Date: 2006-06-14
Speaker: MARIO DIAZ-BALART (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Flor

ida. Mr. Chairman. I yield myself such time as I may consume. A couple of points of clarification. Curyently. U.S. law already allows individual members of religious organizations to travel to Cuba for religious purposes. The only requirements. of course. is that they have a specific license. and that is a safeguard in U.S. law to ensure that travel is in fact for the stated purpose and not for the purpose of tourism. Again. current regulations ensure that the financial donations are not provided to the regime. that terrorist regime. that murderous. terrorist regime. under the guise of religious activity. And the current lw seeks to prevent the manipulation of legitimate activities to practice or share as one may believe about the Cuban people. Why is that important? Well. I have this board here. and I hope you can see it. the American people can see it. Why is it so important that we are careful about how this goes? Because the regime in Cuba is a regime that promotes pedophilia. promotes -sexual tourism. including with children. And let me read this quote. "Cuba has a tourism industry. government operated or affiliated. and it engages in promoting child prostitution." Yes. child prostitution. which is not only trafficking under our law. United States law. but under U.N. protocol. And it is done very openly. This just came out recently. This came out just recently. So again. yes. the law provides that you can do it. as long as it is real. It is not just to do other things. such as what that terrorist regime promotes and sponsors. like pedophilia and child prostitution. I will note that the sponsor of -this amendment said that the American people would be ashamed. or would be appalled. I guessI dont want to quote her. but in essenceif they saw this debate. It is ironic that when. for example. myself. and now Senator. then Congressman MENENDEZ proposed resolutions just condemning the crackdown of the dissidents in Cuba. condemning the crackdown against the freedom of press in Cuba. most of this Congress voted in favor of that resolution condemning the crackdown. Only 22 Members of this House voted against those resolutions. bipartisan resolutions. condemning the crackdown on the free press. condemning the crackdown on the peaceful opposition movement in Cuba. The distinguished Member who was here before who said that he would support a resolution condemning the regime is on record not 20 years ago. not 10 years ago. just last year against even condemning the crackdown against the free press. Against even that. It would be interesting to find out where the sponsor of this amendment was. Was she condemning the crackdown? Did she vote with us to condemn the crackdown. or did she support the Castro regime even when they were doing the crackdown? The bottom line is this. my dear friends. There is a terrorist regime just 90 miles away from the United States with close ties to Iran. to North Korea. and other nasty. horrible. murderous terrorist regimes. In itself the Cuba regime is a terrorist regime. This is not the time to be helping antiAmerican terrorist regimes with funding or in ways in which the terrorist regime can obtain more funding. I would respectfully ask this amendment also once again be strongly defeated. Mr. Chairman. I reserve the balance of my time.