[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 105 (Thursday, July 15, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5949-S5951]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CUBA TRAVEL BAN
Mr. MENENDEZ. I have come to the floor many times to speak out about
the Castro regime's abuses of the Cuban people. Today, I come to the
floor once again, this time in strong opposition to any attempt in this
Chamber to pass any bill that in any way lifts or lessens the travel
ban on Cuba. I wish to make it absolutely clear that I will oppose and
filibuster, if I need to, any effort to ease regulations that stand to
enrich a regime that denies its own people basic human rights. I do not
want to obstruct the business of this Chamber, but I know my colleagues
on both sides of the aisle are well aware of how deeply I feel about
freeing the people of Cuba from the repressive regime under which they
have suffered for too long.
The fact is, the big corporate interests behind this misguided
attempt to weaken the travel ban could not care less whether the Cuban
people are free. They care only about opening a new market and
increasing their bottom line. This is about the color of money, not the
desire for freedom.
The very fact that a travel bill has moved through the House
Agriculture Committee makes one wonder why American agricultural
interests would even care about tourist travel to Cuba. One can only
assume it is about generating increased tourism dollars for the Castro
regime to buy more agricultural products. That would only serve to
enrich the regime and do absolutely nothing to bring democracy to the
island.
Let's be clear. Those who believe that increasing travel will
magically breed democracy in Cuba are simply dead wrong. For years, the
world has been traveling to Cuba and nothing has changed. Millions of
tourists from democratic nations have visited Havana, and the Castro
regime has not loosened its iron grip on its people. It has not ended
its repressive policies. It has not stopped imprisoning and brutally
abusing prodemocracy forces.
Now, sometimes I wonder; those who lament our dependence on foreign
oil because it enriches regimes and terrorist states such as Iran
should not have a double standard when it comes to enriching a brutal
dictatorship such as Cuba right here in our own backyard.
How coincidental that suddenly, now that the Congress is considering
lifting a travel ban, the Castro regime is hoping the world will
believe it will release 52 prisoners of conscience. Well, let's set the
record straight. Many people are wrongly under the impression--wrongly,
reading and watching media reports--that 52 political prisoners have
already been released and are free in Cuba. The fact is, only about
seven have been released, and forcibly--forcibly--deported from their
country--another human rights violation--instead of allowing them to
stay and peacefully advocate for change within their own country.
So even when the regime releases people whose simple crime was trying
to peacefully create change in their country and who get imprisoned for
years for that peaceful act, then when they are released, they are
released only with the understanding that they will be deported out of
their country so they can no longer be advocates, peaceful advocates,
for civil society and democratic change. Imagine if those of us who are
Americans could be arrested simply because we disagreed with the
government, sought to peacefully change it, and then ultimately, after
being arrested for years, were deported to some other country in the
world.
The remaining 47 prisoners are set to be released but not now, not
tomorrow, not next week, not even next month, but sometime during the
next 3 to 4 months, we are told--or so the regime says.
According to reports in the Miami Herald, nine of those prisoners
have said they will refuse to leave for Spain if released, and many who
were released and forcibly deported to Madrid have vowed to continue
their activism in exile. They have told reporters they feel the shock
of being forced to leave their country. Omar Rodriguez Saludes told a
reporter he feels ``like I was still in prison. I left behind part of
my family. I still feel like I have the cuffs on my hands.''
The released men said conditions in the prison were horrendous. They
shared their cells with rats. Diseases infested the prison. And they
told of inmates trying to kill themselves or do themselves bodily harm
because of the squalid prison conditions they were forced to endure.
Remember, these are political prisoners, not people who committed
common crimes.
Julion Cesar Galvez, one of the dissidents, told reporters:
The hygiene and health conditions in prisons in Cuba are
not terrible--they're worse than terrible. We had to live
with rats and cockroaches and excrement. It's not a lie.
Galvez, a 66-year-old journalist who was sentenced to 15 years simply
because of what he sought to write, 15 years of his life in these
horrible prisons, said:
There were outbreaks of dengue fever and tuberculosis.
