CONCLUSIONS

The policy of blockade and of hostility and aggression towards Cuba‘s sovereignty and right to self-determination which has been pursued by successive US administrations —which provides the foundation for the unjust anti-Cuban campaigns in the area of human rights— was not born at the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959 nor when the revolution was declared socialist in 1961. It has been a permanent feature of the United States’ power circles’ position towards Cuba for over 150 years.

The economic, trade and financial blocked imposed on Cuba by the United States is one of the most obvious, flagrant and systematic human rights violations endured by the Cuban people as a result of this policy of hostility, but it is by no means the only one.

Cuba has been the victim of mercenary invasions, acts of biological warfare, the bombardment of subversive radio and television programs, measures aimed at encouraging illegal and violent forms of emigration, plots to assassinate its main leaders and acts of sabotage and terrorism which have caused it 54 thousand million dollars in direct damage to facilities of economic and social importance. These actions have also resulted in the deaths of 3,478 people and the wounding of 2,099 others.

The anti-Cuban resolution adopted each year at the Commission on Human Rights is the result of political manipulation and of blackmail on behalf of US authorities.

The aggressive actions, hostile measures, provocations and threats voiced by the Bush administration towards and against Cuba have intensified over the course of recent years. The possibility of a military action against Cuba has not been discarded by Washington's power hawks. Those who lend support to the anti-Cuban maneuvers at the CHR have complicity in the fabrication of pretexts that only serve the interests of those who call for a "regime change” in Cuba, something which could only be brought about via a large-scale military invasion and the slaughter of the Cuban people, who would fight to the death in defense of their country.

One cannot judge Cuba’s reality and the trial of and severe sanctions imposed on mercenary elements who serve the superpower —applied with absolute respect for the law and in the interests of protecting national security— without knowledge of the unprecedented redoubling of hostility towards the Cuban people by the United States and of the threat to Cuba's existence as an independent nation this represents.

The media campaign orchestrated by Washington, with the aim of presenting its paid mercenaries in Cuba as "journalists, union activists and members of a peaceful political opposition", is a scandalously false gesture that is an affront to the just cause of the defense of human rights. Not one of these individuals was convicted for expressing opinions or ideas or for exercising any of the rights that are recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. All were tried following due process and all of the grave charges filed against them were proven prior their conviction. All are serving their respective sentences, enjoying the decorous, attentive and respectful treatment that all Cubans and foreigners imprisoned in Cuba enjoy.

Cuba has cooperated and shall continue to fully cooperate with all non-discriminatory and universally-applicable procedures and mechanisms of the United Nations in the area of human rights. However, it cannot recognize, nor cooperate in, the application of spurious anti-Cuban resolutions imposed upon the Commission by the United States, which justify the existence of the Personal Representative of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of human rights in Cuba. As was the case in the past with the so-called Special Rapporteur, this new procedure shall disappear when justice prevails, and the person at the head of such an illegitimate mechanism shall have no authority in Cuba.

The Cuban people’s spirit of resistance and its determination to fight to the end are constantly being put to the test. Five young Cuba anti-terrorist activists and defenders of human rights remain imprisoned in the United States following an arbitrary ruling, subject, as are their families, to cruelest forms of psychological torture. On their behalf, the people of Cuba —confident that they rely on the solidarity of many honest people around the world and even in the United States—demands their release and that the right to return to their homeland be respected.

In spite of the conditions of underdevelopment it inherited and the iron-grip of the US blockade, Cuba has been able to make significant progress and has impelled revolutionary changes to build a fairer, more equal society which gives citizens ample opportunities for democratic participation. The institutions and building blocks of a state that rests on the power of workers, intellectuals, professionals and artists, work next to a vast and active civil society, affording all Cubans effective and systematic participation in decisions that affect their present and determine their future.

The Cuban people shall continue struggling in defense of its right to self-determination, to development, to peace and to a fairer, more democratic and equitable international order, in which the dream of "all human rights for everyone" can become a reality. To this end, it is willing to devote its talent, its efforts and even, if necessary, to shed its blood.