September 30, 1988 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS 27331 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS THE COMMUNISTS ARE CRACK­ province's peasantry that Herrera had been churches, human rights groups, business ING HEADS NOW THAT U.S. doing of late, with great success. and agriculture associations and labor CONGRESSIONAL LIBERALS Nicaragua's Interior Ministry soon issued unions that, until now, not only have kept a HAVE DESERTED THE FREE­ a statement saying Herrera had been killed modicum of reformist pressure on the San­ "apparently by thieves." A second official dinistas but also allowed the regime the pre­ DOM FIGHTERS IN NICARA­ explanation a few days later said he had tense of political pluralism. GUA been killed by one of his own employees fol­ "It has been the internal opposition that lowing a wage dispute. Upon further investi­ has prevented the Cubanization of Nicara­ HON. DONALD E. "BUZ" LUKENS gation, the government called the murder a gua and kept the political process from OF OHIO crime of passion, saying that he was done in being permanently closed," says Adan by an employee who was romantically in­ IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Fletes of the Nicaraguan Social Christian voved with Herrera's wife. Party. Adds Virgilio Godoy Reyes, president Friday, September 30, 1988 That explanation, however, was contra­ of the Independent Liberal Party and a Mr. DONALD E. "BUZ" LUKENS. Mr. dicted by the accused worker, who said in a former Sandinista labor minister, "The public statement that he had been hired by main policy of the Sandinistas now in inter­ Speaker, just as many of us predicted, without the Sandinistas to be an accomplice to the a viable opposition, the Sandinista Commu­ nal repression to retain power by any murder, which was carried out by two San­ means." nists have returned to their repressive ways. dinista military officers. His story was sec­ This new-and perhaps final-round of re­ During congressional consideration of aid to onded by opposition leaders, who said that pression, designed to gut what remains of the freedom fighters of Nicaragua, Comman­ spent cartridges found at the scene were of the nonmilitary opposition to the regime's dante Ortega tried to put the best face on his the same type used by the Sandinista mili­ one-party rule, follows a yearlong process of brutal dictatorship. His plan was to bide his tary. The worker denied involvement with tenuous democratization, as the government time, consolidate his power, and fool the U.S. Herrera's wife. So did she, coming forward sought to convey the impression that it was to say that Sandinista police had clipped abiding by the terms of the regional peace Congress into strangling his opposition for hairs from her head and her genital area to him. And our naive House leadership fell for it. plan crafted by Oscar Arias Sanchez, the plant as evidence of the alleged affair. president of Costa Rica. Now that he feels the threat to his regime is The worker subsequently was arrested for disappearing, he can return to using brute Under the plan, five governments in the murder and brought to a Matagalpa prison. region specifically agreed in August last force as a political tool. A few days later, Sandinista authorities an­ year to establish "freedom of press, televi­ I would like to insert for the RECORD an arti­ nounced that he had been killed in an sion, and radio . without prior censor­ cle from the October 10 issue of Insight mag­ escape attempt. And they closed the Herre­ ship"; to grant political groups "freedom of azine which attempts to catalog recent Sandi­ ra murder investigation. association, free speech and movement in nista repression. The Matagalpa incident was only one in a order to proselytize"; to decree an amnesty carefully calculated series of events carried Mr. Speaker, our actions and our inaction out recently by the Sandinista regime to guaranteeing "freedom in all its forms"; and has consequences far beyond the debate we frighten anyone inclined to oppose its in­ to terminate state-of-emergency laws while pursue from our comfortable seats here on creasingly unpopular rule. These include de­ reestablishing "the full exercise of all con­ the floor of the House. As this article shows, tention and imprisonment of suspected op­ stitutional guarantees." there are those who have paid for our inaction positionists under a "public order and secu­ These, of course, would be merely the first rity" law on the books since the days of dic­ steps on the road to Nicaraguan democracy. with torture, there are others who have paid In addition, opposition groups maintained for it with their lives. tator Anastasio Somoza Debayle; closing of independent news outlets; organized harass­ that true democratization only would come The article follows: with an end to the one-party state, with the [From the Insight