U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor
today:
M. President, as the attention of the world has been
focused on the pre-1991 Soviet behavior of President Putin in Crimea – I
come to the floor to remind the American public and members of this
body that there is also a full-fledged human rights crisis ongoing in
our own hemisphere, just 90 miles from our shores in Cuba.
As
Ukrainians courageously fight to protect the democracy they won when the
Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago this year, the Cuban people continue to
suffer from the oppression of a Soviet-style dictatorship that denies
them the most basic rights.
When the Soviet Union dissolved in
1991, millions of people – from Kiev to Budapest – Africa to Asia – were
given their first chance in decades to build their own governments. A
first chance to organize democratic elections. The chance to begin to
determine their own futures.
Since the end of the Cold War,
peace, prosperity and progress have largely been the order of the day
for hundreds of millions of people, but not for the people of Cuba. Not
one of these core principles of democracy can be found on the island.
Fidel
and Raul Castro have been the only names on any ballot for over 50
years. Not one free election has been held. Not one Cuban has been
allowed to own their own company. Not one legitimate trade union has
been allowed to be organized. Not one peaceful protest has occurred
without being brutally squashed by the regime.
No, this is the
reality of Cuba today, it was the reality when the Berlin Wall fell --
and it’s been Cuba’s reality for almost 60 years since Fidel Castro
began taking control of every aspect of Cuban life. This reality in
Cuba, the decades-long brutal oppression of simple human and democratic
rights, the total disdain for the aspirations of a people by the Castro
regime, its military and communist lackey-thugs who penetrate and
control people’s lives at all levels should not be overlooked, it should
not be romanticized, and it should never be explained away.
But,
unlike Ukraine where we have watched in horror as people have been
ruthlessly beaten and killed for simply aspiring for democratic and
transparent government, the Castro regime does not allow images of its
oppression to be broadcast around the globe – let alone at home. But
just because we do not see those images streaming across television sets
and in the newspapers does not mean the world should not be watching.
It does not mean we have turned the other way and it does not mean we
have overlooked the brutal and often times lethal oppression of the
regime in Cuba.
The number of people the regime has murdered or
abducted is in the tens-of-thousands. Hundreds of thousands of children
have been separated from their parents. Maybe hundreds of thousands of
families have been torn apart. Millions of men, women and young people
have been forced into the fields to cut sugar cane and perform other
hard labor against their will. The average Cuban worker lives on an
income of less than a dollar a day.
The Castro regime has been
most adept not at spreading education and prosperity, but at instilling a
penetrating fear and terror in the style of a Stalinist police state.
This has been going on since 1959, but, unfortunately, it is not a thing
of the past.
Let us not overlook the fact that arbitrary and
politically motivated arrests in Cuba reportedly topped 1,000 for a
third straight month this February, according to the Cuban Commission
for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, a group inside Cuba,
founded by Elizardo Sanchez Santa-Cruz whose mission is to bring change
and freedom to the island. The Commission reported that “arrests in the
past three months have nearly doubled from the monthly averages of the
previous two years.”
We must remind ourselves everyday of the
continued oppression and human suffering that is happening – not only
halfway around the world, but 90 miles from our own shores. The ongoing
oppressive behavior of the Cuban regime we saw for the last half of the
20th century still haunts our hemisphere today.
While Putin has
annexed Crimea, while one wonders what’s next, while Assad continues to
kill his own people in Syria, while the world is watching the Taliban in
Afghanistan, and violence continues in the Central African Republic
taking countless lives, the oppression of the Castro regime keeps
rolling along – unabated.
If there is a single symbol of that
oppression, of the longing for freedom in Cuba, it is the Ladies in
White – Damas de Blanco – and their leader, Berta Soler. The courage she
has displayed to promote democracy and political freedom in Cuba has
served as an extraordinary example for all of us and everyone around the
world who longs to be free.
Every Sunday, they protest the
jailing of their relatives by attending mass and quietly marching
through the streets of Havana, praying for nothing more than the freedom
of their relatives and respect for the human rights of all Cubans.
Often arrested, roughed-up, detained, jailed, held for days -- maybe
weeks -- released and jailed again, the Ladies in White are the symbol
of freedom and women like Laura Pollan represents the story of
thousands.
She was a school teacher living with her husband,
Hector, the leader of the outlawed Cuban Liberal Party. They were living
a normal life in a small house on Neptune Street in Havana. Early one
morning there was a pounding at the front door. The police came in.
