[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 35 (Tuesday, March 18, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H1078]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               KUWAITIS STILL BEING HELD PRISONER BY IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure tonight to join with 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Curt Weldon. The gentleman and I 
have both been active in working with the Kuwaitis on this issue.
  Most people do not even understand that there are hundreds of people 
being held by Saddam Hussein in Iraq, who are just innocent women and 
children, husbands and wives, men and women, just ordinary Kuwaitis who 
have been whisked away by the Iraqi Army during the Gulf War and have 
never been returned.
  It is one-tenth of 1 percent of the population of Kuwait that is 
still being held by Saddam Hussein. That is the equivalent in the 
United States of 250,000 people being held prisoner by a foreign 
hostile power.

                              {time}  1915

  The United States can be proud and we Americans can be proud in 
particular of the role that we played in freeing the people of Kuwait 
from the aggression of Saddam Hussein and from the hold of Saddam 
Hussein. We can be proud that our soldiers, our men and women marched 
off and struggled for peace and freedom and succeeded. But the job is 
not done when the equivalent of 250,000 Kuwaitis are still in the hands 
of Saddam Hussein. One thing that we can be proud of, we won the war 
against Saddam Hussein. We won it. In fact, I was just in Kuwait 
several months ago and they have initiated democratic reforms in that 
country that seem to make it all worthwhile. They now have free 
newspapers and radios and criticism of the government, opposition 
parties. This is one of the highlights of the Middle East. This is a 
shining example of what happens when people really do want to try to 
set up a free society. The human rights abuses that Kuwait used to be 
known for have somewhat disappeared. But now they turn around, the 
people of Kuwait, their sons and their daughters are gone. Their 
husbands and wives are missing. Over 600 people are missing. The United 
States should make it clear that there will be no normalization of 
relations with Iraq until those prisoners are released.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon].
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. I would just add for the record that as I 
mentioned earlier, we also include nationals from nine other nations 
who are being held illegally by Iraq. These are not all Kuwaitis, these 
were people living in Kuwait, but some of them were actually of the 
nationality of nine other countries which include India, Bahrain, Oman, 
the Philippines, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. There 
is a total of nine other nations. And we are not just talking about 
military personnel, we are talking about 29 people from the private 
sector, we are talking about 128 students, students that were taken 
away from Kuwait, their parents have no idea where they are or what 
happened to them. We are talking about 3 housewives, 18 retired people, 
and 26 who are unemployed. So it was across the broad spectrum. These 
are ordinary people.
  Kuwait's point is and the world community's point should be if these 
people have been killed, then Iraq should come forward and say they 
have been killed. They should tell the families the whereabouts of 
these individuals. But that has not happened. We should not sit still 
while this atrocity continues.
  I thank my colleague for joining me and for yielding to me.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. As I say, we have every reason to be proud of what 
the United States did during the gulf war to protect Kuwait and the 
other people of the Middle East against aggression. We have every 
reason to be proud of Kuwait since then because they have become a more 
democratized system. They have more of a functioning, representative 
government and they have reached out to end human rights abuses and 
moved forward to establish freedoms they did not have before.
  We can also be very proud of the Kuwaitis for what they did when they 
were being held hostage and occupied by Saddam Hussein. They in fact 
risked their lives, common Kuwaitis risked their lives to protect the 
lives of American citizens who happened to be in Kuwait at the time 
that Saddam Hussein invaded. Just as the Kuwaiti people risked their 
lives for those Americans they did not even know, we should tonight 
make it our business to tell Saddam Hussein and the regime in Iraq that 
those Kuwaitis who they hold must be released and we must think about 
them. We may not know them but we know the Kuwaiti people risked their 
lives for Americans they did not know. Let us pay that courtesy back 
and insist that Saddam Hussein release all those prisoners.

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