Speech #970018273

We traveled through Costa Rica. Nicaragua. and Honduras. I took every opportunity to speak to people who had been in El Salvador recently. and I also traveled to the Honduran border for extensive meetings with Salvadoran refugees who had fled to that village. In these meetings. I learned that the uniformed military forces of El Salvador are using American equipment to carry out a deliberate policy of terror against an unarmed civilian population. The soldiers of El Salvador arrive in American helicopters to kill and torture men. women. and children. During my interviews with the refugees. I asked "Who does this?" Always they answered. "It is the military." Again and again I asked. "Does the Left do this?" "No" they told me"They do not kill children." I have said that I believe that our policy in El Salvador is morally wrong. It is morally wrong for this country to lavish arms on a government that cannot or will not stop its own troops from making war against its own people. It is morally wrong to offer U.S. helicopters that will be used to gun down peasants. It is morally wrong to use a small helpless country in our own backyard to send a message of toughness to Moscow. I would like to insert in the RECORD excerpts of my interviews with the refugees. A VOICE. The woman previously that we talked to is named Crecensia.