Venezuela

Floor Speech

Madam President, the reason I come to the floor is to call attention to a crisis that has fallen off the front pages over the last few weeks; that is, the situation in our own hemisphere that is occurring in Venezuela. I recognize there have been news stories about an airplane that has been tragically potentially lost--or has been lost. We don't know the full outcome of that yet. I know the situation in Ukraine has captivated the attention of the public--and rightfully so--and I am pleased to see the Senate has taken important steps today toward addressing that issue.

I wish to speak about something that is happening in our own backyard, in our own hemisphere; in fact, something that is impacting hundreds of thousands of people who live in Florida because they have family members who still live in the country of Venezuela.

Since February 4 of this year, Venezuelans have been taking to the streets to complain about their government. These Venezuelans are from all walks of life, but they have truly been motivated by young people, by students.

The origins of this public discontent are important to understand because they are not just purely political. It in fact has to do with the dysfunction and the failures of the government that is currently in charge of that country. The statistics bear out that dysfunction and their failures. For example, violence and insecurity is among the highest in the entire Western Hemisphere. The murder rate in Venezuela was 79 per 100,000 people in 2013.

In the city of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, the murder rate is actually almost double that. It is 122 per 100,000, making it one of the most dangerous cities on Earth. The unbridled corruption that exists in terms of how State assets are used--Venezuela is an oil-rich country. There are individuals in that government who have empowered themselves of Venezuela's oil, not their oil, and are basically giving it away to countries such as Cuba and others and using it as their own personal piggy bank for personal enrichment and to fund their governmental operations at the expense of the people of Venezuela.

Their inflation rate is 57 percent. In fact, this week Fitch ratings lowered Venezuela's sovereign debt rating into junk territory from B-plus to B. They warned, by the way, that further downgrades are on the way.

There is also this unprecedented scarcity of basic goods, including food staples; even things such as toilet paper there is a shortage of. I will show some graphics. This is a line of people waiting in the city of San Cristobal to go into a supermarket. We are talking about a rich country. This is not a Third World country. This is not a nation that is poor. This is a revenue-rich nation, among the most resource rich on the planet. Here is a line of people waiting to go into a grocery store, reminiscent of Cuba, for example, a country whose model this government follows, and we will talk about that more in a moment.

Let me show my colleagues a picture of some store shelves inside a Venezuelan supermarket: completely empty, nothing on the shelves. This is the economic reality of the failure of the Maduro-Chavez government in Venezuela today, and this is why, among other reasons, people have taken to the streets to demonstrate.

There was another catalyst: a sexual assault that occurred on a college campus, and students were protesting against law enforcement's unwillingness to address that assault. The government cracked down--but not on the sexual assaulters, not on the perpetrators, on the demonstrators.

All of these things we have talked about--the failure of that State, the lack of democratic opening, the political abuses, the corruption, and the economic disaster of the Venezuelan Government--led to demonstrations that began on February 4 and continue throughout the country.

I want to show you a picture of what those demonstrations looked like. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest, and they were protesting the things I have outlined already: the insecurity, the violence, the scarcity of basic goods, the lack of opportunity, the political repression.

Meanwhile, Nicolas Maduro, the President of that country, and all of his cronies live a life of luxury--and we are going to talk about that more in a moment--because this government is surrounded by individuals who are living lives of luxury not just in Venezuela but in Florida.

While the people take to the streets--and you saw the empty store shelves--there are people tied to the Government in Venezuela buying gold-plated iPads--I did not even know there was such a thing--in Miami and investing in enormous properties and mansions, with the money they are stealing, with the help of the Maduro government, from the people of Venezuela, leading to these protests.

So what has been the response of the Maduro government? What has been the response to these legitimate complaints about what is happening in Venezuela?

I am going to show you some images of what the response has been from the government.

Here is the first. Here is their national guard. Here is their national guard battling with students in the streets, fully equipped with riot gear, ready to battle against them. This has been their response: repression at every turn in multiple cities.

Here is the other response: teargas--teargas by a fully armored individual, firing teargas canisters into the crowd.

Let me talk about the teargas for a moment. Let me show you this canister. This canister that was used against peaceful protesters actually has a marking. It says: ``HECHO EN BRASIL''--``MADE IN BRAZIL.'' And there have been reports, in fact, that there has been some U.S.-manufactured teargas being used against protesters in the streets in Venezuela.

But if it stopped at teargas, it would be one thing. But it has not stopped at teargas. In fact, it is now known that the Interior Ministry of Venezuela authorized snipers to travel to Tachira State and fire on demonstrators.

Here is a picture of a government official, of a law enforcement or army or national guard individual, or an Interior Ministry individual on a rooftop with a rifle and a scope aiming into a crowd.