Searched everything. There was a sham-trial held in Cuba. Hector was
imprisoned. Sentenced to 20 years in jail and accused of acting against
national security. His only crime was dreaming of a free Cuba, and
putting that dream in writing.
Since I last came to the floor to
speak about Cuba, I met Rosa Maria Paya, daughter of the long-time
dissident and political activist, Oswaldo Paya. He was a Roman Catholic
and the head of the Christian Liberation Movement who collected 25,000
signatures in the Varela Project – a peaceful effort to petition the
regime for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. For his peaceful
efforts he was awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament.
His
peaceful efforts, were seen as a danger to the regime, a threat for
which he was detained and arrested many times. Many times he suffered at
the hands of the regime, and, last year, he died in Cuba – killed as
Cuban state security rammed his car off the road. What we know is the
car, driven by Spanish politician Angel Carromero, a citizen of Spain
and Aron Modig, a party activist in Sweden, was involved in the fatal
automobile accident that killed Paya and his Cuban colleague Harold
Cepero.
The circumstances surrounding Paya’s death leave any
reasonable person to conclude what really happened on that road in
eastern Cuba that took the life of Oswaldo was an assassination. His
daughter, Rosa Maria, immediately challenged the regime’s version of
events stating that the family had received information from the
survivors that their car was repeatedly rammed by another vehicle. “So
we think it’s not an accident,” she said, “They wanted to do harm and
then ended up killing my father.”
Ms. Paya was in Washington not
long ago, accepting a posthumous award from the National Endowment for
Democracy on behalf of another young Cuban activist who died alongside
Oswaldo Paya. At the time, the new Ambassador to the United Nations,
Samantha Power, had come before the Foreign Relations Committee during
the nomination process, and assured me she would reach out to Ms. Paya
when confirmed. Since then, she has not only met with Rosa Maria, but
also directly challenged Cuba’s foreign minister to permit an
independent international investigation into Mr. Paya’s death. I commend
Ambassador Power for standing with those still suffering in Cuba and
with Oswaldo Paya and his family who died for advocating peaceful
democratic change and Christian values.
But Cuba’s reach doesn’t
end with the detention or the death of dissidents like Oswaldo Paya. It
doesn’t end at the water’s edge. It goes much further.
Cuba is at
the head of a new and dire crisis in our hemisphere that we cannot
ignore and now we see the same oppression of peaceful activists in Cuba
on the streets of Caracas. Venezuela’s political crisis is growing: 40
dead; hundreds injured; the nation’s economy deteriorating; inflation at
record levels; a scarcity of basic foods and goods. M. President, it
sounds like Cuba to me!
Behind Venezuela’s economic crisis, we
can see Cuba’s failed policies – expropriation and nationalization of
various sectors of the economy, fixed prices in the consumer economy,
criminalization of business leaders and their companies, currency
manipulation and rationing of basic foodstuff.
Behind Venezuela’s
political crisis, we can clearly see familiar Cuban tactics – the
demonization of the dissent, intolerance and oppression of any form of
opposition, politicizing of the military and judiciary, the silencing of
independent television and radio stations, the shutting-down of
newspapers, the arrest of political opponents doing nothing more than
exercising basic rights to freedom of assembly.
We see Cuba’s
destabilizing presence is deeply entwined in Venezuela’s crisis. It
started with the discovery of 29 Cuban spies in Margarita Island in
Venezuela in 1997. It grew steadily and insidiously through the Chavez
years with the Cuban presence and key advisors from Havana in almost
every institution of national government in Venezuela – from the
military to intelligence agencies to the health sector to industrial
policy. And the result? Democracy subverted and innocent people dying
from bullets fired by the government and its thugs – just like in Cuba.
And
yet, knowing the instability that the Cuban regime continues to spread,
amazingly, Europe, nations in Latin America and the Caribbean, and some
of my colleagues in this Chamber, are seeking new opportunities to
engage the Cuban regime. Some want to ease sanctions at this critical
moment and fundamentally redefine our relationship with Cuba. I could
not disagree more.
We can never turn our back on what has
happened and continues to happen in Cuba! We can never wink-and-nod, and
say: It’s been 50 years, that’s long enough, things are changing for
the better in Cuba, so we should ease sanctions.
