embargo on the island against the regime, which is the 
only thing that they have understood to create change within Cuba.

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