He said there were more than 1,500 prisoners in the prison in Villa
Clars--40 prisoners to a cell measuring 32 square feet.
Another prisoner, Norman Hernandez, said:
The prisoners are tired of demanding their rights . . .
They lose all hope. They lose their desire to live, and they
try to hurt themselves so they will get attended to.
These men were lucky to be released, but they will not give up. They
will continue to tell their stories, and they will continue to fight
for freedom for all Cubans.
It took the regime one night in March to arrest these 52 people--one
night. That scooped up 52 people who were peacefully advocating for
change in their own country. So we might ask ourselves: If it took you
one night to arrest 52 political prisoners, why will it take 4 months
to release all of them?
It is not a coincidence that during the next 3 or 4 months, there
will be Members of the Congress who will be looking to provide the
Castro regime with billions of dollars of added tourism revenue. It is
not a coincidence that in September, the European Union will once again
deliberate the wisdom of its remaining sanctions. The nagging question
that lingers in my mind is, Will the 47 ever see the light of day or
will they be forcibly deported from their country and another 52
arrested overnight to take their place?
It is possible the regime will never release them because they do not
want the world to see them because of the torture to which they have
been subjected. Here is one of those prisoners. Last month, a man named
Ariel Sigler was released from a Cuban prison on the verge of death. He
was a 250-pound amateur boxer. You see him there in great health. This
is the picture of his release--a 100-pound paraplegic. A 100-pound
paraplegic. He did nothing to deserve that set of consequences.
Last month, the regime once again refused to let the United Nations
Special Rapporteur on Torture visit the island, which, in my own view,
speaks volumes about the conditions of the thousands of Cubans who have
been imprisoned.
When you oppose the Castro regime, you are called dangerous, and
there is a charge of dangerousness. Thousands of Cubans have been sent
to Castro's prisons because of dangerousness. That is dangerousness:
simply opposing the regime and seeking change in your home country--and
for other trumped-up political charges.
If that is what is happening to the 200 internationally recognized
and known political prisoners, then how much worse must it be for the
thousands of anonymous political prisoners who have not been reported
because they fall under the charge of dangerousness?
According to the State Department:
The total number of detainees is unknown because the
government does not disclose such information and keeps its
prisons off limits to human rights organizations and
international human rights monitors.
Again according to the State Department:
One human rights organization lists more than 200 political
prisoners currently detained in Cuba in addition to as many
as 5,000 people sentenced for dangerousness.
Yet, in the face of this repression, some Members want to provide the
Castro regime with its No. 1 source of income: tourism. This is not
about travel; this is about rewarding a repressive regime. We already
have hundreds of thousands of Americans who travel to Cuba for family,
education, or humanitarian reasons under our existing law. But tourism
to Cuba is a natural resource, akin to providing refined petroleum
products to a country such as Iran. It is reported that 2.5 million
[[Page S5950]]
tourists visit Cuba each year--1.5 million from North America, 1
million Canadians; more than 170,000 from England; more than 400,000
from Spain, Italy, Germany, and France combined; all bringing in nearly
$2 billion in revenue to the Castro regime.
Yet nothing has changed in Cuba except the amount of tourism dollars
the regime has at its disposal. What does it do with nearly $2 billion
of resources from tourism? Does it put more food on the plates of Cuban
families? Does it create a better quality of life for the Cuban people?
No. Even with all of that money coming in, the Castro regime still
rations people's food. They have to stand in line with a coupon to get
access to a simple meal, waiting in long lines for a subsistence meal.
Of course, when the regime rations people and they are in line just
trying to get a meal for the day, there is no time for promoting
democracy or human rights. The people are just trying to exist, trying
to keep their family fed. There is no time but to stand in line,
despite several billions of dollars to the Castro regime from tourism.
