[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 36 (Monday, March 8, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2429-S2430]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   HUMAN RIGHTS IN CUBA AND COMMEMORATING THE BROTHERS TO THE RESCUE

 Mr. MACK. Mr. President, I rise today to express my support 
for Senate Resolution 57 condemning the Cuban government's human rights 
record and calling on the President to make all efforts necessary to 
pass a resolution condemning Cuba at the UN Human Rights Commission 
meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.
  Many people have written and spoken about the latest crackdown in 
Cuba as if they were discovering for the first time the nature of Fidel 
Castro's brutal regime. Fidel Castro is a tyrant. He rules with 
absolute authority and uses fear and greed to maintain his power. For 
forty years he has demonstrated to us his nature. He has not changed. 
We must continue our pressure on him--voice our opposition to him. And 
we must continue our support for the struggling Cuban people. The 
choice should not be difficult to make: we must stand with those 
suffering under one of the few totalitarian Marxists remaining in power 
in the world, and we must stand up to condemn the actions of the brutal 
regime.
  One clear reminder of who we are dealing with is the murder in the 
Florida straits of four Americans in 1996. They were flying a 
humanitarian mission when the Cuban Air Force shot their unarmed 
aircraft out of the sky. For three years, Mr. President, we have all 
known about this murder, and for three years, I have been struggling to 
understand why this administration refuses to take appropriate action.
  The Boston Globe published a very powerful essay by columnist Jeff 
Jacoby to mark this anniversary. I'd like to read from it. Jeff 
captures the starkness of the mismatched foreign policy in place, 
comparing the act, which Fidel Castro committed with this 
administration's unprincipled response. His piece is titled ``Murder 
Over the High Seas.''

       They were trying to save lives. Three years ago this week, 
     they paid with their own.
       When Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Pena, and 
     Pablo Morales took to the skies that day in their little 
     blue-and-white Cessna 337s, their plan was to search the 
     Florida Straits for stranded boat people, refugees fleeing 
     Cuba in makeshift rafts or flimsy inner tubes. There was 
     little enough the fliers could do for any rafters they came 
     upon--toss down food and bottled water, radio their location 
     to the Coast Guard--but that little could make the difference 
     between life and death.
       Of the four, Carlos was the most experienced. He had flown 
     more than 500 such missions for Brothers to the Rescue, and 
     had saved scores of boat people from drowning or dying of 
     thirst. Armando, by contrast, was going up for only the 
     second time. What all four had in common was a love of 
     American liberty--and a profound concern for any Cubans so 
     desperate to escape Fidel Castro's Caribbean hellspot that 
     they would risk their lives to get away.
       On Feb. 24, 1996, Carlos, Armando, Mario, and Pablo took 
     off from an airfield in Opa-Locka, Fla. They intended to fly 
     just below the 24th parallel, well north of Cuba's 
     territorial waters. Both planes contacted Havana air-traffic 
     controllers as they approached the 24th parallel, identifying 
     themselves and giving their position. Whereupon the Cuban Air 
     Force, without warning and without reason, scrambled two MiG 
     fighters and blew the rescue planes out of the sky.
       The Cessnas and their passengers were disintegrated by the 
     Cuban MiGs. Only a large oil slick marked the spot where they 
     went down. No bodies were ever recovered.
       Three of the men--Carlos, Mario, and Armando--were US 
     citizens. Pablo, a former refugee who had himself been saved 
     by Brothers to the Rescue in 1992, was a permanent US 
     resident. What happens when four American civilians are 
     butchered in cold blood, over international waters, by the 
     air force of a Third World dictatorship? What terrible 
     retribution does the United States exact for a quadruple 
     murder so barbaric and unprovoked?
       The astonishing answer is: Nothing happens. There is no 
     retribution. Indeed, the Clinton administration takes the 
     position not only that Castro must not be punished for the 
     four lives he destroyed, but that the victims' families must 
     not be permitted to recover anything for their loss.
       In the wake of the shootdown, under intense political 
     pressure, President Clinton agreed to sign the Helms-Burton 
     Act. Title III of the statute allows American citizens whose 
     property was confiscated by the Cuban government--Castro 
     nationalized billions of dollars' worth of American assets in 
     the 1960s--to file suit against any foreign company using 
     that property. Title IV bars any officer of a foreign 
     company trafficking in stolen American property from 
     receiving a visa to enter the United States.
       Properly enforced, Helms-Burton would weaken Castro's grip 
     on power by reducing the flow of foreign capital into his 
     treasury. But Helms-Burton is not properly enforced. Title 
     III has never taken effect because Clinton keeps suspending 
     it (as the law permits him to do if he finds that a 
     suspension ``will expedite a transition to democracy in 
     Cuba''). Title IV has never taken effect because the State 
     Department refuses to carry it out.
       The hobbling of Helms-Burton is a stinging insult to the 
     memory of the four murdered men. But the Clinton 
     administration has delivered a cut unkinder still.
       In 1996, the families of Armando, Carlos, and Mario sued 
     the Cuban government for damages caused by the wrongful 
     deaths of their loved ones, a legal remedy specifically 
     authorized by the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty 
     Act. In December 1997, Senior US District Judge James 
     Lawrence King awarded the plaintiffs $187.7 million in 
     damages. ``Cuba's extrajudicial killings . . . were inhumane 
     acts against innocent civilians,'' he wrote in his final 
     judgment. ``The fact that the killings were premeditated and 
     intentional, outside Cuban territory, wholly

