[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 98 (Thursday, July 15, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8221-S8222]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     HUMAN RIGHTS IN LIBYA AND IRAQ

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I bring to my colleagues' attention a 
thoughtful op-ed article published in the July 13 Washington Post by 
Mona Eltahawy, a London-based Arab journalist.
  The article raises an important question about a double standard on 
human rights between Libya and Iraq. The United States overthrew Saddam 
Hussein's regime because he was a brutal dictator, but we embrace 
Libya's Qadhafi despite the fact that he is a brutal dictator.
  About the double standard Ms. Eltahawy wrote: ``In the absence of 
weapons of mass destruction, and with images of Hussein on trial for 
war crimes, they have been pushing the ``removal of a brutal dictator'' 
excuse for the invasion. How do they square this with their astonishing 
rush to embrace another ruthless dictator? Qadhafi's behavior of late 
has been uncomfortably close to brutal.''
  Libya remains, according to the CIA World Factbook, ``in fact, a 
military dictatorship'' under Colonel Qadhafi. His government 
``continued to commit numerous, serious abuses,'' including arbitrary 
arrest and detention, and restrictions of ``freedom of speech, press, 
assembly, association, and religion,'' according to the February 2004 
State Department Human Rights Report. Violence and discrimination 
against women are serious problems as well.
  A recent visit by Amnesty International to Libya found that ``a 
pattern of human rights violations continues, often justified under the 
new rhetoric of the `war on terror.' '' Amnesty International's 
findings include ``laws which criminalize the peaceful exercise of 
freedom of expression and association, leading to the imprisonment of 
prisoners of conscience; prolonged detention without access to the 
outside world, which facilitates torture; and unfair trials, in 
particular before the people's court which tries political cases. 
Torture and ill-treatment continues to be widely reported, its main use 
being to extract `confessions.' ''
  The Qadhafi regime also continues to intrude in the affairs of other 
African nations, despite Secretary Powell's call in February 2004 that 
Libya ``cease to be destabilizing, cease to fund despotic regimes, and 
cease to cause trouble.'' According to Assistant Secretary of State for 
Near Eastern Affairs Bill Burns, Libya was involved as recently as 
February in sowing instability throughout Africa. ``There have been 
problems . . . in Zimbabwe. There have been problems . . . in Liberia 
and elsewhere,'' he said. ``We continue to have concerns'' in the 
Central African Republic, he also said.

  In the Central African Republic, Libyan troops were reportedly 
directly involved in 2001 in halting an army revolt against the 
president. A year later, Libya and the Republic agreed on a 99-

[[Page S8222]]

year treaty giving Libya the right to exploit the oil, uranium and 
other resources of the republic.
  In Zimbabwe, Libya has often assisted President Robert Mugabe, 
including supplies of urgently needed oil. In Liberia, Libya has been a 
major provider of arms and supplies to Charles Taylor.
  The Libyan Government is responsible for the terrorist bombing of Pan 
Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Some 270 innocent people lost 
their lives in the bombing, including 189 Americans. Until September 
11, the Pan Am bombing killed more American civilians than any other 
terrorist atrocity in our history. Officially, the Libyan government 
has accepted responsibility for the actions of its officials in the 
atrocity, but Qadhafi denied his nation's involvement in the bombing, 
according to a CNN report on December 23, 2004 summarizing an interview 
by its State Department correspondent Andrea Koppel with him.
  In taking steps to resume relations, the administration presumably 
believes that Libya has made a firm decision to abandon terrorism and 
become a responsible member of the international community. However, 
Qadhafi persists in the type of rhetoric he has displayed in the past. 
In Brussels, he recently threatened to return to the ``days of 
explosive belts'' if provoked by Western ``evil.'' We've recently seen 
allegations of a purported assassination plot hatched by Qadhafi 
against the crown prince of Saudi Arabia following a dispute at the 
Arab League summit in March.
  President Bush has spoken frequently about democracy and human 
rights. In November 2003, at the National Endowment for Democracy's 
20th anniversary celebration, he said that ``sixty years of Western 
nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle 
East did nothing to make us safe--because in the long run, stability 
cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle 
East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a 
place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export.''
  It is surprising that the administration would so quickly strengthen 
relations with a dictator who is responsible for the mass murder of 
innocent Americans, opposes democracy, persecutes his own people, and 
continues to cause instability in Africa.
  Mona Eltahawy's important op-ed article raises many of these 
questions, and I ask unanimous consent that it may be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                        Warming Up to a Dictator

                           (By Mona Eltahawy)

