79-04-B3
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Human Rights[edit]
Transcript[edit]We've been told that Human Rights is the very heart of our foreign policy. If that is true, it explains the inconsistency of that policy. I'll be right back. By coincidence, three situations dealing with our policy on Human Rights became news items almost simultaneously in recent weeks and they pointed up our government's inconsistency with regard to this subject. In fact, it is an inconsistency that perhaps should be called hypocrisy. The first news item was that our State Department has decided that violation of Human Rights is no longer a barrier to normalizing relations with Castro's Cuba. We still have two other unresolved matters standing in the way: Cuba's forces in Africa and a lack of compensation for private property seized by Castro during the revolution, but the slate is clean on Human Rights, because a few hundred of Castro's thousands of political prisoners have been freed and allowed to join their families in the United States. The second item had to do with a cutback at economic aid in Nicaragua and the withdrawal of American personnel. This we're doing because, according to the State Department, President Samosa is in violation of our standards of Human Rights. He may be, I don't know. I do know, because it's a matter of record, that the revolutionary forces who are fighting against his regime are Marxists for the most part and many were trained and armed by Castro's Cuba. so it's one off and one on our Human Rights blacklist. Item number three is the release of a report that has been in the making for about a year and a half. It was in September 1977 that Panama invited the Organization of American States to send its Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to visit Panama and investigate what were called unfounded, unjust and irresponsible charges of violations of Human Rights. These charges had been made in the discussion and debate over the Panama Canal treaties. The results of that investigation have just been made public and they confirmed the charges which the government of Panama had declared were unfounded and unjust. The commission concludes that between 1968 and 1972, political activity was practically suppressed by the military regime. From '72 to '77, Panamaians were deported in violation of the constitution. Restrictions were imposed on freedom of assembly, expression and association and there was interference in the judicial process. All of that is only for openers. The commission reported on torture tactics engaged in with the Panama National Guard, electric shocks to the vital and most sensitive parts of the body, physical beatings of male and female prisoners usually with a hoses, the insulting fondling of female prisoners and threat of rape and long interrogation of prisoners while denying them food, water and sleep. The commission also reported a written statement from Leopoldo Aragon, who was a political prisoner for two years and then exiled to Sweden where he burned himself to death in a protest against our turning over the canal to Panama. Here is some of what he wrote, "Prisoners were running like cattle under the whippings and savage cries of the guards who were hitting them clubs." In addition to this he told of prisoners being hung from tree limbs by their wrists, chaining them to thorn trees and tying them on top of ant tunnels. This October 1st we begin the turnover of the canal to Panama. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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