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“TOILING FOR FREEDOM” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H2947-H2948 on May 4, 2005.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TOILING FOR FREEDOM
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, as we welcome this week the President of Georgia and the architect of the Rose Revolution in that country, it is critically important that the United States Congress continue to focus on the need to bring about freedom and democracy as antidote to terrorism, to oppression, and instability.
Nowhere is this policy more pertinent than in Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan today is a vivid example of the need to continue and indeed strengthen this policy in the region.
Months of civilian protests and flawed parliamentary elections culminated in the invalidation of those election results by that country's supreme court, the resignation of the entire cabinet, and an end to the 15-year reign of its strongman.
This is a clear sign that the winds of democratic change cannot be stopped.
The Kyrgyz people certainly took note of the elections in nearby Afghanistan, of Georgia's Rose Revolution and Ukraine's Orange Revolution in November of last year; courageous individuals such as Mr. Edil Baisalov of the president's Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, Kyrgyzstan, who are struggling to exert their rights as citizens and human beings.
He will be testifying before the Committee on International Relations tomorrow on how the U.S. can help support those who, like him, toil for freedom around the world.
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I assure you that what we do in this body resonates throughout that region.
Mr. Baisalov has referred to the positive impact of a resolution that I introduced on the status of human rights in central Asia, and that it has energized the opposition and the prodemocracy, the dissident movement in his country.
The U.S., along with the European Union, was quick to denounce Kyrgyzstan's recent parliamentary election as seriously flawed. It was precisely this Western rejection of sham elections in Georgia and Ukraine that helped tip the balance there.
Thus, as the Central Asian states enter into a challenging phase of political transition, the United States must continue to maintain the pressure for democratic change in Central Asia.
The challenges are immense. Opposition parties in Central Asia are either fictitious organizations that exist only on paper or, as in Kazakhstan, opposition groups in name only, as in Uzbekistan, where all five opposition parties support supposedly the president.
Turkmenistan's president has gone as far as to dispense with the pretense of democratic rule and brazenly declared himself president for life, a move that demonstrates his confidence that his dictatorship will go unchallenged by the world.
This situation has not gone unchallenged by the United States. In July of 2004, after careful review of the state of political reform in Uzbekistan, the Department of State decided that the leader is not fulfilling the terms of the 2002 Strategic Partnership Framework agreement, which mandated substantial and continuing progress on democracy movements and decided to deny certification to Uzbekistan.
In Uzbekistan, religion becomes criminal in that country as soon as it strays out of the official State-controlled Islam. The Uzbek government is behaving much as it did with its Soviet predecessors.
Following massive arrests in Uzbekistan of followers of the two leading militant groups, adherents of the movements have gone underground. Yet their numbers are swelling in the region, particularly among young unemployed folks who are distributing the information put forth by the militants, and they try to manipulate the religion for terrorist political gain, and they are doing so because they need the money.
Thus, the dependence of many governments throughout Central Asia on tyrannical rule does not only fail to adequately address the problem of Islamic extremism, but it serves to fuel the terrorism that stems from it.
We, and other open societies, must, therefore, condition our assistance to Central Asian states not only on their cooperation on the terrorism front, but also on their taking concrete steps in Central Asia toward the establishment of the rule of law, the support for the growth of civil society and support for building democratic institutions.
With the role of the United States in Central Asia, the region faces the best possible scenario to solve their problems jointly.
We are uniquely placed to press for regional cooperation and to monitor the commitment of regional states to real improvement of social, economic and political conditions.
That is why we have exerted congressional oversight through hearings and briefings, to make sure that everyone understands the current state of human rights in Central Asia because only by helping to create an environment where freedom and prosperity can flourish will we achieve long-term success in the war against terror and oppression.
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