[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.

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