[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12436]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 12436]]

                        SALUTE TO CUBAN PATRIOTS

  (Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Madam Speaker, this past Monday scores of Cuban 
dissidents began a hunger strike in Havana to protest the 40 years of 
oppression that their countrymen have been subjected to under the 
tyrannical rule of Fidel Castro.
  Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, one of the organizers of this public protest 
has said that the goal of the hunger strikers is to draw attention to 
the numerous violations of human rights in Cuba and to ask for freedom 
for all of the political prisoners.
  Their courageous defiance of the Cuban tyrant is heroic, and once 
again attracts worldwide attention to Castro's deplorable human rights 
record.
  Because we pride ourselves in being the land of the free and the home 
of the brave, we must applaud the efforts of these patriots who are 
peacefully trying to bring liberty to their enslaved homeland.
  I ask my colleagues in Congress to send the opposition inside of Cuba 
the clear message that we stand in solidarity with them and that we 
will do our part to help bring freedom and democracy to the 11 million 
presently shackled in the island nation.

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