National Post.
Canada. July 11, 2001
President George W. Bush must decide next week whether the United States
will enforce two controversial portions of the 1996 Helms-Burton law
consistently waived by his predecessor. This would allow Cuban-Americans to use
U.S. courts to sue Cuba and foreign investors for trafficking in property stolen
from U.S. companies and citizens by the Castro regime after the 1959 Revolution.
Havana confiscated an estimated US$1.8-billion from dozens of U.S. companies
such as Exxon, Firestone, Sears, Coca-Cola and General Electric. Revolutionaries
also seized billions of dollars worth of property owned by Cuban-American exiles
who became U.S. citizens.
Canada's Sherritt International has already been found under Title IV of the
Helms-Burton Act to have been commercially exploiting confiscated property. Now
Sherritt and others might be sued under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act. Under
another provision of the law, Washington could deny visas to European, Canadian
and Latin American executives who do business on the communist island.
Everyone from European Union leaders to left-leaning anti-embargo groups
argue that Helms-Burton is a gross example of extraterritorial legislation. They
say the United States has no right to impose its will on foreign executives
operating in foreign territory. But this is a flimsy, self-serving argument; the
lawsuits would be brought in the United States by U.S. citizens, and the foreign
executives deemed to have broken the law would be excluded from U.S. territory.
It is entirely within a country's jurisdiction to grant its citizens the right
to sue over the expropriation of their property, and it is entirely proper for
Washington to decide not to grant visas to business people it finds undesirable.
Why should Cuban Americans whose assets were stolen by Mr. Castro's regime
not be allowed to seek compensation from those now profiting from it? In the mid
1990s, when Swiss banks refused to return millions in unclaimed assets to
American survivors of the Holocaust, the survivors mounted a class action law
suit and successfully sued the banks in U.S. federal court. Who complained?
Similarly, Nicaraguan Americans whose property was stolen by the Sandinistas
after the 1979 revolution have sought redress in U.S. courts.
Cuba does not deserve to be treated as a special case. The island
dictatorship is beloved by politicians around the world who enjoy twisting a
thorn in the side of the United States. They are entitled to their predilection,
but their argument that Washington has no right to do anything about it is an
absurdity.
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