       When the United States ended a 24-year chill and restored 
     diplomatic relations with Libya on June 28, the first person 
     I thought of was Baha Omary Kikhia. I interviewed her in 
     Cairo more than 10 years ago during one of her many trips to 
     the region to find out what happened to her husband, former 
     Libyan foreign minister turned dissident Mansour Kikhia.
       His case has too easily been lost in the lexicon of 
     bloodier and larger crimes committed by the Libyans, such as 
     the 1988 Pan Am bombing, which killed 270 people. But Moammar 
     Gaddafi has been brutal to Libyans, too, and his various 
     eccentricities should not blind us to the police state he has 
     presided over since he assumed power in a September 1969 
     coup.
       He may travel with Kalashnikov-armed female bodyguards, he 
     may pitch tents at home and abroad for talks with officials, 
     and he may pen such ``classics'' as the short story 
     collection ``The Village, the Village, the Earth, the Earth 
     and the Suicide of the Astronaut,'' but none of these quirks 
     should distract us from his abysmal human rights record. 
     Arbitrary arrests, a muzzled press, a ban on political 
     parties and the squandering of Libya's oil wealth have never 
     been laughing matters for Libyans.
       And we should not forget Mansour Kikhia, who disappeared in 
     Cairo in December 1993 while attending a meeting of an Arab 
     human rights organization he had helped found. Kikhia had 
     defected to the United States in 1980 and was a U.S. resident 
     who was four months away from receiving citizenship when he 
     went to Egypt. A four-year CIA investigation found in 1997 
     that Egyptian agents turned over Kikhia--who had asked for 
     Egyptian security protection while in Cairo--to agents of 
     Gaddafi's regime, who spirited the dissident to Libya, where 
     he was executed and buried in the Libyan desert.
       My interview with his wife, a U.S. citizen, left me 
     painfully saddened for her and her family and particularly 
     distressed that someone could just disappear in the city that 
     I called home. I could not forget her during an assignment in 
     Tripoli in 1996, when a Libyan government minder shadowed me 
     at every turn and an official with the ministry of 
     information asked me why we were so critical of Libya in the 
     copy we filed at the Reuters news agency. And I will not 
     forget her now, or the many others who have suffered from 
     Gaddafi's regime, just because he is able to say the things 
     he knows the Americans and British want to hear.
       Gaddafi, claiming he had seen the light, accepted 
     responsibility last year for the Pan Am bombing, agreeing to 
     pay compensation to the victims' families (I wonder whether 
     he has paid compensation to Baha Omary Kikhia) and to 
     dismantle his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons 
     programs. If that last bit sounds familiar, it should. 
     President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair want us 
     to think that Gaddafi's conversion on the road to Washington 
     and London was due to the fear that he would end up in the 
     same jail cell as Saddam Hussein. (Gaddafi's daughter Aicha, 
     a law professor, has joined Hussein's defense team.)
       With no weapons on mass destruction to justify a war 
     against a country that never threatened them, Bush and Blair 
     are determined to hold on to their theory that the ``war on 
     terrorism'' and the invasion of Iraq would bring rogue states 
     in line. But it's an old argument they're making. In the 
     absence of weapons of mass destruction, and with images of 
     Hussein on trial for war crimes, they have been pushing the 
     ``removal of a brutal dictator'' excuse for the invasion of 
     Iraq. How do they square this with their astonishing rush to 
     embrace another ruthless dictator?
       Gaddafi's behavior of late has been uncomfortably close to 
     brutal. In May--a mere two months after a historical visit to 
     Tripoli by Blair, who was accompanied by executives of 
     British businesses eager to cash in--a Libyan court sentenced 
     five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death by 
     firing squad for deliberately infecting some 400 children 
     with HIV. The medics had always protested their innocence and 
     said they had been tortured by the police, with daily 
     beatings, sexual assault and electric shocks.
       Expert witnesses called in for their defense included one 
     of the team that discovered the AIDS virus, who said this was 
     an epidemic caused by poor hygiene at the hospital, not by 
     any international conspiracy. Isn't Bulgaria a member of the 
     ``Coalition of the Willing''?
       Here's the topper. As Libya was engaged in secret 
     negotiations to resume relations with the United States and 
     Britain, Gaddafi tore into Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah at an 
     emergency Arab League summit in March 2003, assailing the 
     kingdom's close relationship with the United States. When the 
     Saudi de facto leader insulted Gaddafi back and walked out, 
     the Libyan leader apparently hatched a plot to assassinate 
     him. Isn't that dangerously close to state-sponsored 
     terrorism?
       Speaking at Whitehall Palace in London last year, President 
     Bush acknowledged that the United States and Britain had not 
     always been on the right side of democracy when it came to 
     the Middle East. ``Your nation and mine in the past have been 
     willing to make a bargain to tolerate oppression for the sake 
     of stability,'' Bush said, addressing Blair.
       It's not difficult to imagine that just such a bargain, 
     along with some good old-fashioned military and oil contracts 
     thrown in, is the driving force behind the resumption of ties 
     with Libya.

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