[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 23, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3880-S3882]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 HAITI

  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, a week ago today the last of the United 
States troops who had been sent to Haiti came

[[Page S3881]]

home. These brave soldiers, as well as others from countries around the 
world, helped bring enormous changes to that troubled nation, that 
troubled neighbor of the United States. Last Tuesday's withdrawal 
provides us an opportunity to reflect upon what has been accomplished, 
what is left to be done, and what special role the United States--and 
particularly those of us who have a responsibility in the National 
Government of the United States--will play in this next series of 
chapters of the nation of Haiti.
  There has been considerable attention focused on the problems that 
remain in Haiti, and any observer would admit that there are very 
substantial challenges yet to be overcome in that nation. But I believe 
that an analysis would also require some comparison of what is the 
circumstance in Haiti today, in April of 1996, as compared to the 
recent past.

  Let us take the period of 1993. Haiti in 1993 was a scene of anarchy 
and lawlessness. Haiti's military dictatorship ruled by machete. There 
had been an estimated 3,000 political killings per year during the 
reign of terror of the military dictatorship.
  I remember, Mr. President, visiting a Catholic church in downtown 
Port-au-Prince where a Government official had been removed from a mass 
in front of his terrorized family and friends, taken into the street, 
and summarily executed.
  A few weeks later, with a delegation from the United States, I had 
the honor of placing a wreath at the point at which that brave citizen 
of Haiti gave his life. For that action and others, I was declared 
persona non grata and was not allowed to reenter Haiti as long as the 
military dictatorship was in control.
  Haiti continues as a violent society. It has been a violent society 
since the establishment of the republic, the second republic--second 
only to the United States of America--in the Western Hemisphere.
  But since the arrival of United States troops and other international 
military and civilian participants in an effort to restore democracy to 
Haiti, 30,000 weapons have been removed from the streets. Today there 
is the fledgling beginnings of civilian law enforcement and a judicial 
system.
  In 1993, there was no independent law enforcement capability in 
Haiti. Law enforcement was an adjunct of a corrupt military. There was 
no semblance of an independent judiciary. The judiciary was subservient 
to the autocratic military dictatorship. While there is a long road to 
travel to bring Haiti to a mature justice system, the first steps have 
been taken.
  In 1993 and again in 1994, thousands of refugees left Haiti headed 
for the United States in man-made rafts. Mr. President, 25,600 persons 
were rescued at sea during the first half of 1994 alone--25,600 persons 
rescued at sea during a 6-month period. Countless others were less 
fortunate. They died of dehydration or were eaten by sharks.
  After the United States-led operation, the flow of refugees from 
Haiti has plummeted. In 1995, the Coast Guard intercepted only 5 
percent of the number that had been intercepted in 1994, the first 9 
months of 1994 having been under the rule of the military regime. The 
total numbers intercepted in 1995 were 1,204 individuals.

  On democracy, Haiti has been an independent Republic with the 
pretense of democracy for 192 years. But during the first 191 of those 
192 years, there has never been in the history of the country a 
transition of power peacefully from one democratically elected 
President to a successor democratically elected President--191 years in 
which the democratically elected President was either toppled by a 
military regime, beheaded, forced into exile, or in some other manner 
involuntarily relinquished political responsibility and another, often 
nondemocratically elected, successor took his place.
  In February of this year, for the first time, that historic event 
occurred. President Aristide voluntarily, peacefully, pursuant to the 
Haitian Constitution, transferred the power to the new President. The 
United States, during an equivalent period of time of our history as a 
Republic, had 40 peaceful democratic changes of administration. This 
was the first time that had occurred in the history of Haiti.
  So, Mr. President, as we talk about the things yet to be done, I 
think we as a democratic nation, we as a nation which has had a long 
and intimate history with Haiti, we as a nation which decided that it 
was intolerable to have old-style military autocratic regimes using 
their power of the machete, power of the sword, and power of the gun in 
order to displace a democratically elected government, we who are 
willing to organize the international community in an effective effort 
to restore democracy to Haiti, I think should take some pride in the 
changes that have occurred and the steps, beginning though they may be, 
toward respect for human rights and democracy in Haiti.
  But much remains to be done. Since Operation Restore Hope, the United 
States troops and their civilian counterparts have given the people in 
Haiti the chance to rebuild their country. Some of the things that 
remain to be done include poverty and unemployment, which continue to 
plague the Haitian people. The estimates are that unemployment now is 
in the range of 80 percent plus. With an uncertain future, the Haitian 
people lack a sense of optimism for what the future holds for 
themselves and their children. International investors have been wary 
about returning to Haiti and continuing the rebuilding of the economy.

