Political Quotes

“Mr. President, rightfully, this body is consumed with pending votes on infrastructure, but I want to draw my colleagues' attention to another matter of both importance and urgency. One of Vladimir Putin's favorite tactics during the Chechen rebellion was to kidnap the innocent relatives of rebel leaders and hold them captive until the leaders surrendered. Sometimes, if the rebel leader never gave himself up, the family members would just disappear forever. Thousands of these cases were documented over the course of the war, all in gross, blatant violation of human rights laws. It is one of the many reasons that Russia is an adversary, not an ally of the United States. We don't do business with nations that prey upon the innocent. We don't align ourselves with nations that use kidnapping or torture as a tool to stay in power. A few months ago, Moustafa Soltan and Khairi Soltan were startled by a hard knock on their door in the wee hours of a February Sunday morning. It was the Egyptian authorities, there to detain them again simply because their cousin happened to be a man named Mohamed Soltan, an American citizen and vocal Egyptian human rights advocate. Rightly, Moustafa and Khairi were not surprised because for the past year, the Soltan family has been the subject of consistent, coordinated harassment and detention by the agents of Egyptian dictator Abdelfattah Elsisi.…”