[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 23]
[House]
[Page 31720]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 CONDEMNING THE ARREST OF JORGE LUIS GARCIA PEREZ ``ANTUNEZ'' AND YRIS 
                             PEREZ AGUILERA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Madam Speaker, Senator Bob 
Menendez gave an important speech last Thursday, December 10, opposing 
concessions to the dictatorship of Cuba.
  In his speech Senator Menendez read out loud an open letter which had 
been sent by one of Cuba's true heroes--a giant of the resistance to 
the Cuban tyranny--Jorge Luis Garcia Perez ``Antunez,'' here 
photographed with his wife, Yris Perez Aguilera, a letter to the 
titular Cuban dictator, Raul Castro, on Tuesday, December 8.
  ``Mr. Raul Castro,'' Antunez wrote, ``for months now my wife Yris 
Tamara Perez Aguilera and I have been kept in extrajudicial house 
arrest by your political police. Mr. Dictator, let me ask you some 
questions that may help clarify some doubts for those fellow countrymen 
of mine who may at some point have had hope your government would 
reduce the repression or even carry out democratic openings.
  ``What do you feel when you incite or allow people who call 
themselves men to beat and drag through the streets women like Damaris 
Moya Portieles, Maria Diaz Rondon, Ana Alfonso Arteaga, Sara Marta 
Fonseca, Yris Perez and now more recently the blogger Yoani Sanchez?
  ``How can you sleep after your subordinates cruelly beat, more than 
once, Idania Yanez Contreras while she was pregnant?
  ``How can you and your government talk about the battle of ideas, 
when ideas constantly face repression with beatings and arrests and 
years of imprisonment?
  ``Maybe your followers will not dare respond, but I who am in the 
long list of those who do not fear you, will answer:
  ``You act like that because you are a cruel man, insensitive to the 
pain and suffering of others; because, loyal to your anti-democratic 
and dictatorial vocation, you are convinced that dictatorships such as 
yours can only sustain themselves by fear and torture, and that even 
the most minimal of openings can end the only thing that interests you: 
staying in power.
  ``And finally, speaking of my case in particular, I will respond to 
you without the need to first ask of you the motives for such focused 
repression against my person.''
  Antunez, by the way, Madam Speaker, now 45 years old, was a political 
prisoner for 17 years until 2007.
  He continued to write, ``Your government and its lackey-repressive 
forces cannot forgive my two great and only crimes. First, that for 
almost two decades of torture and cruelties during my unjust and severe 
imprisonment, you were not able to break my dignity and my position as 
a political prisoner. Second, because despite all the violence and 
harassment--and above all the risk of returning to prison--I have 
decided to not abandon my country, where I will continue fighting for a 
change I believe to be as necessary as it is inevitable.''
  Signed, in the City of Placetas, by Jorge Luis Garcia Perez 
``Antunez'', Tuesday, December 8.
  On Friday, December 11, Antunez and his wife, Yris Perez Aguilera, 
she is a heroine, were violently arrested. The doctrine of Fidel 
Castro's hero Adolf Hitler was again devoutly followed: ``The very 
first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular 
employment of violence.''
  ``This is kidnapping,'' yelled Yris. ``Long live human rights,'' 
shouted Antunez as they were being beaten and taken away by the 
Castros' political police on Friday.
  I condemn the brutal arrest of these two heroes by the Castros' 
cowardly thugs. The days of the Castros' racist totalitarian tyranny in 
Cuba are coming to an end. Those who have collaborated with the 
violence and brutality of the racist regime will face justice and 
eternal shame. Antunez, Yris Perez Aguilera, her brother, Mario Perez 
Aguilera, Oscar Elias Biscet, Darsi Ferrer and many other heroic 
political prisoners of Cuba will be elected the leaders of free Cuba. 
That change is as necessary as it is inevitable. Because of heroes like 
Antunez and Yris Perez Aguilera, the day of freedom in Cuba is 
approaching.

                          ____________________