Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Forty Americans are in this atmosphere. Do they have access to pay telephones?

Mr. KINGSTON. No phones. Do their mattresses have sheets, or do you know?

Mr. KINGSTON. Well, that is just to get you a place in line, and sometimes, if you want to pay more, it can influence the verdict. And the gentlewoman has pointed out that the families back home, the spouses and the children who are waiting while the loved ones locked up in Ecuador or somewhere in South America, they do not know what is going to happen. This is an American's worst nightmare. It is bad enough being in jail, innocent; bad enough certainly when you are guilty, but at least in America you know you are going to have a fair trial. But when you are in a foreign country, you do not have that assurance. You made the statement, and I agree with you completely, that drug laws cannot be adequately or fairly addressed without judicial improvements, including training for police and judges, because we do not want to go and impose our will on other countries, but at the same hand when it affects American citizens, then we have an obligation, and that obligation, we want to work through diplomatic channels, and you certainly have done that. But at the same hand you have to have an urgency to you to say, you have got Americans over there, you got to bring them back because the next person could be someone you know. And I remember when I was young going to Mexico from the Texas border and going into Juarez, and I remember also having an opportunity to go to Tijuana from California, and I remember vividly as a 17-year-old and 18-year-old my parents begging me not to go because my mama would say: ``You don't know,'' and I am not throwing something off on the Mexican Government, but there would be certain law enforcement folks who could possibly plant something on you just to extort money out of you, and you are locked up in a Juarez jail somewhere, and you do not know what is going to happen to you. And so often Americans decide not to go abroad, and I think it is important for us in terms of our relations with other countries to have a good flow of tourism back and forth. But we are not going to have tourism when people are afraid that if they are caught doing something, innocent or not, then they do not know if they are going to get a fair trial.

Mr. KINGSTON. Now the pictures; you have some good pictures right here, but you also had some smaller pictures which I know you could not blow them all up, but the jail itself that these Americans are in looks like what you would envision a jail looking like maybe 50 or 60 years ago. Odors, stains on the wall, dampness, puddles on the floor, cracked ceilings, paint chipping off, graffiti on the walls, and I think worse, prisoners mingling about the rapists and the murderers with the check bouncers.

Mr. KINGSTON. Now in the Ecuador prison that you went in, the overcrowdedness, it did look to me like there were too many people. Do you know how many people per cell or how do they do it? How many beds?

Mr. KINGSTON. Now you keep talking about if one joint of marijuana is found on you, you might as well have a whole truck.

Mr. KINGSTON. And these prisoners are all mixed together. What is the prison violence like? Is there a lot, or you know is there a pecking order among the inmates where, you know, those who are wealthier have better facilities than the poor ones?

Mr. KINGSTON. So if you are an American and your family does not have money or if you do not have a family and you are in this situation, you are just stuck in a rat hole in South America.

Mr. KINGSTON. And he was Ecuadorian?

Mr. KINGSTON. Did he make this turtle?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, he makes a turtle like that in jail. That means he has a knife, right?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, it is bizarre that in 1997 that exists anywhere in the world. It is further bizarre that 40 Americans would be in it. The human rights organization which the gentlewoman alluded to, have they reported any torture in this prison or in similar prisons?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, have any Americans been murdered yet?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let me ask the gentlewoman this. She went to this prison and the gentlewoman's visit was fairly well publicized. They knew 2 or 3 weeks in advance that the gentlewoman was coming. The gentlewoman was accompanied by State Department personnel and diplomats, I think. Beyond that, there were professionals and Ambassadors, political-type appointments. They knew the gentlewoman was coming. So did it appear when the gentlewoman was there that the gentlewoman was somewhat insulated from the bare truth? It sounds to me like the gentlewoman saw things that they would ordinarily want to hide from a visitor such as herself. Did my colleague get the impression things were being hidden beyond this, or did she think that she saw all, and they did not care if she did or did not?

Mr. KINGSTON. So, Mr. Speaker, they were not telling the gentlewoman, get out, Yankee go home, mind your own business; they were saying, Congresswoman, we are glad to have you here.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let me ask the gentlewoman one more time for the Record. What was the name of the prison and what was the city that it was in in Ecuador?

Mr. KINGSTON. I appreciate the gentlewoman, my friend from Jacksonville, for yielding. I think it is very important the point that you are making about the war on drugs. It does have to be an international battle as drugs are grown in one country, manufactured in another, sneaked into other countries; it does take a cooperative effort. But as you pointed out, one of the main legs of this has to be good judicial systems. And you have already mentioned that in the prison that you visited, of 2,500 prisoners only 400 have been to trial and that the costs per trial is $30,000. Now, that is the hard costs. You and I know there is other costs that are under the table that cannot be reported. But it is a reality down there, and we know about this.

Mr. KINGSTON. At any stage?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, would it be fair to say that these prison systems are revenue-raisers, that often it is a matter of buy your freedom rather than have it heard in a trial?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, when an American overseas gets tuberculosis in a foreign jail, is there any kind of intervening rule in diplomacy that says we can give them medical treatment?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, that is true. We do that on lots of fronts and a lot of people.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I am glad that the gentlewoman has gone, and I am also glad that she has shared her information with other Members of Congress, because we as Members of Congress need to know what is going on, particularly when American citizens are involved. In this case we have a joint constituent; but if it is an American, it is everybody's constituent.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, it may be postponed, as I understand it now, until maybe in June.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I do not know for sure, but I do know that it has been postponed.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, that is a sensible approach to better international relations, and I think a positive step, because if one is operating a business there, one needs to know. I had a case in Savannah of two young women who were aspiring actresses and they got a contract to go to South Korea to do a film, and when they got there, the manuscript of the film was switched to a pornographic movie. Now, they said: This is not the manuscript we have signed a contract on. And they said: It might not be the manuscript, but it is the movie that you signed a contract on; and if you break it, in Korea, it is a criminal offense. Or a civil offense is treated like a criminal offense, and so these two young ladies would be put in jail. We were able to get the State Department involved and our office intervened. We got them actually out of the country in a very spirited chase like out of a movie itself, but got them home. But it is just ridiculous. Here we have two idealistic young women in their early twenties going overseas, the manuscript gets swapped, and they had the good sense to say no. But Mr. Speaker, the next group or the group before them may have said: Well, I guess we are stuck, we are going to have to do this. And that is what the film company was hoping on. And these girls somewhat called their bluff but at a great personal risk. I think Americans need to know these dangers before we go overseas, particularly in business settings. I think if one is a tourist and one stays in kind of the middle of the road, they are probably okay, but if they are trying to do something a little bit different, then they can get in trouble. In fact, it is interesting, I had another friend whose wife is a legal resident. But she is a British national, lives in Savannah. She is a British national born in Hong Kong and she is Asian. She has lived in Savannah, taught school for 20 years. She goes to Korea on vacation. She is leaving and they will not let her leave because she is Asian, and they decide that she has a counterfeit American passport to get into the country and they will not let her out. Fortunately, our State Department intervened and they were able to get her out. But again, some of these laws are crazy. Americans can very, very innocently fall into a situation where before you know it they are in jail, they are in some crazy prison, like the ones you have visited, or they are tied up in court, their career is on the line, there are monetary problems, family problems, and so forth. What the gentlewoman is trying to do with her amendment is say, let us take the uncertainty out of foreign commerce. If we can do that, foreign relations will improve.