Rather than legitimizing a tyrant and a man who doesn’t care for the well-being of his own people; President Carter should advocate positive change for the beleaguered Cuban people.  Below is the speech I made on the Senate floor in 2002 when President Carter made his first trip to Cuba.

CARTER, MISSION TO CUBA — (Senate – May 14, 2002)

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. President, many of us have anticipated the trip of former President Carter to Cuba with a mixed sense of hope and concern. We had hoped that he would use this unique opportunity to help bring ideas of freedom and democracy to the repressed people of Cuba , just 90 miles off our shores.

However, it was amazing and disappointing for many of us to learn of Mr. Carter’s visit to a Cuban biotechnology facility and his acceptance, at face value, of the assurances of communist Cuban officials there that the facility is engaged solely in medical and humanitarian pursuits.

More distressing is that former President Jimmy Carter was accorded the same privilege and courtesy extended to former Presidents who have requested top-secret intelligence briefings and situation reports on global areas of interest of the United States.

In the post-9/11 world, it is important that we as a united country protect the safety and security of our people.

Instead, what we have in Mr. Carter’s visit to this biotech facility is a former President–who himself was once responsible for our foreign policy and the safety of the American people–dismissing the concerns of his own government, revealing information to which he was privy in top-secret briefings, and buying wholesale the assertions of the dictator Fidel Castro and his minions.

The words and actions of Mr. Carter at this facility are a breach of trust, and it is made even worse, in that the individual involved in that breach is one in whom the American people once placed the ultimate trust and responsibility of the Presidency.

Rather than spending his time with Fidel Castro and his henceman, I would suggest the name of at least one person Mr. Carter would be better advised to get to know.

Just a few short days ago I joined the Congressional Cuba Political Prisoner Initiative. As part of this initiative, I have decided to sponsor or “adopt,” if you will, a Cuban political prisoner named Francisco Chaviano Gonzales, and to advocate on his behalf, and on behalf of the thousands of others being held in Cuba in clear abuses of their basic human rights.

Francisco Chaviano is president of the National Council for Civil Rights, an organization dedicated to promoting democratic practices, racial equality and human rights. He was arrested after government agents broke into his home and confiscated documents revealing human rights abuses in Cuba –specifically, information about the Castro government’s sinking of a tugboat that claimed the lives of 41 men, women, and children who were attempting to escape to freedom.

Chaviano was arrested and detained in prison for 1 year, and although a civilian, he was tried by military tribunal and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

He has been confined in isolation and deprived of basic medical care for long periods of time. After being allowed to visit him for the first time in eight years, his wife reported that he is in very poor health. Other members of the civil rights organization have followed in Chaviano’s footsteps and continued to press the Cuban government for democratic reforms, at great peril to themselves.

Jimmy Carter is a man who is often praised in the media as a “model ex-President” or a “statesman” for his work with Habitat for Humanity. I do believe there is still time for him to make a more positive contribution to the plight of the Cuban people and to American foreign policy regarding Fidel Castro.

Mr. Carter is scheduled to deliver a speech to the Cuban people tonight. His remarks have the potential to do enormous good or to cause further harm. Rather than legitimizing a tyrant and a man who doesn’t care for the well-being of his own people; he could advocate positive change for the beleaguered Cuban people.

If Mr. Carter in his speech tonight is looking for a road map to freedom and prosperity for the Cuban people, he need look no further than the words and principles of freedom written by George Mason in the Virginia Declaration of Rights. This document, adopted on June 12, 1776, helped form the basis of our Declaration of Independence and 15 years later in our Bill of Rights as the first amendments to our Constitution.

I would read a few excerpts from George Mason’s historic words from various articles of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which I think are instructive.

Article 1: That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

Article 2: That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them.

Article 3: That government is, our ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration. And that, when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conductive to the public weal.

Article 12: That the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwalks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.

Article 16: That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience …..

Those are the words of freedom, and of the inherent rights to which all people are entitled, even if only temporarily subjugated.

Therefore, I call on former President Carter to embrace these truths and to use this unique opportunity to advance these enduring principles of liberty in Cuba .

I urge him to support the Varela Project, which is a petition drive that has collected the 10,000 signatures needed under Castro’s so-called “constitution” to force a referendum on whether his government should be allowed to continue.

I call on Fidel Castro to heed the concepts first enunciated by George Mason 226 years ago in the Western Hemisphere, and I also call upon him to schedule free and fair democratic elections on the island of Cuba within the next year.

Mr. President, I will close with more words from George Mason, who said:

There is a passion to the mind of man, especially a free man, which renders him impatient of a restraint.”

Mr. Carter has the power to either to fan the flames of those passions and aspirations of the Cuban people, or to throw cold water on them. The choice he needs to make is clear. Do not flinch. Stand strong for freedom!

Thank you. I yield the floor.