CHAPTER 1: IN SPITE OF THE DISAPPROVAL OF THE WORLD’S PEOPLES AND MANY GOVERNMENTS, THE UNITED STATES, AS PART OF ITS ANTI-CUBAN POLICY, REPEATEDLY MANIPULATES THE WORK OF THE COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS.

In the 1980s, ultra right-wing conservative forces rose to power in the United States. The Santa Fe Document, which was used as an electoral platform and as policy document by the forces that backed then President Ronald Reagan, said in reference to Cuba: “A vigorously and fairly applied programme of human rights as the “miraculous” weapon wielded by the United States in confronting the Soviet Union and its satellites and surrogates. Curiously, the current administration (…) has made no serious attempt to apply his human rights doctrine to Castro’s Cuba (…)”

In the context of its new anti-Cuban strategy, the Reagan administration instructed infamous Cuban-American terrorists, directed and financed by the CIA to change their cover and “become”, supposedly, groups in favour of peaceful opposition and the defence of human rights. Inside Cuba, various small subversive groups of this kind were created with official US funding which recruited people who were previously involved in violent counterrevolutionary activities and even some former officials and policemen from Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship. Recruitment was focussed especially on members of the lumpen-proletariat, opportunists, those who felt hard-done-by and the usual annexationists.

In 1985 and 1986 the first failed attempts to have Cuba condemned over its human rights record were made in the Third Commission of the United Nations General Assembly.

The first attempt to achieve something similar in the Commission on Human Rights took place in 1987 when the United States proposed a draft resolution that was unsuccessful when a no-action motion was passed.

In 1988 the United States proposed another draft resolution aimed at singling Cuba out for criticism. This was also unsuccessful because of the positive reception given to the Cuban initiative to invite a mission made up of the Commission’s president and five member state representatives to visit Cuba.

Neither was the United States able to achieve its objective of having Cuba condemned by the Commission in 1989. Several amendments proposed by US diplomats to the draft resolution submitted to the Commission were defeated. The text adopted simply took note of the report drawn up by the mission that visited Cuba and invited the Cuban government to work on implementing its recommendations.

On consolidating itself as the only superpower, after the Soviet Union disintegrated and socialism in Eastern Europe disappeared, in 1990 the United States managed, for the first time, to have a draft resolution condemning Cuba passed in the Commission on Human Rights.

Cuba refused to countenance any kind of cooperation with such an abomination, which was malformed from its very conception, motivated by illegitimate interests and the result of brutal pressure and blackmail.

The Cuban people’s principled position, its dignified steadfastness in the face of lies and slander gradually won the respect and support of Commission members and when 1998 arrived, the draft anti-Cuban resolution proposed by the United States was clearly defeated by a vote of 16 in favour and 19 against.

After this unexpected defeat, the United States government buckled down to the task of creating a new image for its anti-Cuban manoeuvring in the CHR. Using its traditional methods, it convinced the government of the day in the Czech Republic, a country which at the time needed the United States’ support for its application to join NATO, to become the public face of the draft resolution against Cuba in the Commission. Taking on such a degrading task presented no difficulty to the team of opportunists headed by former President Havel; over the years they had learned to obediently carry out Washington’s orders and enjoy its money.

Armed with this new design and applying its usual pressure and blackmail to the fullest, the United States managed to get the anti-Cuban resolution passed from 1999 to 2001 but always with a tiny majority of between one and three votes.

By the end of 2001 it was obvious that this way of working was entering a crisis. The superpower realised that it needed to “spruce up” the image of its anti-Cuban exercise, something that became a strategic necessity after its humiliating exclusion from membership of the Commission as a result of elections by secret ballot held in the Social and Economic Commission.
58th session of the CHR (2002)
In the weeks proceeding the beginning of the 58th session of the Commission, senior officers of the Bush administration stepped up their efforts to impose to have one or several Latin America countries introduce the anti-Cuban draft.
The intensity of the pressure exercised by top US officials and the increasing vulnerability and dependence of several Latin American governments —which had very low levels of popular support— on the US helped them to achieve their aim. So President Jorge Batlle of Uruguay was the marionette and gave a public performance of the anti-Cuban script that reflected nothing but the opinions of the Miami terrorist mafia and was written, down to the commas and full stops, in Washington.

In contrast with the submissive position of a few Latin American governments, the peoples in the region unanimously condemned this anti-Cuban manoeuvre. Not only did they take to the streets to protest in several capital cities but in countries like Argentina, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru parliament demanded that the government refuse to follow this line and adopt an independent, dignified position in Geneva.

All the anti-Cuban text forced through the Commission’s 58th session in 2002 did — those who touted it unsuccessfully attempted to present it as a “new” product with “constructive” approach— was to re-establish an unfair monitoring mechanism of a non-existent human rights “situation” in Cuba. The worst thing about this case was the decision, which exacerbated the anti-Cuban manipulation conceived by Washington in order to satisfy its lust for domination, to involve none other than the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in this dirty business.