I say – NO! –
No, we should not ease sanctions. We should not let up. We should not
reward the Castro regime for its human rights violations. For the
suffering it continues to cause the people of Cuba.
We should not
reward the regime for the long dark years they have brought to the
island. We should not ease tourism restrictions simply because the clock
is ticking.
Those who wish to pursue engagement with Cuba must
not forget Cuba’s history and its present state of torture and
oppression – its systematic curtailment of freedom.
Recent events tell a different story: The story of two terrorist states – Cuba and North Korea.
There
is unshakeable, undeniable, incontrovertible proof of the Cuban
government colluding with North Korea in violation of United Nations
sanctions regime. In July of last year, a North Korean ship was docked
in Cuba’s new Mariel Port facility.
The North Korean ship,
suspicious to even the most untrained observer, left the dock and it
wasn’t long afterward that it was seized by the Panamanian government
when it attempted to enter the Panama Canal. Panamanian authorities
boarded the ship, and what did they find? There, in the cargo bays,
under some 200,000 bags of sugar, authorities discovered 240 tons of
weapons bound for – where? – that’s right – for North Korea, another
terrorist state.
And yet, apparently this evidence – to some of my colleagues – is not of concern.
But
that’s not the end of the story, M. President. When authorities
inventoried the 240 tons of weapons hidden beneath 200,000 bags of sugar
they found on the North Korean ship – they found two MiG aircraft;
several SA-2 and SA-3 surface-to-air missile systems; missile and radar
components; and a cache of small arms and rocket propelled grenades.
I
ask my colleagues, is this the kind of behavior of a tired old benign
regime – one that deserves our sympathy? Is this a misunderstanding that
does not check enough terrorist boxes? Is this something we should
justifiably ignore, falling under the category of Castro-will-be-Castro?
Or is this, at its core, the act of a dangerous player – listed as a
terrorist state – that we would not tolerate from any other nation?
It
seems to me that supplying a rogue nation like North Korea with a
secret cache of weapons demands something more than the loosening of
travel restrictions and the opening of trade. It demands exactly the
opposite.
We should treat Cuba and the Castro regime as we would treat any other state sponsor of terrorism – which it is.
And
yet, here I am, M. President, once again forced to come to the floor of
the Senate. Once again – to point to these pictures of a North Korean
ship in a Cuban port smuggling MiG aircraft and surface to air missiles
and ask why should we turn a blind eye to what we clearly would not
accept from Iran, Syria, or Sudan? And why, in God’s name, would we want
to take this opportunity to reward the regime with cash-flows so they
can continue to oppress their people and subvert neighboring countries?
Why
should we accept the lame excuses given by the Cuban regime that –
somehow – despite the fact that many of the arms were still in their
original packaging, despite the fact that others had been recently
calibrated, despite the fact that there was a fresh coat of paint over
the insignia of the Cuban Air Force on the side of the MiGs to hide
their origin, despite the fact that the entire shipment was covered with
a-couple-of-hundred-thousand bags of sugar, Cuba claimed that this was a
purely innocent business transaction and that the arms were being sent
to North Korea for required maintenance and would have been returned to
the island.
Does anyone actually believe such a ludicrous claim?
But the broader question for my colleagues is: Can we and should we
simply ignore it and move on? Even though United Nations weapons
inspectors found that the shipment was a clear violation of UN sanctions
– that Cuba was the first country in the Western hemisphere to violate
international sanctions related to North Korea and that the shipment
constituted the largest amount of arms shipped to or from North Korea
since the adoption of Security Council Resolutions 1874 in 2009 and
Resolution 2094 in 2013. I repeat: “the largest amount of arms shipped
to or from North Korea.” If that is not food for thought when it comes
to easing restrictions against the terrorist state to our south, I don’t
know what it.
That said, in recent years, some would have us
believe that reforms led by Raul Castro have placed Cuba on a path to
economic progress, but, if we look at the new law on foreign investment
that Cuba passed last week, we get a clearer picture of the truth behind
Cuba’s economic model.
Let’s be clear about this new economic
model. Under Cuba’s new foreign investment law, investment projects will
be allowed to be fully funded by foreign capital. Business taxes on
profits would be cut by 50 percent. Foreign companies would be exempt
from paying taxes for the first 8 years of operations in Cuba and many
foreigners living in Cuba would be let off the hook from paying income
taxes at all.
But think about it. The question is: Who wins? Not the people of Cuba.
