[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 87 (Monday, June 11, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3893-S3895]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Arrest of Jorge Luis Garcia ``Antunez'' Perez
Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I come to the floor outraged that
following a hearing that I held as chairman of the Western Hemisphere
Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee entitled ``The Path to
Freedom: Countering Repression and Supporting Civil Society in Cuba,''
after testimony from Cuba of Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, known as
``Antunez''--and this is a picture taken from that video feed--he was
taken into custody by the Castro regime this weekend, arrested, and
beaten unconscious.
This is the account of his wife, Yris Tamara Perez Aguilera, who
provided this account to Radio Republic, an independent radio station
in Miami that she was able to call so that she could denounce what was
taking place and let the world know what was happening. Here is the
exact statement that she gave the radio station:
My name is Yris Tamara Perez Aguilera, wife of Jorge Luis
Garcia Perez Antunez, a former political prisoner--
--a former political prisoner who spent 17 years of his life in
Castro's prison simply because of his peaceful prodemocracy action.
This Saturday, June 9, my husband, together with Loreto
Hernandez Garcia and Jonniel Rodriguez Riverol, after a
brutal beating by the part of the political police--[that is
State security]--were transferred to the precinct here in
Placeta. All this occurred around 3:30 in the afternoon.
After this, at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, we--Yaite
Cruz Sosa, Dora Perez Correa, Arturo Conde Zamora, and
myself, Yris Tamara Perez Aguilera, left for the police
precinct to bring my husband clothing since he was taken away
in shorts, since he stepped outside [of his home] to call
Damaris Moya Portieles, who was currently on hunger strike.
After leaving about one block away from my house, I was
intercepted by a police officer, who arrested me where I was
once again beaten by Police Officer Isachi, ordered by the
Chief of Confrontation of the municipality of Placetax,
better known as Corporal Pantera.
I was handcuffed and driven to the police precinct. Upon
arriving to the precinct, once again Officer Isachi, one of
the main oppressors here in Placetas--[that is a town in
Cuba]--of the ill-named National Revolutionary Police,
strikes my head very strongly, where once again my cervical
vertebrae was damaged.
At that point, the screams of my husband, Loreto, Jonniel,
and the prisoners there who said, ``Stop hitting her. Stop
hitting her, you abusers; can't you see she's a woman?'' Then
a military garrison officer approached the cells where my
husband and the other prisoners were pepper-sprayed. When
they were pepper-sprayed, my husband lost consciousness due
to lack of air. Thanks to the activist Yaite Cruz Sosa, whom
stood nearby, emptied a bucket of water on his face and
fanned him with a jacket until he regained consciousness.
My husband, arounds 7 p.m., cried from his cell, ``Yris,
they're taking me away, Yris, they're taking me away.'' I was
not able to speak because of the terrible headache from
all the beatings I took to the head. He said to me, ``The
special brigade put me on a chain of prisoners to take me
from the cell and place me on a bus; I don't know where
they are taking me.''
She goes on to say:
I am very worried about what may happen to my husband. He
has heart problems, and that pepper spray, as many know, is
toxic and may bring bad consequences since my husband has a
blocked artery and vein, and I am afraid for his life.
Furthermore, my husband is currently missing.
I don't know my husband's whereabouts. I was freed
yesterday [Sunday, June 10, 2012] in the afternoon, and I was
given no information as to where I could find my husband.
I lay the responsibility of what may happen to my husband
on the government. I know they took reprisal against him for
his participation in congress. In these moments, I am leaving
for Santa Clara, and together with me, I have Yaite Cruz
Sosa. I am going to the State Security Forces and they must
tell me where I can find my husband so I can bring him his
affairs.
That is the end of her statement.
