[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 42 (Wednesday, March 17, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H1384]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page H1384]]
SUPPORT OF HOUSE RESOLUTION 99, CONDEMNING LACK OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CUBA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-Balart) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, the House Committee on International 
Relations at this time is marking up a very important resolution 
condemning the Cuban government, the dictator Castro, for its latest 
and ongoing Stalinist crackdown against the internal opposition and the 
independent press.
  Among the scores and scores and scores of well-known dissidents and 
independent press members who have been arrested in recent weeks are 
the most distinguished members of the internal opposition in Cuba, and 
the four best known and also very distinguished members of the internal 
opposition, Felix Bonne Carcasses, Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello, 
Vladimioro Roca Antunez, and Rene Gomez Manzano. These individuals were 
tried in a farcical and secret proceeding on March 1, and only a few 
days ago, this week in fact, Castro announced the sentences: 5 and 4 
and 3\1/2\ year sentences for those dissidents.
  Now, the internal opposition is working intensely and valiantly in 
Cuba to draw international attention to Castro's deplorable human 
rights violations and continues to strengthen and grow in its 
opposition to the dictatorship. At this time of great repression, it is 
indeed proper and necessary that the international community, as this 
Congress is doing at this time and will do next week, demonstrates its 
firm and unwavering support and solidarity with the internal opposition 
and the independent press.
  What is remarkable and unexplainable and condemnable is that while, 
correctly so, even many of Castro's best commercial allies, such as 
Canada and the European Union and Latin American states, have 
rightfully condemned Castro's recent crackdown, and the government of 
Spain is reevaluating its decision to send the king of Spain there in 
the next weeks, and the members of the Ibero-American Summit are 
reevaluating their decision to go to the summit in Havana later on this 
year, while all that is taking place based on this crackdown by the 
Cuban dictator, what is the Clinton-Gore administration doing?
  The Clinton-Gore administration has reiterated its intent to send the 
Baltimore Orioles to Cuba. I know that is unbelievable at this stage as 
well as in ultimate bad taste. I would say it demonstrates a perfidious 
bad faith. Because while the Clinton-Gore team says that it is a 
people-to-people exchange, the Baltimore Orioles will be going to Cuba 
to a stadium filled by Castro's people. Castro will decide who gets to 
go to the stadium, Castro will be at the stadium, and he will receive 
the public relations banquets that will be provided to him by virtue of 
the fact of this diplomatic gesture of the Clinton-Gore administration.
  So I call upon the Clinton-Gore administration to stop its hypocrisy. 
If the administration is going to condemn the crackdown, condemn the 
crackdown. They should not say they are going to condemn the crackdown 
and then say they are sending the Baltimore Orioles, which is what they 
are doing. So I denounce that as hypocritical, and I denounce that as 
unconscionable.
  At this time, more than ever, the Cuban people deserve and merit and 
require the unwavering support of the international community, 
including the government of the United States. I call upon this 
government to act in a way consistent with its moral and legal 
obligations to stop its hypocrisy; to cancel this game of Mr. Angelos 
and the other supercapitalists who want to go and do business with the 
apartheid economy of Castro, and to say that this is not the time, 
while the dictatorship is in its last gasps, to be sending little 
baseball games for the pleasure, entertainment and publicity feast of a 
moribund dictatorship.
  So if there is any dignity left in that White House, I say cancel the 
Orioles' little game and be consistent with the ethical and 
constitutional and legal requirements of the moment and stand with a 
people who have suffered for 40 years and are deserving of the same 
democracy and self-determination and human rights that has spread 
throughout the rest of the hemisphere.
  Mr. Speaker, It is a privilege for me to join my distinguished 
colleague Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in sponsoring this important and timely 
resolution along with its other distinguished sponsors from both sides 
of the isle.
  The Cuban dictatorship's repressive crackdown against the brave 
internal opposition and the independent press must be condemned in the 
strongest possible terms. The internal opposition and independent press 
of Cuba have our profound admiration and firm solidarity.
  This resolution by the United States House of Representatives 
condemns Castro's stalinist crackdown on the brave internal opposition 
and the independent press, and demands of the Cuban dictatorship, as 
the entire international community must, the release of all political 
prisoners, the legalization of all political parties, labor unions and 
the press, and the scheduling of free and fair, internationally 
supervised elections.
  Martin Luther King rightfully declared that an injustice anywhere 
constitutes an affront to justice everywhere. Now more than ever it is 
incumbent upon the entire international community, as the U.S. House of 
Representatives is hereby doing, to demonstrate its firm solidarity 
with the oppressed people of Cuba and with the brave Cuban internal 
opposition and the independent press.

                          ____________________