Here is a picture of a sniper. It does not end there. Those are not the only pictures we have.

Here are more pictures of more snipers on rooftops.

Here is another sniper aiming into the crowd, with a spotter next to him.

Here is another blown-up picture of the same sniper.

These are government-sponsored individuals. What civilized planet on Earth sends the national guard and the interior ministry of their own government, of their own country, with snipers to fire on their own people who are demonstrating because of the lack of freedoms and opportunity and economic degradation that exists in a country?

They cannot deny this. Here are pictures, taken by demonstrators themselves, of the snipers ready to shoot down people. In fact, 36 people have lost their lives.

But it does not end just with the government snipers. Because what the government is trying to do here to hide their involvement is they have organized these progovernment militia groups, basically--these militant groups that they hide behind. These groups do not wear uniforms. They are called ``colectivos.'' They drive around the city on motorcycles, and they assault protesters. They break in and vandalize their homes. They have weapons that they use to shoot into the crowds and kill or harm people.

There are three main groups. By the way, these groups began under Hugo Chavez's reign, and these groups are actually organized around a concept that has existed for years in Cuba--these committees to defend the revolution. These are neighborhood groups, so they know your family, they know who you are, they are always watching, and they organize themselves into armed militias. The government's claim is: Well, these groups are on their own. We are not coordinating with them. But, in fact, there have been multiple reports that these groups coordinate with the national guard to take down barricades set up by protesters, to break into the homes of protesters, to vandalize homes, to terrorize people, and to kill.

There are three main groups that I want to point out, these colectivos.

La Piedrita is one of them. It is based in a working-class neighborhood of Caracas. It has a far-left ideology. It is armed. It is comprised of radicals who claim to be willing to die for their revolutionary ideals--whatever those are.

In January, this group, by the way, tweeted that Henrique Capriles--the opposition party's nominee for President in the last elections--is a racist and a fascist and accused him of intending to launch attacks on the poor and on impoverished neighborhoods.

Another colectivo: the Patriotic Force of National Liberation. This group bases its beliefs on the teachings of a leftist revolutionary and murderer by the name of Che Guevara.

A third group is the Tupamaro Revolutionary Movement. This is an armed communist political and militant organization that also operates out of Caracas.

These are just three of these armed, un-uniformed, thuggish, criminal groups that operate under the auspices and at the direction of the government of Nicolas Maduro and the people who surround him.

So what is the result?

The result is there have been over 1,800 people detained in Venezuela since this began last month. Over 450 people have been injured. Over 50 people have been tortured while detained--that we have reports on. And over 36 people have been killed.

This is not happening on a continent halfway around the world. This is happening in our hemisphere, right now, in real time. And these numbers, they just summarize the depth and the scope and the breadth of what is happening in the regime's brutality in Venezuela.

But these are not just statistics. Behind every single one of these--behind the 36 who have been killed, behind the 1,800 who have been detained, behind the 450 who have been injured--are real people, with names and families and fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and children. I want to tell you the story of a couple of them.

The first is Marvinia Jimenez. Here in this picture you see her on her knees as part of a peaceful protest. And here you see an armed individual with a pistol pointed at her. She is on her knees

and poses no threat. She has given herself up as a peaceful protester, as she confronts an armed individual associated with the government holding a pistol.

What happened next in these pictures is these armed individuals from the Interior Ministry grabbed her by the wrist and head. They subsequently throw her to the ground. And here is what they do when she is on the ground. This individual here--a female, a member of the Interior Ministry--takes off her helmet and proceeds to beat her in the head with that helmet.

Here is the picture. This is real. This is not a movie. This is happening. This is happening now.

This happened to Marvinia Jimenez, and luckily someone caught it on their phone and was able to capture these images.

These are uniformed individuals associated with the government. You saw she had given herself up and was on her knees. And this is what happens: She gets beaten in the face with a helmet.

She lived to tell her story. But there are others who have not been so fortunate.

Here is Geraldine Moreno. She was a college student in the city of Valencia.

On February 19, she stepped outside of her home to see what was going on during an antigovernment protest. Six national guard members--six national guard members of the Maduro government--came by on motorcycles to break up the protest.

As the demonstrators fled, they fired into the crowd, and she was hit by gunfire and fell to the ground. She struggled to get up, and just then one of the national guard members came up and shot her in the face at point blank range and killed her.

Geraldine was someone's daughter. In fact, she was not just anyone's daughter, she was Rosa Orozco's daughter, and Rosa has lost her daughter forever.

This is the youth of Venezuela. This is supposed to be Venezuela's future, and they are being indiscriminately mowed down in the street by the government of their own country.

There are some inspiring stories too.