magazine, Oct. 10, 1988] ment of the churches and labor unions by so-called turbas, Sandinista toughs who bru­ Sandinista National Liberation Front giving REPRESSION FLOWS AS IT GETS HoT UNDER tally intimidate those who try to exercise up its total control of such institutions as SANDINISTA COLLAR their civil rights; and accelerated expropria­ the military, the government bureaucracy <By David Brock) tion of private property as retribution for and the schools. In that event, Sandinista <Summary: Summer in Nicaragua was a political activism. Nicaragua would be the first Marxist-Lenin­ time for testing the Sandinista regime's will­ An editorial in the independent newspa­ ist state to negotiate itself out of power. ingness to relax its control. A March cease­ per La Prensa the second week of July re­ This being so, many critics doubted the fire accord had renewed hopes that the re­ ferred to these events as a "lightning oper­ sincerity of Sandinista intentions from the gional peace plan's provisions for greater ation" designed to "shock the country, pla­ outset. The government nonetheless pro­ political freedom, agreed to by the Sandinis­ cate the people's fears by cowing them and ceeded to lift a state of emergency, allow tas, might have room to be realized. But as creat~ the international image of a strong the opposition press to operate freely and civilian opposition gained momentum, the regime with the necessary strength to deal permit a host of critical radio stations to ruling party hardly stepped aside. The blows without causing destabilization." The broadcast throughout the country. While crackdown, coming without excuse of a Sandinistas, it said, have been "carried away the ruling directorate made no permanent, Contra military threat, includes the jailing by their vengeful triumph-which is charac­ institutional reforms, the political openness, and killing of civilians.) teristic of totalitarian dictatorships-and fueled by a severe economic crisis, embol­ The bullet-ridden body of Eleazar Herre­ have apparently tried to set a permanent dened the democratic opposition to press for ra, a prosperous cattleman and farmer from example that will serve as a 'future warning' more concessions. Matagalpa, was found lying in a ditch near to those who harbor 'subversive thoughts' By all accounts, over the course of several his property July 29 by Sandinista police. and those who don't know who has the months, popular discontent with Sandinista The 48-year·old leader of a faction of the power in Nicaragua, the spokesmen of per­ rule swelled to an all-time high. Opposition opposition Conservative Party in the Mata­ manent hate and the true apologists of in­ political rallies since last fall have drawn galpa province in central Nicaragua had stitutional violence." large numbers. A January march and rally been reported missing two days earlier by This provoked the government once again in Managua, for example, attracted approxi­ his wife, who said that her husband had left to shut La Prensa, the light switch of Nica­ mately 30,000 people, the largest anti-Sandi­ their home the previous week and had not raguan democracy, which the Sandinistas nista demonstration since 1984, when enthu­ been seen since. When Radio Sandino, the have flicked on and off so often that news siastic throngs greeted Arturo Jose Cruz, government station, curtly reported the of its closing hardly raises an eyebrow. This the opposition candidate in that year's pres­ homicide July 29, opposition leaders in Ma­ time, the paper was silenced for 15 days in idential election. (Cruz later withdrew his nagua immediately called for an investiga­ the midst of a deep-going summer crack­ candidacy after failing to reach agreement tion of the killing, fearing that it was trig­ down on the growing ranks of the civilian with the government on democratic elector­ gered by the political organizing of the opposition, a collection of political parties, al procedures.) e This "bullet" symbol identifies statements or insertions which are not spoken by a Member of the Senate on the floor. Matter set in this typeface indicates words inserted or appended, rather than spoken, by a Member of the House on the floor. 27332 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS September 30, 1988 The next month in Monimbo, a poor had the effect of severely crimping the op­ While hopes were high last fall in the barrio in the city of Masaya that was the position's ability to organize. months following the signing of the Arias site of the first major uprising against The government claimed the Nandaime peace plan, few Nicaraguans other than Somoza a decade ago, hundreds of peasants demonstration was the final phase of an beneficiaries of the ruling party appear now took to the streets to protest forced military effort, coordinated by the U.S. Embassy in to hold out much hope for material im­ recruiting.