Mr. Antunez spent 17 years of his life in Castro's jail simply for
fomenting peaceful democracy efforts, an effort to create a civil
society. We had asked him to testify before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee Western Hemisphere Subcommittee's hearing on moving
toward democracy in Cuba, and at personal risk he traversed from where
he lives--a countryside--on foot to make it to the intrasection. We
knew that his willingness to testify was a risk, and so we did not put
his name on the committee's notice until he arrived at the
intrasection, so that we then amended the notice to the public so that
he could be safe because we knew that, as others we invited to testify
who were stopped and could not make it to the hearing, that if we
talked about Mr. Antunez coming before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee via a video feed, he would likely not make it.
He testified before the committee about the Castro regime's abuses
and beatings. He told us that day--among many other things--before the
hearing that he witnessed the death of Antonio Ruiz in the city of
Santa Clara, where prodemocracy peaceful activists had gathered. He
said:
I had to walk many kilometers behind trees and bushes, as
if I was some type of criminal, to attend an event that in
any other free and democratic country in the world would be
an everyday occurrence.
He went on to say at the hearing that, at the very moment he was
there testifying before us, an Afro-Cuban woman had been on a hunger
strike for several days in Santa Clara because state security had
threatened to sexually assault and rape her 6-year-old daughter as
punishment for her prodemocracy actions.
This is the life inside of Castro's Cuba--not the romanticism some
people talk about. This is the life of those who struggle as human
rights activists and political dissidents simply to create a space for
civil society inside of
[[Page S3894]]
the country. This is the cost paid by one man willing to come forward
to put his life on the line, to share his efforts for libertad in Cuba
with this institution, the U.S. Senate.
Mr. President, our response must be unparalleled. The arrest and
beating of Antunez--clearly as a direct result of his Senate
testimony--is further proof of the continuing brutality of the Castro
brothers' regime and further evidence of the need for the United States
and other democratic nations to stand against tyrants and realize that
the nature of this regime won't be altered by increasing tourist travel
to the island, expanding agricultural trade, or by providing visas for
regime officials to come and tour the United States.
Today I am calling on the U.S. State Department to cease providing
any nonessential visas for travel to the United States by Cuban
officials.
In the last months, the Department has authorized visas for a stream
of Cuban regime officials to visit the United States, starting with
Josefina Vidal, Cuba's director for North American affairs in April,
whose husband was kicked out of the U.N. mission in New York, and most
recently for the daughter of Cuba's dictator Raul Castro, the same
dictator that sends these rapid-response brigades, which is state
security dressed as civilians, to attack innocent civilians like this.
Mariela Castro Espin comes here to the United States with her friends
to attend the Latin-American Studies Association conference. While Cuba
holds an American hostage, Allen Gross, and is engaged in what has been
described as the ``highest monthly number of documented arrests in five
decades,'' when well over 1,000 arrests are made of peaceful activists,
Mariela Castro has been parading around the United States on a
publicity tour describing herself as a ``dissidente.'' I don't know
from what she is a dissident.
Enough is enough. Why should Mariela Castro be allowed to openly
spout her Communist vitriol while a real leader of the Cuban people,
Mr. Antunez, who sought to convey his message to Americans through the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is forced to clandestinely make his
way to the U.S. Interests Section in Havana to talk and then be beaten
and jailed simply because of what he said in an open hearing?
Why should Josefina Vidal be allowed to host meetings with regime
sympathizers in the United States while an American citizen, Alan
Gross, sits as a hostage in a Cuban jail for doing nothing but trying
to assist the island's small Jewish community in creating access to the
Internet so they are able to communicate with each other?
I am also calling on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and the U.N.
Committee Against Torture, which last week on its own called on Cuba to
answer for its dramatic increase in politically motivated arrests, to
immediately investigate this incident. Make no mistake, this was not a
random bureaucratic arrest, not a random act of violence by thugs of
the regime. It was an in-your-face exercise of the most brutal kind
intended to send a message to the United States and the Senate.
During the course of the hearing I chaired, I noticed there were
members of the Cuban Interests Section; members of the Castro regime--
we are a democracy, so we allow them to come to hearings such as ours--
who were taking copious notes of everything that was going on. I made
it clear we would be watching for any retribution against any witness
from inside Cuba.
