In 1991, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights brought a case against then President George Bush for the Haitian Migrant Interdiction Program, an initiative of the Bush administration which created a Berlin Wall around Haiti, trapping those seeking political asylum and other refugees from fleeing the most sadistic and dangerous government in the Western Hemisphere.

Today, George W. Bush maintains the armada, but has taken the brutality one step further. He has added de-facto economic sanctions which ban aid to the government, and food, clothes and medical supplies to the poorest of the poor.

Because of administration policy, 146 million dollars in loans from the Inter- American Development Bank that were approved and have been ready to move since March 2001, have instead been blocked. Health, education, potable water and secondary road projects have been stalled. Aid that would have gone to sustaining Loune Viaud's courageous efforts have been cut off.

You heard the statistics. A few months ago I visited the Port au Prince hospital. I saw a woman contemplating a C section without anesthesia. I met another woman who looked nine months pregnant, but she also appeared ancient. We were told it was a tumor, but without medication, they couldn't operate. I saw so many infant children, crying for milk that their starving mother's dried breasts could not provide.

Is this really what the American people want to do to the people of Haiti?

Six months ago, a high ranking Bush administration official commented to a member of our board, "Only when the economic sanctions lead to Florida being flooded with boat people will this administration's policy change". That statement has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A few weeks ago, over 200 Haitians in a rickety, leaking boat washed up on Key Biscayne Boulevard.

The refugee flight is the direct result of the economic crisis exacerbated by the administration's policy.

So the people of Haiti are dying or desperately fleeing, while waiting for Gov. Bush to appeal to his brother.

The irony, some would say, hypocrisy, of the Bush position is not lost on the Haitian people. The de facto sanctions were imposed on our hemisphere's most destitute nation in retaliation for voting irregularities.

But Haiti did not benefit from 200 years of mostly free and fair Presidential elections as we have in the United States. To the contrary, Haiti's first free election was in 1990. We should not be totally surprised that there are still problems with a system in its infancy. The best way to achieve our goal of assuring a strong civil society and a transparent electoral process is to work hand in hand with the government of Haiti. Indeed, we should engage as fully as possible with the government and be a handmaiden to democratic reform. The government of Haiti has done almost everything in its power to comply with conditions for the resumption of aid. It faces a hostile internal opposition which is supported by the administration's policies and is determined to extend the crisis. And, we have continuously raised the bar for ending the strangulation.

Teddy quoted my father's words about moral courage, words taken from a speech he gave in South Africa in 1966. He also spoke that day of the need to use our knowledge for the well being of our fellow human beings throughout the world and to stop the evils which are not natural disasters, but man made. Haiti's is a man made disaster. His words that day resonate when we consider U.S. policy toward Haiti, and the heroism of Loune Viaud. My father said:

"There is discrimination in New York, and serfdom in the mountains of Peru. People starve in the streets of India, a former Prime Minister is summarily executed in the Congo, intellectuals go to jail in Russia, and thousands are slaughtered in Indonesia; wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere in the world. These are differing evils; but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfections of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, the defectiveness of our sensibility toward the sufferings of our fellows; they mark the limit of our ability to use knowledge for the well-being of our fellow human beings throughout the world. And therefore they call upon common qualities of conscience and indignation, a shared determination to wipe away the unnecessary sufferings of our fellow human beings at home and around the world."

Loune Viaud personifies those qualities of conscience and indignation that Robert Kennedy so admired, and all of you here today, who support her work, you share my father's determination to wipe away the unnecessary suffering of our fellow human beings.

And for that, I thank you.