To me, that is an irreversible concession to a regime that this week
arrested a Cuban American for providing laser printers and ink
cartridges to a rural woman's opposition movement in Santiago. He was
interrogated, the head of the movement's home raided by a dozen state
security agents, the printer and cartridges confiscated. What a threat,
a bunch of printers and ink cartridges. What a threat. He was
subsequently released and put on a plane back. Meanwhile, an American
remains in prison for helping the island's Jewish community connect to
the Internet. After 6 months in jail, this individual still faces no
trial and no charges, a U.S. citizen, jailed simply because he was
trying to help the Jewish community in Havana to access the Internet.
What a crime. What a crime. Yet for the most part we are relatively
silent.
They were looking to help the Cuban people. But the regime doesn't
want anyone engaging with the Cuban people. They want tourists to
provide only one thing--hard currency, dollars, money.
Visiting the beaches of Varadero and sipping a Cuba libre, which is
an oxymoron, provides money to continue repression, but it will not let
the Cuban people sip the sweetness of freedom. It will not change the
plight of the Women in White. These are women who are the mothers,
daughters, sisters, and wives of those many political prisoners in
Castro's jails who each week, normally on Sunday, march dressed in
white in peaceful protest with a gladiola and, in doing so, are
ultimately trying to say: Free my relative.
This photograph shows the consequence of what they face. State
security, dressed up as civilians, ultimately, as we can see,
assaulting them, hurting them, arresting them. It will not change the
fate of the Women in White, and it will not change the fate of their
family member who remains jailed.
It will not change the fate of being imprisoned by the regime and
then being released, as they have done so many times when there is some
international spotlight on an individual, only to be rearrested over
and over and over.
It will not change the tragic fate of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who was
deemed a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, who died in
February after being on a hunger strike in a Cuban prison for 85 days
protesting horrific prison conditions. It will not end the desire for
freedom or change conditions in Cuba for men like Guillermo Farinas who
began his hunger strike after the death of Zapata, ending it after he
heard of the prisoner release, but vowing that he and other courageous
Cubans would join in yet another hunger strike, if the 52 other
political prisoners are not released and put back in their homes by
November 7.
This photograph shows what he has been emaciated to in his hunger
strike.
Lifting the travel ban, allowing tourist dollars to flow to the
regime will not end any of it. It will not free the people of Cuba. It
will not change the fate of the Women in White or the desire for
freedom of Guillermo Farinas and the other political prisoners. It will
only enrich the regime.
Reports this week have pointed out the economic impact opening travel
to Cuba will cause to the Gulf States, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands,
and other democratic neighbors in the Caribbean. The dollars that will
be transferred from those tourism economies should be for the benefit
of a democratic government in a free Cuba not to bail out a brutal
regime. The Castros don't deserve it, and the U.S. Gulf States and our
Caribbean friends cannot afford it.
According to the Jamaica Daily Gleaner:
The results of various studies of the likely impact on the
Caribbean of lifting of the U.S. travel ban suggests that
Cuba's tourism arrival would surge to full capacity at the
expense of other Caribbean destinations . . .
. . . Apart from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands,
the most heavily dependent Caribbean destinations on the U.S.
and the most vulnerable, should the legislation to lift the
travel ban pass, ultimately include [many of the islands in
the Caribbean that would have an enormous economic damage to
them].
It seems to me we should be promoting tourism to the beaches along
the gulf coast, not to the apartheid beaches of Castro's Cuba.
You are not even allowed, as a Cuban citizen, to go to the beaches,
many of the beaches of your own homeland, because they are reserved for
tourists. You can't enter some of the hotels unless a tourist in your
own country brings you in. That is why we call it apartheid. You cannot
have access in your own homeland.
Imagine in my home State of New Jersey, where we love the New Jersey
shore, imagine me not being able to go to any of the beaches in New
Jersey because the government wants to restrict me from interacting
with tourists and that those beaches would be reserved only for foreign
tourists in my own home State in my own home country. That is what goes
on.
Allowing the regime to benefit from increased tourism will not change
a thing in Cuba. It will not bring democracy to Cuba. It will not make
conditions for the Cuban people any better or change the history of the
brutality of the Castro regime, a brutality that continues to this day.