Representatives of the Cuban-American terrorist mob played an important role in supporting the United States government’s anti-Cuban actions. Making good use of the fact that it has representatives in the U.S. Congress, it became directly involved in the pressure and blackmail exerted on several governments. Similarly, it undertook public diplomacy schemes whose aim was to sell the idea that behind the Bush administration’s actions was a call for action made by what they call “the Cuban exile community”.

59th session of the CHR (2003)

Washington officers and the Miami anti-Cuban mob started to work early to impose a new anti-Cuban resolution at the 59th session of the HRC

On 18 September 2002 eleven congress people on the Miami terrorist mob’s payroll headed by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart sent a letter to the then United Nations High Commissioner urging him to get personally involved in the actions against Cuba.

On 13 December of that same year, Ros-Lehtinen sent another letter to the high commissioner ordering him to ask Cuba to release several mercenaries from jail; these were people who had been legitimately imprisoned in Cuba for crimes committed on the orders of the United States government.

At the beginning of January 2003 the undersecretary of state for Political Affairs, Marc Grossman, sent a message to the high commissioner to remind him that he still had not appointed his personal representative for Cuba, adding that the United States thought it extremely important that this be done as soon as possible.

Given the reluctance of the Uruguayan government to play the leading role again in the anti-Cuban libretto written in Washington —this was because of the high political price this had cost it in the eyes of the Uruguayan people— the superpower had to exert further pressure on vulnerable Latin American governments, in order to find a new “star”.

Mrs. Poblete, assistant to the anti-Cuban congressperson Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, went to Geneva at the beginning of January 2003 and had separate meetings with some Latin American diplomatic representatives to explore what they feelings were on the anti-Cuban manoeuvre orchestrated by the United States, to gauge which in specific areas and subjects each one was most vulnerable and to propose concrete recommendations to boost the effectiveness of the blackmail and conditions which would be worked out later by both the US congress and administration.

At the end of that same month, Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky went to several Latin American countries where she met with presidents and foreign ministers, her goal being to coerce them into giving a commitment to propose the anti-Cuban motion at the 59th Commission on Human Rights.

Similarly, US ambassadors in various capital cities, as is traditional, undertook important tasks in support of the anti-Cuban manoeuvre. They stepped up their anti-Cuban misinformation and manipulative propaganda campaigns, distributing brochures cooked up by the State Department full of “up-dated” lies and distorted “facts”. In addition, with varying degrees of subtlety and transparency —depending on how dependent the government in question is on the United States— they demanded support for what the superpower call its priorities in the Commission on Human Rights and reminded them of the bounties that could stem from a good bilateral relation with the hegemonic power.

Showing its usual cynicism and opportunism, President George Bush’s administration unsuccessfully tried to use the fact that Peru was then coordinating the Rio Group, one of the fora for political rapprochement for Latin American and Caribbean countries, to try to oblige them to propose the anti-Cuban draft resolution at the 59th Commission on Human Rights.

After the failure of his attempts to “Latin Americanize” the public sponsorship of the anti-Cuban project, Washington had to resort to the Peruvian government’s pledge to shoulder the responsibility of introducing the anti-Cuban draft project at the 59th Commission on Human Rights crafted and later on lobbied by the United States, Peru, a country which, at the HRC, has never led actions against any other Latin American country, at the service of a foreign power- embarked in the anti-Cuban maneuver, joined by the obedient Costa Rican government and the then Uruguayan President Batlle, remembered by his own people as its worst nightmares.

As the opening of the Commission’s period of session drew closer, so the United States’ pressures grew stronger. In its anti-Cuban machinations, Washington had the unconditional support of governments which were its allies/clients, particularly that of then President of Spain, José Maria Aznar, a Fascist booted out of office by the Spanish people because of his servility to Bush and because of the way he continually manipulated and distorted the truth.

To ensure it obtained the votes needed to push its anti-Cuban resolution through the Commission, the Bush administration paid no heed to legal or ethical constraints. Promise of financial aid and other benefits for those who delivered their vote rang out from Washington. Nevertheless, the most common practice was not offering something new; what predominated were direct or veiled threats to block loans and grants from international financial institutions which the United States controls, such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, to withdraw bilateral trade and immigration concessions and even to make the United States’ treatment of political matters of vital importance to the countries being blackmailed depend on how they voted.

A few days before the vote, the United States markedly increased its efforts to force a change to the text of the anti-Cuban resolution. They wanted to include an explicit condemnation of the fair prison sentences given to the mercenaries working on behalf of its unilateral blockade and aggression policy.

On 18 March 2003 Richard Boucher, spokesperson for the State Department made a statement calling on the Commission to condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the arrest of its mercenaries in Cuba.

