Date: 1987-12-14
Speaker: DONALD E. LUKENS (republican)
Chamber: H

I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentleman for heading our codel to Nicaragua this weekend. I would like to make three or four observations of my own from personal experience and personal knowledge. I know other Members of the delegation were very moved and I believe very. very impressed. This is my own fourth time down to Nicaragua and fifth time in that area in the last 12 months. This trip was more significant to me than any of the others combined. for the simple reason that I saw a piece of democracy and what could be a peace with freedom in Nicaragua. I am sure the gentleman from Indiana would agree with me that the march in Leon. as he already said on two occasions. was a very unique example of raw courage and of great dedication to the prinicples that without liberty. without freedom. there really is no peace. I would like to share with the gentleman and other members of the delegation what we discussed in private. what I have already said to some of the Members. In speaking to approximately 42 or 43 individuals through inpterpreters. or who themselves spoke English. most of them came up to me during that march and said that without the Contras. "You know. we would not be here. Without that military pressure against the Sandinista regime there would be no freedom whatsoever in Nicaragua." Having restrained myself for several months in the hope that the Arias peace plan has opened the window of opportunity and does have some potential and which I will continue to support. the key to it working now in Honduras and GuatemalaI mean El Salvador. have given into total and complete amnesty. have offered it for their prisoners. it is now for the Communist regime. the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua to open its prisons to total and complete amnesty. It has not done that. In fact. I figure that anything that is the most unifying glue down thereand I would like the gentlemans comments on thisit would be the mutual outrage and anger and frustration at having innocent people in prison with perhaps some who deserve to be there and not have access to them. to have information about them and to be totally frustrated and angered by this outlandish charade of the Sandinista government telling them that they do not have access to their loved ones and will not explain why they are in there. It is very frustrating In some ways but it is also encouraging to me. as a member of a free country. to go to a country that is still slave. not free. and see the beginnings of freedom. I do not believe that this Communist administration in Nicaragua can survive real freedom. I think they would die a diplomatic or political death in a ballot box ballot. I think they would lose. The last comment: It is very dismaying on leaving Nicaragua. believing there was some hope for free activity. political activity to read a headline on our departure that they now plan to have a 600.000 person army in a little country of 3.3 million where at least 10 and as high as 14 percent of the population has already gone because of fear and frustration and disappointment with this administration. the government. the Communists. calling themselves Sandinistas in Nicaragua. It is time for this country to make up its mind if we are a major nation. if we have a major foreign policy. and if we intend to do something about it. or if we really intend for the first time in our history to desert the Monroe Doctrine and also the first time in the last 7 years to abandon the Reagan Doctrine which was to restore the promise of freedom to some people. I would hope the Sandinista Government would comply with more of the Arias peace plan mandates and requirements. If they did. there would be no battle anywhere except at the ballot box. It is clear now that the Communist Sandinista Government. ought to now make a change for the better. to bring more freedom to their country or to face the real prospect of terrible. terrible tragedy brought on by their own obviously ironclad adherence to a failed philosophy. I thank the gentleman from Indiana for yielding. [The report referred to is as follows:] [From the ROA National Security Report.