As shown in this picture, this is Maria Corina Machado, a member of the Venezuelan opposition party in Parliament. She was here in Washington this week. She has bravely spoken out against these things going on in Venezuela, and bravely, the Government of Panama gave her the space to speak out on behalf of the people of Venezuela at a recent OAS meeting. But, shamefully, the rest of the countries that are members of the OAS--not the United States or Canada but every other country did nothing to defend her right to speak, and she was denied the right to tell the world the truth about what is happening.

She could have stayed in exile and asked for political asylum, but do you know what this brave young woman did? She got on an airplane and flew back to Venezuela--to her country--to continue the fight there, peacefully, as a member of their Parliament, as a member of the opposition party.

Well, when she arrived, she was immediately detained at the airport in Caracas. She was questioned by the thugs you just saw, who no doubt tried to intimidate her in that questioning. She was verbally attacked by government supporters at the airport. And then she got in her car to leave, to go to her destination, and these same thugs tried to run her car off the road. They are so incompetent that they could not even carry that out, thankfully. She finally made it to her destination.

And then guess what happens this week. The speaker of their so-called National Assembly--an individual by the name of Diosdado Cabello--a Maduro loyalist, a criminal--decided to remove her, to basically just expel her from the National Assembly. She is no longer a member of the National Assembly--unilaterally dismissed by the equivalent of their Assembly's president, their speaker.

The OAS's response to this has been shameful. The Organization of American States has been downright embarrassing and shameful. I thought it was best summarized by the opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who wrote in the New York Times on March 25:

The outspoken response from human rights organizations is in sharp contrast to the shameful silence from many of Venezuela's neighbors in Latin America. The Organization of American States, which represents nations in the Western Hemisphere, has abstained from any real leadership on the current crisis of human rights and the looming specter of a failed state, even though it was formed precisely to address issues like these.

Why do we even need an OAS--an organization of democratically elected governments--why do we even need it, why are we even members of it, why do we even contribute funds of American taxpayers towards it, if it cannot meet and address systemic human rights abuses such as these?

I am less than pleased, by the way, with our own government's reaction. This is not a partisan issue, but I have to say this. President Obama has expressed he is concerned about this. To his credit, the Vice President was stronger in condemning the Maduro regime.

We are not just concerned about this. We should be outraged about this. Just as we are outraged when things go wrong in other parts of the world and weigh in with sanctions--and we should--and our voices--and we should--this is happening in our own hemisphere, right underneath our nose. And it is shameful that the leadership of our government has so far not done more to address this. But we can change that, and I am hoping that we will.

What I hope to do over the next few days is to propose specific sanctions against individuals and companies associated with the Maduro regime so they know there are consequences for what is happening here. And you think our sanctions have an impact on Russia in its violations of Ukrainian sovereignty? Sanctions against Maduro and his government would have a dramatic impact. Because all those people who are around him who are getting rich off this regime, who are supporting these abuses so they can stay in power and keep making money, they all have bank accounts and property and restaurants and businesses and mansions in the United States of America. And if you support this, this government should sanction you.

I ask what I did a few weeks ago in a speech on this subject: If the United States of America will not stand up and be a strong voice on behalf of people who all they seek is freedom and liberty that our own founding documents say belong to all people--rights given to them by their Creator--if the United States of America will not be a forceful voice, what nation on Earth will? They look to us. Our own model of freedom and our Republic inspires people. We say we stand for these principles. We need to defend them when they are threatened, especially in our own backyard.

So I hope in the weeks to come we can pursue these targeted sanctions against some of these individuals associated with the government, like the Assembly president Diosdado Cabello, and others such as these individuals who we will come on the floor in the next few weeks and identify by name, those who benefit from the systematic violation of human rights in Venezuela, who are stealing money from the Venezuelan people, who are using the resources of that nation to enrich themselves. In the next few weeks, we will identify them by name and the properties they own and the assets they hold in our own Nation.

But I implore my colleagues not to ignore this issue. This is happening right now, right in our own backyard, in our own hemisphere, and it is impacting real people at an extraordinary price.

So I hope in the weeks to come that I--along with Senator Menendez and others who have united behind us and with us--will be able to convince enough of my colleagues to take the next step.

We have already unanimously passed the resolution condemning all of this. I thank my colleagues in the Senate for that. The next step is to build in real consequences for being a part of this. My colleagues will have an opportunity to be a part of this in the next few days, especially when we return next week.

I hope we can get a hearing on these sanctions in the Foreign Relations Committee, and I hope we can get passage of it on the floor, so we can send a clear signal to the people of Venezuela: The people of the United States of America are on your side. We support your cause. We will not forget what you are going through. We will not abandon your aspirations. We stand for the liberty and the freedom of all people, including those who do not live here with us.

This is what we are going to have a chance to do in the next few days. I hope we can successfully take action.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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