Once again the superpower decided to work behind the scenes. But this time it had to go up against more complex obstacles. Some Latin American governments, which had already committed themselves to either sponsoring or supporting the anti-Cuban resolution, decided not to support yet another US manoeuvre against Cuba. They had been brought to bay by the fact public opinion in their countries was against the war in Iraq and by their fear of popular uprisings if they gave their backing to a new escalation of propaganda which could be used by the superpower as a pretext for a military attack on the Cuban people.

The humiliating mission of proposing the amendment fell to Costa Rica, an amendment cooked up by the United States to create the conditions, which would make it more feasible to attack the Cuban people and thus wipe the Cuban Revolution off the map. The only government in Latin American or the Third World that voted for this amendment was the Costa Rican government. Need we say more?

On April 16 Cuba officially tabled two amendments to the anti-Cuban resolution, E/CN.4/L.77. These demand an immediate end to the illegal, unilateral blockade on Cuba and asked the high commissioner to make an evaluation of effects on the Cuban people of terrorist acts against Cuba launched from within US territory.

There was a long procedural debate on these amendments, which delayed the discussion and vote on the anti-Cuban resolution by 24 hours. During this debate the United States’ authorship of the amendment presented by Costa Rica was completely unmasked and so the superpower’s ambassador in Geneva had no alternative but to declare that his delegation “would support anything against Cuba”.

In spite of the tremendous pressure brought to bear by the United States, the amendment that tried to condemn Cuba was defeated in the Commission when it was rejected by an overwhelming majority of countries. Only 15 countries voted for the amendment while 31, more than twice as many, voted against.
This result dealt a heavy blow to Washington and to the Cuban-born, annexationist terrorist mob. This is the same mob which, when the unilateral attack by the US empire on Iraq began, shouted, “Iraq now, Cuba next”, —an out-and-out incitement to aggression— in the only public demonstration in support of this illegal war in any city in the world. It just had to be Miami.

The Cuban amendment condemning the US blockade as a serious human rights violation did not pass. The same group of European and Latin American governments which cynically and hypocritically claims to be worried about a non-existent human rights situation in Cuba —voting in favour of and cosponsoring the anti-Cuban resolution in Geneva— showed that they didn’t have the required dignity or respect for justice to condemn the genocidal blockade imposed by the United States on the Cuban people in violation of its basic human rights, including the right to life itself.
The governments that are accomplices of and subordinate to the Empire in its anti-Cuban manoeuvre at the Commission on Human Rights were shown to be naked in their new clothes of double moral standards, hypocrisy and submission to Washington and to its hopes of crushing the Cuban nation.

After the amendments failed to pass, the anti-Cuban draft resolution E/CN.4/L.2 was voted on and passed by a narrow margin of four votes (24 in favour, 20 against and 9 abstentions). This was in spite of the fact that the United States had had an extra 24 hours for its brutal pressure to do its work.

The anti-Cuban resolution (E/CN.4/RES/2003/13), although it did not meet all expectations, ensured that the United States government would be able to continue with its anti-Cuban machinations in the Commission’s work. As well as keeping the subject on the Commission’s agenda, it managed to consolidate the mechanism of the high commissioner’s so-called personal representative thus providing its anti-Cuban crusade with the services of an official who would list and repeat the lies cooked up in Washington and Miami and, why not say so, those invented with Uncle Sam’s money in other places like Prague and Warsaw.

60th session of CHR (2004)

Looking ahead to the Commission’s 60th session, held in 2004, the United States, from quite early on, availed itself of every opportunity to put pressure on various governments in the interests of its anti-Cuban machinations. Among other things, this included visits by various undersecretaries of state, especially the State Department’s Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky, to Latin American and Eastern European capitals.

Two delegations of congress people were also dispatched to these latitudes on the same mission. The Cuban-born mobster, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican congressperson for Florida was a member of one of the delegations. These aforementioned efforts were supplemented by several tours of and visit to Latin American countries by the former White House Special Ambassador for Latin America, the protector of terrorists and staunch anti-Cuban, Otto Reich and by Jesse Helm’s former collaborator, also an anti-Cuban, and Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega.
Once this first phase of political and diplomatic pressures was completed, the politicos in Washington convinced themselves that the only countries which could be coerced to publicly propose the anti-Cuban motion in the 60th CHR were one or more of those in Central America or Eastern and Central Europe. Although they found both options equally unattractive in terms of image — quite a few Central American and Eastern and Central European governments are perceived by world public opinion to be clients of the Empire— they opted for Central America.

Notwithstanding anything that could be said about them, Central American governments have the comparative advantage of belonging to the Latin American family; thus if one or more Central American governments takes a public stance against Cuba in Geneva, this would allow the United States’ powerful disinformation machine to present its anti-Cuban manoeuvring as a concern that has arisen in the heart of “Cuba’s own region”.

The United States then buckled down to the task of trying to coerce Central American governments as a group to public sponsor the anti-Cuban motion in the 60th CHR. However, in addition to the principled rejection of more than one government —they knew that such an escalation in anti-Cuban actions would be met with enormous public repudiation and would seriously affect bilateral relations with Cuba— Washington came up against a hurdle that it was unable to surmount, its pressure and blackmail notwithstanding.

