IV
104TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION
H. CON. RES. 24
Calling for the United States to propose and seek an international embargo
against the totalitarian government of Cuba.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
FEBRUARY 7, 1995
Mr. DIAZ-BALART submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was
referred to the Committee on International Relations
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
Calling for the United States to propose and seek an inter-
national embargo against the totalitarian government of
Cuba.
Whereas the United States has shown a deep commitment,
and considers it a moral obligation, to promote and pro-
tect human rights and fundamental freedoms as ex-
pressed in the Charter of the United Nations and in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
Whereas the Congress has historically and consistently mani-
fested its solidarity and the solidarity of the American
people with the democratic aspirations of the Cuban
people;
Whereas the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 calls upon the
President to encourage the governments of countries that
conduct trade with Cuba to restrict their trade and credit
•HCON 24 IH
relations with Cuba in a manner consistent with the pur-
poses of that Act;
Whereas the 1992 FREEDOM Support Act requires that the
President, in providing economic assistance to Russia and
the emerging Eurasian democracies, take into account
the extent to which they are acting to ‘‘terminate support
for the communist regime in Cuba, including removal of
troops, closing military facilities, and ceasing trade sub-
sidies and economic, nuclear, and other assistance’’;
Whereas the Government of Cuba engages in the illegal inter-
national narcotics trade and harbors fugitives from jus-
tice in the United States;
Whereas the Castro government threatens international peace
and security by engaging in acts of armed subversion and
terrorism such as the training and supplying of groups
dedicated to international violence;
Whereas the Castro government has utilized from its incep-
tion and continues to utilize torture in various forms (in-
cluding by psychiatry), as well as execution, exile,
confiscation, political imprisonment, and other forms of
terror and repression, as means of retaining power;
Whereas Fidel Castro has defined democratic pluralism as
‘‘pluralistic garbage’’ and continues to make clear that he
has no intention of tolerating the democratization of
Cuban society;
Whereas the Castro government holds innocent Cubans hos-
tage in Cuba by no fault of the hostages themselves solely
because relatives have escaped the country;
Whereas although a signatory state to the 1928 Inter-Amer-
ican Convention on Asylum and the International Cov-
enant on Civil and Political Rights (which protects the
•HCON 24 IH
right to leave one’s own country), Cuba nevertheless sur-
rounds embassies in its capital by armed forces to thwart
the right of its citizens to seek asylum and systematically
denies that right to the Cuban people, punishing them by
imprisonment for seeking to leave the country and killing
them for attempting to do so (as demonstrated in the
case of the confirmed murder of over 40 men, women,
and children who were seeking to leave Cuba on July 13,
1994);
Whereas the Castro government continues to utilize black-
mail, such as the immigration crisis with which it threat-
ened the United States in the summer of 1994, and other
unacceptable and illegal forms of conduct to influence the
actions of sovereign states in the Western Hemisphere in
violation of the Charter of the Organization of American
States and other international agreements and inter-
national law;
Whereas the United Nations Commission on Human Rights
has repeatedly reported on the unacceptable human
rights situation in Cuba and has taken the extraordinary
step of appointing a Special Rapporteur;
Whereas the Government of Cuba has consistently refused ac-
cess to the Special Rapporteur and formally expressed its
decision not to ‘‘implement so much as one comma’’ of
the 
United 
Nations 
Resolutions 
appointing 
the
Rapporteur;
Whereas the United Nations General Assembly passed Reso-
lution 1992/70 on December 4, 1992, Resolution 1993/
48/142 on December 20, 1993, and Resolution 1994/49/
544 on October 19, 1994, referencing the Special
Rapporteur’s reports to the United Nations and con-
•HCON 24 IH
demning ‘‘violations of human rights and fundamental
freedoms’’ in Cuba;
Whereas Article 39 of Chapter VII of the United Nations
Charter provides that the United Nations Security Coun-
cil ‘‘shall determine the existence of any threat to the
peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall
make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be
taken . . ., to maintain or restore international peace
and security.’’;
Whereas the United Nations has determined that massive
and systematic violations of human rights may constitute
a ‘‘threat to peace’’ under Article 39 and has imposed
sanctions due to such violations of human rights in the
cases of Rhodesia, South Africa, Iraq, and the former
Yugoslavia;
Whereas in the case of Haiti, a neighbor of Cuba not as close
to the United States as Cuba, the United States led an
effort to obtain and did obtain a United Nations Security
Council embargo and blockade against that country due
to the existence of a military dictatorship in power less
than 3 years;
Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 940 of
July 31, 1994, subsequently authorized the use of ‘‘all
necessary means’’ to restore the ‘‘democratically elected
government of Haiti’’, and the democratically elected gov-
ernment of Haiti was restored to power on October 15,
1994;
Whereas the totalitarian nature of the Castro regime has de-
prived the Cuban people of any peaceful recourse to im-
proving their own condition and has led thousands of
•HCON 24 IH
Cuban citizens to risk or lose their lives in attempting to
escape from Cuba to freedom; and
Whereas the Cuban people deserve to be assisted in a decisive
manner to end the tyranny that has oppressed them for
36 years and the continued failure to do so constitutes
ethically improper conduct by the international commu-
nity: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate
concurring), That it is the sense of the Congress that—
(1) the United States considers the acts of the
Castro government, including its massive, system-
atic, and extraordinary violations of human rights, a
threat to international peace; and
(2) the President should advocate, and should
instruct the United States representatives to the
United Nations Security Council to propose and to
seek, a mandatory international embargo against the
totalitarian government of Cuba pursuant to chapter
VII of the Charter of the United Nations.
Æ