[[Page S2430]]

     disproportionate, and executed without warning . . . makes 
     this act unique in its brazen flouting of international 
     norms.''
       But when the families attempted to collect their judgment 
     out of frozen Cuban assets, the Clinton administration 
     blocked them. The president famous for feeling people's pain 
     is less concerned with the pain of grief-stricken Americans, 
     it would appear, than with the pain Castro might feel if the 
     judgment were paid.
       The administration's position is staggering. Castro is an 
     open and declared enemy of the United States and has been for 
     40 years. In sending combat aircraft to slaughter four 
     unarmed Americans engaged in humanitarian rescue work, he 
     committed an act of war. The response of the United States 
     should have been to remove Castro from power and put him in 
     the dock for crimes against humanity. (for the murder of just 
     ``one'' American in 1989, the United States invaded Panama 
     and seized Manuel Noriega.)
       Clinton's appeasement of Castro is a cruel betrayal. The 
     families of the dead Brothers of the Rescue deserve better 
     from their government. And the tormented people of Cuba, 
     bleeding under Castro's whip, deserve better from their free 
     and powerful neighbor to the north.

  Mr. President, it is clear to me that the United States has failed to 
stand up for the protection of the individual when damaged by 
international terrorism. I spoke last week about this administration's 
failure to adequately address terrorism in the Middle East. The pattern 
remains consistent--appease the enemies of freedom, the advocates of 
terror, in the hopes that they will not strike again. This approach 
simply fails. I don't know how to say it any more directly that that. 
This approach fails.
  The Congress passed a law last year supporting the awarding of 
damages from the frozen assets of terrorist states being held by the 
Treasury Department to American victims. This law can help the families 
of the Brothers to the Rescue pilots. The President, however, waived 
this relief asserting our national security interests would be better 
served by protecting Castro's money. How can this be? Nobody has 
provided to me an adequate explanation of what interest would cause us 
protect terrorism and shun American victims.
  Mr. President, this resolution calls on the United States to stand up 
for freedom, justice, and human dignity. It states that the President 
of the United States should lead on this issue by having the United 
States introduce and make all efforts necessary to pass a resolution in 
Geneva condemning the human rights record of the Cuban government. Mr. 
President, if there is one time and one place where we are obliged to 
condemn human rights practices, it is at the UN Commission meeting in 
Geneva each year. That is what this resolution calls for, and I calls 
for its immediate passage.

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