The United States government, after the defeat at the 59th CHR of the amendment proposed by Costa Rica on its orders, needed to be sure that a critical reference to Cuba for legally jailing several dozen mercenaries on the payroll of United States Interests Section in Havana was included in the very first and all other versions of the anti-Cuban resolution to be submitted to the 60th CHR. Some Central American governments refused to publicly co-submit an anti-Cuban motion if it were so amended.

Faced with this state of affairs, Washington abandoned the strategy of having the sub-region as a whole propose the anti-Cuban resolution and concentrated its pressure on the most vulnerable and dependent Central American governments. The strategy was to be that of initially sacrificing the public prestige and credibility of one government —which would be condemned to play the role of principal author— with other co-sponsors joining one by one as they succumbed to the threat of the superpower’s big stick.

The government that played the sad role of being the main sponsor the anti-Cuban motion in the 60th CHR will be identified below. As it is only logical to conclude, this task fell to a government with one of the worst human rights records in the hemisphere. Just a hint; it is a government that has not even been able to put an end to the impunity given to the systematic practice of extrajudicial executions of dozens of its children.

A meeting of Congress’s International Relations Committee was held in March 2004 to give backing to the pressure being applied by the White House and the State Department; it had been summoned by the Cuban-born mob’s representative in the US Congress, Ileana Ros Lehtinen. Diplomats from several Latin American countries were invited to the meeting; they had to listen to Ros-Lehtinen’s voice telling them the aims that had to be accomplished by the anti-Cuban resolution over there in Geneva. The mob moll turned Congressperson said clearly that one or two paragraphs condemning Cuba more explicitly had to be added to the text of the resolution passed the previous year.

The empire’s client regime installed in Prague once again played its role as peddler in the lucrative business of the Cuban counterrevolution. Politicos and diplomats of the puppet Czech Republic ran around several world capitals like really bad actors—making good use of the money bounteously dispensed by the Superpower— rehashing the anti-Cuban script drafted in Washington with the help of some Miami residents. It must be kept in mind that former President Havel had had the great honour of having been paid homage in that Florida city by the highest representatives of the terrorist anti-Cuban mob. In February and March, when he visited some Latin American and African countries, Deputy Foreign Minister Vosalik, one of the people hired for this job, was involved in various machinations against the Cuban Revolution.

Mindful of the accuracy and effectiveness of denunciations made by Cuba, the United States fine tuned its efforts and demanded complete secrecy from its accomplices during the preparations for its anti-Cuban manoeuvres in Geneva. It was asking for the impossible: the creation of an illusion that the anti-Cuban resolution in the Commission on Human Rights was the outcome of genuine concern on the part of the international community.

Reality once again dealt Washington a hard blow in the Commission’s 60th session. The American authorship of the anti-Cuban resolution was obvious, as never before, they hadn’t allowed even a comma of the original to be changed. Never before had US diplomats been so public in applying pressure to obtain the necessary votes and the signatures of the collaborator countries dragged into cosponsoring.

In order to guarantee complete compartmentalisation of information about the gestation period of this anti-Cuban monster and to make it easier to twist arms — not even the slightest difference of opinion over the final product was permitted— the text of the anti-Cuban resolution was drafted under the strictest secrecy in Washington.

The Empire’s task of naming the public sponsor of the anti-Cuban resolution at the 60th CHR had been made easier by one of its most faithful servants. José Maria Aznar had once again played the role of procurer for Washington in its anti-Cuban manoeuvrings. During the Summit for the Heads of State of Central America and Spain in Madrid, he, on 5 March, made a direct request to Honduran president Ricardo Maduro that his country propose the anti-Cuban motion in Geneva. This was a special favour President Bush had asked him for.

On 9 March in Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell directly demanded that the Honduran president accept responsibility for officially registering the resolution censuring Cuba in the 60 CHR. In exchange, Powell promised that the United States would consider Honduras for inclusion among the countries to receive the few crumbs of financial aid it has promised to hand out under what it was calling the Millennium Initiative.

When he returned to Honduras, former President Maduro announced this promised US aid but kept secret the condition that went with it: that of giving up the sovereign right to decide what actions the Honduran State would take at the United Nations and worse yet, to play the humiliating part in Geneva of chief accomplice to the attack on the truth and justice that the Cuban people are demanding .

A meeting was held in State Department headquarters on 24 March at which Marc Grossman, undersecretary for political affairs, told diplomats from several countries who had been invited that Honduras would be the “chief sponsor” of the anti-Cuban resolution at the 60th CHR. Grossman’s assistants immediately distributed the English text of the resolution and only then were the Honduran ambassador allowed to speak. Timidly, he merely confirmed announcement that had been made and visibly nervous at having been placed in a humiliating, embarrassing situation, uttered a few stammered, incoherent words and asked for backing for the resolution.

