[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 57 (Wednesday, May 4, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H2947-H2948]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TOILING FOR FREEDOM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, as we welcome this week the President 
of Georgia and the architect of the Rose Revolution in that country, it 
is critically important that the United States Congress continue to 
focus on the need to bring about freedom and democracy as antidote to 
terrorism, to oppression, and instability.
  Nowhere is this policy more pertinent than in Central Asia. 
Kyrgyzstan today is a vivid example of the need to continue and indeed 
strengthen this policy in the region.
  Months of civilian protests and flawed parliamentary elections 
culminated in the invalidation of those election results by that 
country's supreme court, the resignation of the entire cabinet, and an 
end to the 15-year reign of its strongman.
  This is a clear sign that the winds of democratic change cannot be 
stopped.
  The Kyrgyz people certainly took note of the elections in nearby 
Afghanistan, of Georgia's Rose Revolution and Ukraine's Orange 
Revolution in November of last year; courageous individuals such as Mr. 
Edil Baisalov of the president's Coalition for Democracy and Civil 
Society, Kyrgyzstan, who are struggling to exert their rights as 
citizens and human beings.
  He will be testifying before the Committee on International Relations 
tomorrow on how the U.S. can help support those who, like him, toil for 
freedom around the world.

                              {time}  1730

  I assure you that what we do in this body resonates throughout that 
region.
  Mr. Baisalov has referred to the positive impact of a resolution that 
I introduced on the status of human rights in central Asia, and that it 
has energized the opposition and the prodemocracy, the dissident 
movement in his country.
  The U.S., along with the European Union, was quick to denounce 
Kyrgyzstan's recent parliamentary election as seriously flawed. It was 
precisely this Western rejection of sham elections in Georgia and 
Ukraine that helped tip the balance there.
  Thus, as the Central Asian states enter into a challenging phase of 
political transition, the United States must continue to maintain the 
pressure for democratic change in Central Asia.
  The challenges are immense. Opposition parties in Central Asia are 
either fictitious organizations that exist only on paper or, as in 
Kazakhstan, opposition groups in name only, as in Uzbekistan, where all 
five opposition parties support supposedly the president.
  Turkmenistan's president has gone as far as to dispense with the 
pretense of democratic rule and brazenly declared himself president for 
life, a move that demonstrates his confidence that his dictatorship 
will go unchallenged by the world.
  This situation has not gone unchallenged by the United States. In 
July of

[[Page H2948]]

2004, after careful review of the state of political reform in 
Uzbekistan, the Department of State decided that the leader is not 
fulfilling the terms of the 2002 Strategic Partnership Framework 
agreement, which mandated substantial and continuing progress on 
democracy movements and decided to deny certification to Uzbekistan.
  In Uzbekistan, religion becomes criminal in that country as soon as 
it strays out of the official State-controlled Islam. The Uzbek 
government is behaving much as it did with its Soviet predecessors.
  Following massive arrests in Uzbekistan of followers of the two 
leading militant groups, adherents of the movements have gone 
underground. Yet their numbers are swelling in the region, particularly 
among young unemployed folks who are distributing the information put 
forth by the militants, and they try to manipulate the religion for 
terrorist political gain, and they are doing so because they need the 
money.
  Thus, the dependence of many governments throughout Central Asia on 
tyrannical rule does not only fail to adequately address the problem of 
Islamic extremism, but it serves to fuel the terrorism that stems from 
it.
  We, and other open societies, must, therefore, condition our 
assistance to Central Asian states not only on their cooperation on the 
terrorism front, but also on their taking concrete steps in Central 
Asia toward the establishment of the rule of law, the support for the 
growth of civil society and support for building democratic 
institutions.
  With the role of the United States in Central Asia, the region faces 
the best possible scenario to solve their problems jointly.
  We are uniquely placed to press for regional cooperation and to 
monitor the commitment of regional states to real improvement of 
social, economic and political conditions.
  That is why we have exerted congressional oversight through hearings 
and briefings, to make sure that everyone understands the current state 
of human rights in Central Asia because only by helping to create an 
environment where freedom and prosperity can flourish will we achieve 
long-term success in the war against terror and oppression.

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