The
most glaring omission in this new law is any benefit at all to the
Cuban people. Instead of receiving new investment opportunities of
benefitting from tax cuts and loop holes, they will continue to live
under restrictive laws and regulations – unable to start a business,
unable to follow a dream, build a better life.
They are left to
live under the most restrictive laws preventing them from ever realizing
their dreams for themselves and their families.
In fact, the
Cuban regime has permitted people to work for themselves – to be
entrepreneurs but only 200 types of jobs the government sanctions. They
have a list of authorized jobs that includes sewing buttons, filling
cigarette lighters, and street performing. Not exactly lucrative
start-ups that can build an economy. These “authorized” jobs bear more
resemblance to a feudal economy than anything we would recognize as
economic opportunity.
At the same time, the government has moved
aggressively to close in-home movie theaters, second hand clothing
markets, and fledgling private restaurants that its considers too large
or too successful. Why? Because anything that allows Cubans to meet
legally, lawfully, and as a group – is a threat to the regime.
And
while the Cuban government offers new incentives to foreign investors
and continues to clamp down on self-employed workers, the real economic
change in Cuba is the growing role of the Cuban armed forces in the
country’s economy.
Under the watchful eye of Raul Castro’s
son-in-law, a general in the Cuban Armed Forces, the military holding
company, GAESA, has amassed control of more than 40 percent of Cuba’s
economy. Through companies like GAESA, the government and the armed
forces – those most loyal to the Castros – are laying a foundation for
its future control of Cuba and the Cuban economy.
On the economic
front, I think it's important to make the point that when people argue
for trade and travel with Cuba, they are arguing to do so with Castro's
monopolies. Let’s be clear, regular Cubans are prohibited from engaging
in foreign trade and commerce. So we want to trade with Castro's
monopolies? Do we? Do we want to reward the regime?
The U.S.
government’s own report of agricultural sales to Cuba states how every
single transaction with Cuba, by hundreds of American agricultural
companies, have only had one counter-part: Castro's food monopoly,
through a company named Alimport that hasn't helped the people one bit.
So do we really want to unleash billions to Castro's monopolies?
Also,
every single foreign "people-to-people" traveler currently stays at a
hotel or resort owned by the Cuban military (GAESA). No exceptions!
So,
M. President, how does that promote the "independence of the Cuban
people from the regime?" as President Obama's policy statement upon
releasing these regulations states?
At the very least, they
should be compelled to stay at a "casa particular" – a private home –
but staying at the military's facilities contravenes the President's own
policy statement. This hardly constitutes an economic opening for the
people of Cuba.
However, if there is one positive trend to be
found in Cuba today, it is that after decades of fear and self-imposed
silence, there is a growing number of Cuban citizens beginning to speak
out critically, increasingly in public.
In June 2012, Jorge Luis
Garcia Perez, known as Antunez, after testifying before the Foreign
Relations Committee via Skype – as you can see in this photograph – was
beaten and detained for his testimony on human rights abuses on the
island. But that did not stop him and it did not stop the bloggers from
the Cuban diaspora from getting the word out.
After decades of
being manipulated by the Castros, the people of Cuba no longer identify
with the government. And while the government still holds power, its
legitimacy is plummeting in the opinions of its people. So after 55
years of dictatorship, it is our responsibility in the international
community to encourage this independence and help the people of Cuba
reclaim their rights: Rights to freedom of expression, rights to
organize unions, rights to freedom of assembly, rights to freedom of the
press, rights to freedom of religion, universal human rights, the
rights and freedoms that will be the building blocks of the new and
democratic Cuba of the future.
But let us not be misled. Though
Berta Soler is now allowed by the regime to visit the United States and
Europe, when she returns to Cuban soil there is no change in the status
of the Damas en Blanco. Every move she and her courageous partners make
is monitored by the Castro regime. They are still physically harassed,
intimidated, and arrested. Why? For simply wanting what any mother in
any country on the face of the earth wants – to learn of the fate of her
husband, son or daughter who has been harassed, beaten, and jailed by
an aging, illegitimate regime.
According to the Cuba Commission
for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, there were more than
15,000 cases of arbitrary, politically-motivated detentions since the
start of 2012.
In January of this year, when 30 heads of state
from Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the Secretary General
of the UN and Secretary General of the OAS were at a summit in Havana,
there were more than 1,050 detentions over the course of the month.