  I applaud those of my colleagues who are dissatisfied with actions 
that have occurred in Haiti such as the limited investigation of some 
of the political killings. We must insist upon continued progress in 
this area. This Congress and this Federal Government have special 
responsibilities to help the Haitian people maintain their momentum 
toward democracy and respect for human rights and an improved economic 
future.
  Some of the things that are particular responsibilities of this 
Congress include a role to play in training the new Haitian Parliament, 
the first Parliament that truly justifies the characterization of being 
an independent legislative branch in the history of the Republic of 
Haiti.
  The Haitian police force needs continued guidance. We have assisted 
in selecting and training some 5,000 Haitian police officers who will 
be the beginnings of an independent police presence in that nation. It 
is like having a police force made up of 5,000 rookie police, each with 
approximately 4 months of training before being placed on the streets. 
We now have a role to play in the maturing of that police force, the 
development of a leadership cadre, the development of a culture of how 
a police force maintains itself in that democratic society.
  Probably the most difficult task that we face is in assisting the 
Haitian people in the revitalization of their economy. We must work 
with President Preval, and we must assure that there is a movement 
toward a marketplace, privatized economy in Haiti. For too long the 
Haitian people have suffered under an economy which has been highly 
centralized, highly socialized, and enormously corrupt and inefficient. 
The Haitian Government must also work with international financial 
institutions to create a climate that will make it again receptive for 
foreign investment.
  President Aristide established the goal of Haitian economic progress 
which was to move from misery to poverty with dignity. The Haitian 
people should have a friend and partner in the United States in that 
road that they have yet to walk.
  Mr. President, a concern that I have at this juncture is the ability 
of the United States to build on the progress that has been made and to 
assist the Haitian people in overcoming the challenges that still 
remain. It has become bogged down in domestic partisan politics, and we 
have been less constructive than we need to be in assisting our 
neighbors in Haiti. We have wasted valuable energy and time trying to 
either establish the grandeur of the gains that we have made or to 
point out each shortcoming. As difficult as those shortcomings may be, 
they have been given a proportion which is out of relationship to the 
totality of the circumstances in Haiti.

  Both the Congress and the administration, both Republicans and 
Democrats, have some legitimate opportunity to share in the successes 
that have been achieved in Haiti and to accept the responsibilities for 
the future.

[[Page S3882]]

 We will do a disservice to the United States ability to influence the 
progress and future of a country which is important enough to us that 
we have just invested almost $2 billion and the lives of thousands of 
U.S. uniformed and civilian personnel, and we will have lost the 
opportunity to demonstrate our serious commitment to assisting a 
country which is trying to go through some of the most difficult 
transitions--from tyranny to democracy, from anarchy to a civilized 
society, from misery to poverty with dignity.
  Those are our challenges. Those challenges are only going to be met 
if we do it on a bipartisan basis. This Senate met that challenge in 
times past. In 1948, when many felt it would be impossible for a 
divided Government--with a Republican-controlled Congress and a 
Democrat in the White House, a Democrat who appeared to be vulnerable 
and therefore should be exploited by emphasizing differences--men of 
the stature of Senator Arthur Vandenberg recognized that the American 
national interest was in unifying behind policies that would serve our 
Nation's need to constrain the expansion of communism. We followed the 
enlightened leadership of Senator Vandenberg, and now, 50 years later, 
we see the fruits of that policy by the collapse of the Soviet Union 
and our ability, through almost a half a century of bipartisan 
commitment to that policy, to have avoided the need to use nuclear 
power and an excessive amount of United States military force in order 
to achieve that objective of the collapse of the Soviet Union and 
communism. We need to use that example as our standard as we set our 
policy for Haiti.
  Mr. President, there are very real consequences if we continue a 
policy of treating Haiti as a partisan domestic political issue rather 
than an American foreign policy opportunity. We do not need to ask 
ourselves what will happen if we allow the progress that has occurred 
in Haiti to wither. We have already seen what will happen. We will see 
it again on our beaches with the dead bodies of Haitians who tried but 
failed to make it to our shores. We will see it at the tarmac of 
Guantanamo with hundreds of tents of refugees who have been able to 
survive and are awaiting their fate in limbo as they were just 3 years 
ago. We are not playing our role today in termination of a constructive 
American policy toward Haiti.