While all of the above was going on behind the scenes, the report of the personal representative, so-called, of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights had been officially distributed.

Mrs. Christine Chanet who has, up until now, occupied this spurious post created by virtue of anti-Cuban resolution E/CN.4//2002/18 forced through the 58th session of the CHR submitted her first written report to the 60th CHR.

The document was — and could not have been otherwise, given the information sources used, the pressure applied by the United States and those countries who supported its hostile policies towards the Cuban people, not to mention the unjust reasons that motivated its drafting— yet another example of anti-Cuban libel, devoid of objectivity, which, when it came down to it, simply gave credit to the false allegations made up by those expert liars who work for the CIA, the Sate Department and the Miami anti-Cuban terrorist mob.

The so-called personal representative found herself singing the sad anti-Cuban libretto created for her by the United States and its accomplices. In an international system of human rights which is obviously the object of thorough-going political manipulation for the purposes of world domination, any expert who values her or his credibility and impartiality should carefully examine the nature of and circumstances surrounding the responsibility she or he is offered before accepting or acting on it — although it is never too late to reconsider and act honestly.

So anyone who accepts the anti-Cuban mandate created by Commission resolution 2002/18, a mechanism thought up by the Superpower to invent pretexts for continuing with its policy of hostility, genocidal blockade and aggression towards the Cuban people should never, ever expect to be respectfully or considerately treated by Cubans.

The conclusions and recommendations in the so-called personal representative’s report are exact replicas, photocopies of the demands the hegemonic Superpower made of the Cuban people with the aim of destroying its process of revolutionary transformations and of forcing it back into the servile position of neo-colonial vassalage under which it suffered for more than 50 years after the Island was militarily occupied by the forces of the then nascent US imperialism.

The so-called personal representative went along with Bush administration and the Miami mob’s henchmen by asking Cuba that:

1. Its government interfere with and suspend just decisions taken by courts following due process and existing laws when judging acts classified as serious crimes; that it release and extend de facto impunity to a group of mercenaries paid by the Superpower who acted to the detriment of their own country when accomplishing missions for that Superpower.
2. It should revise laws and constitutional principles voted for in a referendum by an overwhelming majority of the Cuban people who were exercising their right to sovereignty and self-determination.
3. It allow people from other countries working for the hostile anti-Cuban policy of the US imperial power circles and the Miami mob to enter Cuba on missions financed, partially, by the $59,000,000 which Washington is assigning to encourage acts aimed at annihilating the Cuban constitutional system.

The Bush administration, once it had resolved the problem of who would dirty their hands by undertaking to publicly sponsor the anti-Cuban resolution at the 60th CHR did not let up on its manoeuvring for even a second. Its representatives launched themselves into a whirl of anti-Cuban activity the minute the Commission opened its doors in Geneva.

The United States refused to allow any negotiation over the anti-Cuban resolution drafted in Washington and forced the Honduran representatives to hurry up and register it officially with the 60th CHR secretary. It refused to give countries that had become its accomplices either by supporting or cosponsoring the anti-Cuban resolution even the tiniest opportunity to propose even a change to the punctuation in the anti-Cuban text.

Even though it had not consulted them nor taken them into account, the hegemonic Superpower began to push the members of its cohort, one by one, into cosponsoring the resolution censuring Cuba. The usual bunch began to add their names to the list: former colonial powers fallen on hard times and today occupying the sorry position of obedient second class partners: servile and sub-imperialist allies who feed their lust for domination by acting as sub-regional guard dogs for Washington’s aggressive policy; some client regimes — in the region the Superpower looks on as its own backyard— which are still in existence against the will of their people and others who simply did not have the courage to stand up to Washington’s pressure.

On 2 April 2004, at 6:00 pm Geneva time, the Honduran delegation tabled the anti-Cuban draft resolution. US representatives oversaw every detail of the operation. In order to “share out” and lessen the public humiliation that it had imposed on the Honduran government — a country which had never shown any interest in submitting any kind of draft resolution for the CHR’s consideration— Washington promised the authorities in Tegucigalpa that it would obtain the signatures of such independent governments and ones so committed to the cause of human rights as those of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Peru, the Czech Republic and Australia.

The leading actor profited from its long experience in these schemes and despite its active role in search for cosponsors and support, decided to continue working in the shadows. Reaching the height of cynicism and cheek, Washington chose to not put its name on the list of those who were responsible for drafting the anti-Cuban resolution.

The text of the resolution, — were it not for the serious threat stemming from the headway made by the motivations behind it— would deserve to become an object lesson for politicians and diplomats interested in developing the art of useless rhetoric and that of using a lot of words to say very little.

