[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 7]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 9725]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       THE WORLD'S OTHER TYRANTS

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                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 10, 2003

  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, morally and politically it 
is essential that the United States show that our concern for human 
rights is truly universal, and is not a concept to be invoked when 
convenient to provide cover for geopolitical motives. In the New York 
Times for Sunday, April 6, Aryeh Neier noted the unfortunate tendency 
of the world to focus on one or two major crises to the exclusion of 
terrible problems happening elsewhere. Specifically, he deplored the 
fact that war in Iraq has contributed to a situation in which 
outrageous human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, Cuba, and Belarus have 
failed to receive sufficient attention. It is true that recently we in 
the House took an appropriate step of condemning the oppression by 
Fidel Castro, but more needs to be done to focus world outrage on the 
abuses of freedom committed not only by Castro, but by the brutal 
dictators in Belarus and Zimbabwe. Because of the importance of 
maintaining our commitment to human rights as a broad and universal 
principle, I ask that Aryeh Neier's important article be printed here.

                [From the New York Times, Apr. 6, 2003]

                The World's Other Tyrants, Still at Work

                            (By Aryeh Neier)

       With international attention focused on Iraq, despots are 
     seizing the opportunity to get rid of their opposition--real 
     or imagined. In Zimbabwe, Cuba and Belarus, independent 
     journalists, opposition leaders and human rights advocates 
     have been thrown in prison. Absent scrutiny, the leaders of 
     these rogue regimes have been emboldened, aware that their 
     actions are causing little more than a ripple of protest 
     beyond their countries.
       The outside world has ignored Zimbabwe, which is holding 
     critical parliamentary elections whose outcome could help 
     determine whether President Robert Mugabe will be able to 
     amend the Constitution and handpick his successor. Since the 
     start of the war in Iraq, Mr. Mugabe has intensified a 
     campaign of intimidation, arresting more than 500 democracy 
     advocates and opposition leaders, including Gibson Sibanda, 
     vice president of the main opposition party, the Movement for 
     Democratic Change.
       The campaign of state-sponsored violence is not limited to 
     the opposition leaders in Zimbabwe. A worker on the farm of a 
     opposition parliamentary deputy died of injuries after being 
     beaten by Mr. Mugabe's security agents for participating in a 
     two-day general strike. Other farm workers have also been 
     beaten by men in army uniforms who claimed that the farms 
     were being used as staging grounds for opposition activities. 
     Hundreds of people accused of taking part in the strike were 
     treated for broken bones in private clinics, fearing more 
     reprisals if they sought care at public hospitals. Meanwhile, 
     Zimbabwe, once a breadbasket for southern Africa, falls ever 
     further into poverty and famine.
       In Cuba, the war is giving Fidel Castro cover for an 
     unprecedented assault. Over the past two weeks in state 
     security agents have arrested about 80 dissidents. 
     Prosecutors are seeking life sentences for 12 of those 
     detained and 10- to 30-year prison terms for the rest. They 
     include the economist Marta Beatriz Roque, the poet and 
     journalist Raul Rivero and the opposition labor activist 
     Pedro Pablo Alvarez.
       The list of arrests reads like a Who's Who of Cuban civil 
     society--with the obvious exception of those who were already 
     in jail when the roundup started. They are the unsung heroes 
     of a movement to liberate the minds of Cuba. But the names do 
     not mean much to a world public now concentrated on becoming 
     more and more expert on the latest in military equipment and 
     on the geography of Iraq.
       In Minsk, the capital of Belarus, the authorities last week 
     detained 50 opposition protesters who had gathered for the 
     85th anniversary of the declaration of the short-lived 
     Belarusian Democratic Republic. On Thursday, demonstrators 
     supporting the Iraq war--which President Aleksandr Lukashenko 
     opposes--were arrested. It seems clear that Mr. Lukashenko, 
     Europe's sole remaining dictator, is intent on tightening his 
     grip on Belarus.
       Sadly, Zimbabwe, Cuba and Belarus are not alone. Other 
     countries have used the Iraq war to step up human rights 
     abuses. Vietnam's most renowned dissident, Nguyen Dan Que, a 
     60-year-old writer who is a physician by training, was 
     arrested late last month. Hardly anyone protested. In Egypt, 
     hundreds of war protesters were detained, with dozens beaten 
     and tortured. In Thailand, the government has justified what 
     appear to be summary executions in the name of a war on 
     drugs. At least 1,900 people have been killed, including 
     innocent bystanders. These crackdowns, too, all passed with 
     little notice or comment.
       That dictators move in times of world crisis comes as no 
     surprise. The Soviets crushed the Hungarian revolution in 
     1956 during the Suez crisis. In 1968, when the Johnson 
     administration was preoccupied with Vietnam, and Germany and 
     France as well as the United States were convulsed in antiwar 
     demonstrations, the Soviets moved into Czechoslovakia.
       In January 1991, just as today, the international community 
     was focused on a war in Iraq. As the Persian Gulf war was 
     starting, the Soviet Army took advantage of the international 
     community's inattention to crack down on an independence 
     movement in Lithuania. More than 200 people were wounded and 
     15 killed as Moscow seized control of the television 
     broadcast center in Vilnius.
       If we let tyrants escape the international condemnation 
     that is often the only way to protect their critics against 
     abuses, the brutal campaigns in Zimbabwe, the clean sweep of 
     dissidents in Cuba, and the arrests of demonstrators in 
     Belarus may have to be added to the list of unintended 
     consequences of the war in Iraq.

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