Cuba's leaders heard that message loudly and clearly and their
beating and arrest of Antunez was their response to the Senate.
This was a deliberate violation of human rights, in my view, ordered
at the highest levels of the regime as punishment simply because
Antunez had the courage to speak truth to power.
Enough. Enough violent repression in Cuba. Enough beatings of those
who seek nothing more than freedom to speak out and tell the truth.
Enough abuse. Enough imprisonment.
What more evidence do we need of the tragedies of daily life inside
Cuba for those who are peaceful, prodemocracy, human rights advocates,
political dissidents, and independent journalists as we saw here? What
more evidence do we need? How much more can we forget? I find my
friends in Hollywood have all kinds of great things to say about the
Castro brothers, but what about this? What about the 1,000 who were
arrested and are languishing in Castro's jails? What about those who
die on hunger strikes as a result of their peaceful protest for the
abuse they are going through? The silence is deafening.
Let's stand for Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, who knew what might happen
when he agreed to testify before our committee. His determination to
put Cuba on a path to freedom is what gave him the strength and the
courage--in the face of what he knew a brutal dictatorship could do and
would do--to come forward and tell us his story, which is the story of
a repressed people waiting for freedom. The courage of thousands and
thousands of men and women on the streets of Havana, in the countryside
across the island is what we can never forget in our dealings with the
dictatorial, repressive regime that has ruled Cuba since the middle of
the last century.
Still today, 23 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, these Cubans
remain trapped in a closed society, cut off from the advancements of
the world--repressed, threatened, fearful of saying or doing something
that will land them in prison, often for years--years. Imagine an
American citizen, protesting outside the Capitol, thinking that could
get them put in a gulag for 10, 15 or 20 years. That is what these
people are going through. They land in prison, are beaten until they
are unconscious. Yet the silence is deafening. It is unconscionable.
I urge each and every one of us in this institution, if we cherish
the ability in this institution to have the free flow of testimony from
anyone in the world without reprisal, to be outraged about what
happened with the beating of Mr. Antunez and his imprisonment. I urge
every American to remember Mr. Antunez today. I urge every American to
remember all the victims of the Castro brothers, just as we remember
all those around the world who have suffered and died under the iron
fist of other repressive dictatorships.
As I have said many times before, the Cuban people are no less
deserving of America's support than the millions who were imprisoned
and forgotten at other times around the world--lost to their families,
left to die for nothing more than a single expression of dissent. I am
compelled to ask again today, as I have before, as I did at the
hearing, why is there such an obvious double standard when it comes to
Cuba?
I am amazed at colleagues who come and talk about repression,
brutality, beatings, and the imprisonment of average citizens around
the globe. Yet they are silent, silent, silent about Cuba. We are
willing to tighten sanctions in other places around the world, but we
let a repressive regime in Cuba basically walk away.
It is not time to forget. It is not time to forget Mr. Antunez, who
was willing to risk his life to give testimony before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee. It is not time to forget Alan Gross, an
American citizen, who for over 2 years--over 2 years--has been sitting
in Castro's jail, sick, his mother dying, his wife and family
desperately needing him. What was his crime? His crime was trying to
help the Jewish people in Havana talk to each other. We can't forget
Alan Gross. We can't forget those who suffered and died at the hands of
the dictators. We can't forget the arrest and beating of Antunez,
clearly as a result of his testimony--proof positive of the continuing
brutality of the Castro brothers.
I hope we can shock the conscience of any Member of the Senate who
would want to hear any witness, anywhere around the world, give
testimony about an oppressive regime, to come forth to speak and give
insight about what is happening in their country and to not face
retaliation against them. If the Senate speaks with a powerful voice in
this respect, it can maybe save Mr. Antunez's life, and it can send a
message to the world that we will not tolerate the beating and
imprisonment and near death of those who are willing to come and
testify before us.
I think the integrity of the Senate is at stake in terms of how we
respond. I hope--I hope--silence will not be the response.
With that, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
[[Page S3895]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
____________________