Nevertheless, it is important to understand the danger presented by such a subtle trick. The anti-Cuban manoeuvring in the Commission on Human Rights is illegitimate and unacceptable to our people and to anyone in the world who loves truth and reason. This is not only because of the wording of the resolution which is forced down the Commission’s throat so as to institutionalise it but more especially because it makes it easier to fabricate a pretext which gives continuity to the unilateral hostile policy of blockade and aggression which successive US administrations have imposed on Cuba for over forty years. This hostility and aggression is now reaching even more dangerous levels when “a regime change” in any country, which does not submit to US imperialism, is now Washington’s official policy.

The resolution censuring Cuba forced through the 60th CHR did not have even the tiniest passing reference to the US policy of hostility, blockade and aggression towards the Cuban people which is the only mass, systematic, serious and constant source of violation of the human rights of Cuban men and women. So how could anyone expect that such a document recognise or endorse the Cuban people’s right to adopt measures enshrined in law to protect its independence, its self determination and to ensure that the social, economic and political system sovereignty chosen to build a future filled with welfare, social justice and solidarity for all is well defended?

The anti-Cuban resolution was passed by the ridiculous margin of one vote, the votes being 22 in favour and 21 against and 10 abstentions. Such a result was a Pyrrhic victory for the Superpower whose henchmen had applied the strongest most brutal pressure on governments of developing countries. As a corroboration of the growing weakness and bad reputation of the anti Cuban manoeuvring in Geneva, the resolution received more votes against that ever before and had 2 votes in favour less than in 2003.

The former government of Honduras played an unfortunate part. Its representatives, who were definitely coerced into moving a motion of which they could not change a comma made no move in the Commission theatre that was not dictated to them by the US delegation. The latter showed them the benches where they had to collect signatures for co-sponsorship and encouraged them to complete their “mission” by giving them inflated figures of the favourable votes that were supposedly a sure thing after the pressure applied in Washington and other capitals. Of course, Honduras did not itself collect a single vote for “its” resolution.

In order to ensure that the anti-Cuban resolution in Geneva was passed, the United States government delegation was “reinforced” with people who have years of experience in applying hostile anti-Cuban policies and in wielding the big stick against southern governments. One of these was Frank Almaguer, a shady Cuban-born fellow.

Almaguer was Washington’s ambassador in Tegucigalpa from 1999 to 2002. Before that, he had been involved in other instances of interference and interventionism in Central America and other Latin American countries, carrying out his missions behind the humanitarian façade of the Peace Corps, so called, and USAID.

Never before had the ties between a US administration and the most reactionary and aggressive elements of the anti-Cuban terrorist mob from Miami been so obvious. And to crown their insolence and their contempt for the Commission, Washington accredited Luis Zúñiga Rey, an infamous Cuban-born terrorist as a member of its delegation to the CHR’s 60th session.

Zúñiga Rey was arrested in 1974 and sentenced by the courts when he illegally entered Cuba from the United States carrying arms and explosives. He was part of a CIA operation that was to carry out several terrorist acts. When he was released and returned to the United States, he took charge of the paramilitary wing of the Cuban American National Foundation and was involved in organising and financing bomb attacks on Cuban hotels in Havana and in other terrorist actions against Cuban hospitals.

The Special Rapporteur’s report on the use of mercenaries given at the CHR’s 56th session contained information that Zúñiga Rey recruited the Guatemalan citizen Percy Francisco Alvarado Godoy to make a study of areas in Cuba, such as hotels, electricity generating stations and oil refineries that were vulnerable and susceptible to terrorist attacks.

Zúñiga Rey the terrorist took part in the debates in the CHR’s 60th session from the benches of none other than the Superpower, which claims to be committed to, and encouraging the fight against terrorism.

The Cuban-born terrorist mob which lives in the United States working in collusion with the Bush administration which gives it shelter and power pulled the threads in its web of influence so it could send US congress people who had been the beneficiaries of its “generous” financial contributions to join in the anti-Cuban farce in Geneva.

Chris Smith, Republican representative for New Jersey, one of the states which gives shelter to groups of Cuban-born terrorists such as Alpha 66 and Commandos L —the other is Florida—wandered through Geneva halls and passages lobbying for support for the anti-Cuban resolution and threatening those who said no with reprisals. Mr. Smith was helped by Mrs Poblete, assistant to Cuban-born congressperson Ileana Ros-Lehtinen who is infamous for her part in Elián González’ kidnapping and her active role in trying to have the genocidal blockade on the Cuban people stepped up.

In their attempts to push the anti-Cuban resolution through at any cost, the minions of imperial power resorted to the extremely small-minded threats.

They reminded the Central Americans that they could send back hundreds of thousands of their countries’ émigrés who work in the United States and stop them from sending family remittances to their countries of origin.

They threatened some African countries with taking the benefits of the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) away from them —the AGOA is a US law that allows some African exports privileged access to the US market.

They tried to intimidate other countries from several other regions by sketching out a typical blackmail scenario. They were told that their refusal to vote for the anti-Cuban resolution could make them the object of a resolution of censure. The imperial government even went so far as to promise those who bowed to their anti-Cuban demands that it would use its “good offices” to discourage any attempt to censure that country, fully aware that these censorious manoeuvres in the Commission are always set in motion in the interests of industrialised powers.
Several countries from various regions were asked to vote for the anti-Cuban resolution or at least to abstain and in exchange the United States would not block a loan from the International Monetary Fund where the United States has a de facto veto right.