Sometimes I think some of my colleagues just don't have a sense. This
is not using the word ``brutality'' for the sake of it. The pictures
speak a thousand words.
I would like my friends in the Senate and others beyond, who may not
have fully engaged in understanding what this brutality is all about,
to recall the words of Armando Valladeres who wrote the prize-winning
book ``Against All Hope.'' He was imprisoned in the infamous Isla de
Pinos in 1960 for his opposition to communism. He lived through the
hell of Castro's jail, suffering violence, forced labor, and solitary
confinement. His writings were smuggled out of Cuba, read throughout
the world. He was finally released after intense international
pressure, 22 years after he was taken prisoner. They had to
rehabilitate him because they didn't want him released and shown to the
world in the circumstances that some of these prisoners are.
Here are some of his memories of activity at the hands of the Castro
brothers while in captivity:
I recalled the two sergeants, Porfirio and Matanzas,
plunging their bayonets into Ernesto Diaz Madruga's body. . .
. Boitel, denied water, after more than fifty days on a
hunger strike, because Castro wanted him dead; Clara,
Boitel's poor mother, beaten by Lieutenant Abad in a
Political Police station just because she wanted to find out
where her son was buried. . . . Officers . . . threatened
family members if they cried at a funeral.
I remember Estebita and Piri dying in blackout cells, the
victims of biological experimentation. . . . So many others
murdered in the forced-labor fields, quarries and camps. A
legion of specters, naked, crippled, hobbling and crawling
through my mind, and the hundreds of men mutilated in the
horriffing searches.
Eduardo Capote's fingers chopped off by a machete.
Concentration camps, tortures, women beaten. . . .
And in the midst of that apocalyptic vision of the most
dreadful and horrifying moments in my life, in the midst of
the gray, ashy dust and the orgy of beatings and blood,
prisoners beaten to the ground, a man
emerged. . . .
. . . the skeletal figure of a man wasted by hunger with
white hair, blazing blue eyes, and a heart overflowing with
love, raising his arms to the invisible heaven and pleading
for mercy for his executioners.
``Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.''
And a burst of machine-gun fire ripping open his chest.
I hope my colleagues remember these memories of Armando Valladeres
and
[[Page S5951]]
the realities of Castro's prisons before we think about rewarding the
Castro regime in any way. Their sins are too great, and this is not a
thing of the past. Their brutality and repression have been going on
since the inception and still go on today. It has never stopped. It has
never gotten better. It has never changed. It never will for so long as
the regime is in power.
When I hear my colleagues come to the floor and talk about lifting
the travel ban, I am compelled to ask, Why is there such an obvious
double standard when it comes to Cuba? Why are the gulags of Cuba so
different than the gulags of other places in the world? Why are we
willing to tighten sanctions against some but loosen them when it comes
to an equally repressive regime in Cuba, in effect rewarding them? Why
are we so willing to throw up our hands and say: It is time to forget?
I don't believe it is time to forget. We can never forget those who
have suffered and died at the hands of dictators anywhere, and
certainly not in Cuba. It is clear the repression in Cuba continues
unabated, notwithstanding the embargo, notwithstanding calls by those
who want us to ease travel restrictions, ease sanctions,
notwithstanding the fact that we have millions of visitors from other
places in the world bringing billions of dollars, and still the
repression goes on. In good conscience, I cannot do that. I will not
step back.
I have come to the floor in the past to oppose any attempt to do
that, to pass any bill that in essence lifts the travel ban on Cuba. I
will continue to do so. I will continue to do so until we have the
opportunity to make sure the Cuban people are ultimately free, make
sure they have the basic fundamental rights that you and I enjoy in
this great country, and to ensure the voices of all who languish in
Castro's jails--for which the world seems to be deaf to their cries,
does not seem to care, does not speak about, does not do anything
about--will continue to raise their voices in this Chamber and beyond.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of Colorado). Without objection, it
is so ordered.
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