In
one prominent case, a leading Afro-Cuban political activist,
intellectual and known leftist Manuel Cuesta Morua was arrested after
attempting to organize a parallel civil society summit during the visit
by heads of state. This simple practice, a practice that is not uncommon
and, in fact, is ubiquitous throughout Latin America and the world, is
not tolerated by the Cuban regime.
Instead, Mr. Cuesta Morua
faced five days of intensive interrogations and has been charged with
“disseminating false news against international peace,” joining
prominent activists Jorge Luis Garcia Perez and Guillermo Fariñas, who
was awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament for his
dedication to peace.
He is shown here being taken away by the
police. These activists have faced repeated, brutal acts at the hands of
the Castro regime – no less violent than the regimes of any other
terrorist state.
Finally, it is important to note that
detentions, violence and harassment are not reserved for political
activists alone, but also directed at labor rights activists as well.
In
early March, AFL-CIO President Trumka called on the Cuban government to
end its harassment of Mr. Cuesta Morua, and all independent union
activists, advocating for labor rights to protect Cuban workers, like
Morua and Maria Elena Mir and her colleagues.
American workers
are not turning a blind eye to what the Cuban regime is doing to limit
worker rights, and we should not turn a blind eye either. We cannot
remain silent.
We must support those like Morua and Maria who are
willing to step forward for Labor rights in the face of a repressive
regime that will not stop at anything to silence them. As the people of
Cuba look to cast off the shackles of five decades of dictatorial rule,
we must stand-with and speak out in support-of all those who seek to
reclaim their civil and political rights, and promote political
pluralism and democratic values. We cannot turn our back on Cuba’s human
right violations record for decades simply because “enough time has
passed.”
If that’s the case, M. President, enough time has surely passed in Syria, and Sudan, and Iran, and North Korea.
To
me and to the thousands who have suffered at the hands of these
regimes, the clock has nothing to do with our policy options. Engagement
and sanctions relief has to be earned – it can’t be timed-out! It must
come through real change not Xs on a calendar or the ticking of a clock.
And
the clock is ticking for Alan Gross. On December 4th, 2009, Alan Gross,
a private sub-contractor for the U.S. government, working to bring
information to the Cuban people, was arrested in Cuba. Mr. Gross is a
64-year old development professional who worked in dozens of countries
around the world with programs to help people get access to basic
information.
Since 2009, he has been detained in Villa Marista – a
prison in Havana notorious for its treatment of political prisoners by
the Cuban National Security Agency. This is not a minimum security
prison where foreigners are routinely held. It is a harsh, repressive
prison –reserved for Cuban dissidents.
He is still being held at
Villa Marista, and so I come to the floor to urge my colleagues –
indeed, to urge the Administration – to do all it can to free Mr. Gross,
and keep pressure on the Castro regime.
After serving four years
of a 15 year sentence, this 64 year old American’s mental health is
reported to be deteriorating and his life may well be in danger.
The
case of Alan Gross is only one example of why we cannot let up until
the dead weight of this oppressive regime is lifted – once and for all
-- from the backs of 11 million Cubans living on that island nation,
isolated from the world.
M. President, we have supported
democracy movements around the world. It is the idea upon which this
nation was founded and it is who we are as a people and what we stand
for in the eyes of the world.
We can no longer condone through
inaction and outright support – even from some of my colleagues in this
chamber – the actions of a repressive regime 90 miles from our shores
simply because of the passage of time, or because of some romantic idea
of what the Castro regime is all about.
To my colleagues let me
say, I know I have come to this floor on many occasions demanding
action. I have come to this floor demanding that we live up to our
rhetoric and our values. I ask that we hold the Castro brothers
accountable for the years of suffering – the years of brutality and
repression that has deprived the Cuban people of the basic human rights
we so proudly proclaim to support around the world.
And I will
come to this floor again-and-again-and- again to ask for nothing less.
To ask that we never allow the Castro regime to profit from increased
trade that will benefit the regime, that will use these dollars for
repression, but not put one ounce of food on the plates of Cuban
families.
Let me end, M. President with this photograph of a man
being arrested in Havana and flashing a sign recognized across Cuba and
throughout the world.
Libertad! Libertad! Libertad! That’s all I ask for the people of Cuba. And I will not rest until Cuba is free.
Thank you, M. President, and with that I yield the floor.
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