On 14 April 2004, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega confirmed that the White House had made contact with some Latin American and European countries asking them to support the anti-Cuban resolution. He said that even President Bush himself was getting personally involved by making telephone calls and gave as an example the conversation with President Fox.

The assistant secretary for international organisations in the State Department, Kim Holmes, publicly said that the United States was fighting hard, talking to several countries to get them to support the anti-Cuban resolution.

A State Department spokesperson confirmed that the Secretary of State and other State Department officials had been making phone calls to countries that were members of the Commission to identify the United States’ most important interests in the human rights sphere and urging them to vote accordingly.

Sometimes the pressure applied was so outrageous that news of it leaked out. One such case was that of the Dominican Republic when Hipólito Mejía was president. The latter had indicated to Cuban authorities that he would abstain from voting on the anti-Cuban resolution. His commitment remained firm until the evening of 14 April when less than 12 hours remained for the vote in Geneva when a surprised Cuban government learned that the Dominican Republic would join those voting against Cuba.

Hipólito Mejía said publicly in Miami that he had been receiving phone calls from US Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega and from the man who was then president Bush’s special envoy for the Americas the anti-Cuban Otto Reich pressuring him about the vote on the anti-Cuban resolution in Geneva.

In Latin America in particular there is a clear correlation between the degree of sovereignty, dignity and popularity of a government and the chances that Washington’s pressure and blackmail to coerce support or co-sponsorship for the anti-Cuban resolution will be successful.

Those governments in the region which are experiencing corruption and fraud scandals and have very little popular support, those which are extremely dependent on Washington for financial assistance and for validation of their repression of their discontented popular sectors, those which represent the selfish interests of transnational capital’s client oligarchies are those most likely to bend their knee to the anti-Cuban orders of the Superpower and disregard the will of their respective peoples.

The list of servile “statesmen and women” in the region would include people of the “political stature” of former presidents Menem (who became a millionaire thanks to the honest way he performed his exalted task) and Batlle (the former Uruguayan president who ended his term in office with the lowest level of popular support in the history of his country and who gave continued impunity to those who had committed serious human rights violations such as extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances and torture).

If the way the United States behaved in Geneva were really motivated by a desire to protect human rights in Latin America, it would not force its spurious and unjustified anti-Cuban resolution down the Commission’s throat. On the contrary, it would submit for the Commission’s consideration two draft resolutions against those Latin American governments that co-sponsor and support the anti-Cuban resolution.

And the foregoing is not mere rhetoric. This thesis is based on the reports that the State Department drafts every year on the human rights situation in every country in the world with, of course, the exception of the United States. The State Department’s report contains concrete facts and value judgements on the governments that co-sponsor their anti-Cuban manoeuvrings, which far surpass the seriousness of the false allegations about Cuba.
Whereas reports issued in successive years do not include a single reference to grave and flagrant human rights violations in Cuba, they do document tens, even hundreds and thousands of cases of the torture, forced disappearances, extra-judicial executions —even of children— political assassinations of journalists and lawyers, forced evictions, corruption and fraud in governments and courts, malnourishment and illiteracy and complete impunity and hopelessness which victimize the peoples governed by those who join in the attack in Geneva on the dignity of Cuban men and women.

The government of Honduras, following the orders of the Bush administration, agreed to be the public sponsor of the anti-Cuban draft resolution at the 60th CHR (2004), going openly against the will of its people.

Many important Honduran political and artistic figures and intellectuals, non-governmental organizations, friendship associations from various regions of the country and even some of the major newspapers, such as La Prensa, La Tribuna, Tiempo and El Heraldo published correspondence, statements, articles and letters condemning the anti-Cuban decision taken by President Maduro and criticising the way he behaved at the United States’ behest.

The correspondence and public declarations condemning the attitude of the Honduran government include ones made by: Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, the Association of Non-governmental Organisations (ASONOG), the 7th Ordinary National Assembly of the Democratic Unification Party, the Popular Block, the Fraternal Black Honduran Organization (OFRANEH), the Board of Directors of the Coordinating Committee of the Honduran Peasants’ Organization and the Civic Council of Peoples and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH) in the name of several NGOs, national unions and union branches, student, indigenous and catholic grass roots organisations, etc.

The Committee of Relatives of the Arrested and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) called Honduras’ anti-Cuban position in Geneva “unjust, undignified and morally incompetent” and said: “President Ricardo Maduro’s government is not legally qualified to advocate internationally what it is incapable of doing in its own country”. It ended by saying that “We Hondurans do not feel honourable about a deal that accepts access to the supposed benefits of the Millennium Account in exchange for censuring Cuba”.