  I am concerned that within the Senate we see a blocking of 
humanitarian assistance which will be critical to this next stage of 
Haiti's development. Assistance in the form of health care, funding 
that will be needed to procure essential medical supplies, vaccines, 
and for the operation of health clinics throughout Haiti is being held 
up by this Congress. The shutting down of humanitarian programs will 
exacerbate adverse conditions in Haiti and could contribute to further 
economic and political instability.
  Equally disturbing, it has become fashionable to denounce Haiti's 
efforts to make a transition to democracy. If the question is, were the 
elections that were held in 1995 a standard of perfection by a mature 
democracy, the answer is clearly no. If the question is, were they the 
fairest, most accurate reflections of the opinion of the Haitian people 
in the 192-year history of that country, the answer is, with as much 
energy and confidence, yes.
  We need to build on these successes, and we must do so in a 
bipartisan manner. I support the efforts of Congress to assist and 
demand that there be performance, performance in areas such as 
investigation of political murders. But I also ask us to recognize the 
reality of the situation. We are asking a government, whose President 
told us in person-to-person communication in this very Capitol just a 
few days ago, that his government had reached the point of financial 
stringency, that it could not pick up the garbage. To now expect that 
this government is going to have American or Western European standards 
of sophistication in forensic investigation is to ask what is not going 
to exist.
  We must work with the people of Haiti and with their government. If 
we fail to do so, we will, again, see the kind of pictures that we saw 
in the very recent past of U.S. Coast Guard ships picking up overladen 
small wooden boats with refugees reaching out for salvation. We will 
see, again, the pictures of the butchered citizens of Haiti, like the 
man dragged from the Catholic church during mass.
  At that point, we will ask ourselves not whether we scored 
appropriate political points, but whether we serve the national 
interest.
  It is ironic that at the very time Congress is about to turn again to 
the question of illegal immigration and how to frustrate its imposition 
on the United States, that we are close to bringing about a crisis on 
an island which has been the source of so much of that illegal 
immigration. Clearly, one of the most fundamental things that the 
United States can do to reduce the amount of illegal immigration is to 
turn serious attention to assist in the social and economic development 
of those countries which are the most likely sources of illegal 
immigration.
  We have made progress on that front as it relates to Haiti. Illegal 
immigration is down by over 20 times in the last 3 years. The question 
is, are we going to lose this momentum or are we going to build on the 
progress that we have made?
  During the period of military rule in Haiti, as has been the case for 
decades previously, Haitians, in a time of desperation, stripped the 
country's hilly terrain of trees in order to make charcoal for heat and 
for cooking.
  Today, actions by the Federal Government and the White House and the 
Congress threaten to cause a mud slide that will bury the progress that 
Haiti has made with our cooperation and assistance over the past 2 
years. It is our challenge to see that we can plant trees and stabilize 
the soil of Haiti so that, together, the people of Haiti, the people of 
the Western Hemisphere, and particularly the people of the nation which 
has been their longest and truest friend, the United States of America, 
can look forward to a new century of prosperity, a new century in which 
at least the people of Haiti have realized the goal of moving from 
misery to poverty with dignity.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, are we in morning business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. We are considering Senate Joint Resolution 21.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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