The Honduran National Commissioner on Human Rights Ramón Custodio raised his voice in the name of the Honduran people during the debates of the Commission on Human Rights 60th period of sessions to condemn the attitude of his government and to dissociate the people of his country from such loathsome anti-Cuban manoeuvre.

In 2004, the United States failed once again in its efforts to change the discredited image of its anti-Cuban behaviour on the Commission on Human Rights. The illegitimate motivation behind this manoeuvre and the pressure and blackmail directly applied by the Superpower to have it unfairly passed cannot be hidden.

No matter how many times they repeat it, there is no credibility to Washington’s hackneyed thesis that their anti-Cuban behaviour in Geneva should be seen as completely separate from any attempt to invent a pretext for the continuance of its hostile blockade policy against Cuba. Facts show just the opposite.

Only a few days after the Commission on Human Rights 60th period of sessions ended, on 6 May 2004 to be precise, President Bush announced the implementation of new measures aimed at stepping up the blockade and at destroying the constitutional order sovereignly chosen by the Cuban people in a referendum.

Since the Bush administration came to power with the enthusiastic support of the most extreme elements in Miami, the United States has been carrying out new attacks and implementing more measures to artificially create a crisis situation in Cuba which would give them a pretext to intervene militarily in the island. They’re convinced that only direct, large-scale armed intervention can stop the process of revolutionary transformations undertaken by and with the unwavering support of the overwhelming majority of the Cuban people who are committed to defending this process.

The first chapter of the report drafted by the commission created by President Bush to hasten the so-called “regime change” in Cuba, published 6 May, identifies two tasks directly connected to the Commission on Human Rights: the organisation of a broad disinformation campaign abroad and encouragement for the international isolation of the Revolution with efforts involving other actors and manipulating spaces offered by multilateral organisations.

The executive summary of the same chapter of the document that President Bush made his own says, with no beating around the bush, that fomenting anti-Cuban manoeuvrings in international organisations was an especially important tool for contributing to the policy of hastening the end of the Castro regime. It specifically recommended “increasing support for human rights monitoring”.

With a view to ensure his re-election in November 2004, Bush continued to enthusiastically cultivate the support of all those who for decades have been involved in the most hideous plans and actions aimed at destroying the Cuban Revolution, including representatives of terrorists groups based in US territory.

Bush visited Florida again a few days before the elections. On Sunday October 31, Bush spoke at a rally held in that state, which was attended by many terrorists and renowned enemies of the Cuban Revolution. He declared then that he would maintain the pressure to have the gift of freedom finally reach Cuban men and women and to make Cuban people enjoy in Havana the same liberties available to them in the United States soil.

A few months later, the Cuban people would confront again, at the 61st session of the Commission, a new chapter of the outrageous exercise of political manipulation promoted every year by the United States in Geneva, unsuccessfully intended to debase the process of revolutionary changes that has been taking place in the Island since January 1959. The Bush administration disregards each and every ethical of legal criteria in order to achieve its contemptible anti-Cuban goal. Pressures and blackmails would become blunter than ever this time.

61st session of the CHR (2005)
A mere 48 hours had gone by since President Bush’s re-election, when the aggressive and militaristic clique whose power had been given a surprising boost in the recently held imperial elections, the former rushed to assure that its hostile blockade policy towards Cuba would suffer no changes.

On 4 November 2004, the State Department issued a press notice entitled: “Cuba: Human Rights Situation”, which repeated several of the lies, slanders and false accusations that have been the basis of the anti-Cuban campaign waged by the United States over human rights issues.

The imperial press notice once again uses a distorted version of what happened in March 2003, when the Cuban government and courts found themselves obliged to act and apply the law to neutralize the criminal act of mercenaries who —paid and controlled by the US Interests Section in Havana— attempted to destroy the Cuban people’s chosen constitutional order. Washington’s anti-Cuban edict described this end to impunity for those who break the law as a “sweeping crackdown on independent civil society activists”.

The State Department shamelessly lied once again. By virtue of laws which existed before the crimes were committed, the ordinary Cuban civil courts sentenced not activists, much less independent, men and women but annexationist mercenaries who accepted orders and generous salaries from the United States government and perpetrated illegal acts inside Cuba to foster the Superpower’s policy of blockade and aggression towards our homeland. Conspiring with a foreign power is a crime in any country in the world, including the United States.

Washington’s reinforced hostility against Cuba and the manipulation of the human rights issue to that end became more evident in the letter sent by Bush to the organizers of the anti-Cuban seminar that took place in Miami, on November 2004, sponsored by the Institute of Cuban and Cuban American Studies of Miami University and the Czech Embassy. In that letter, he reaffirmed his commitment to support every action that would contribute to the goal of ultimately destroying Cuban Revolution.
It was not accidental that this letter was published in the aftermath of the re-election of the president in polls where he was favoured by the culture of fear, which has been imposed on the US people. Bush meant to reiterate his support to the ever-loyal terrorist and anti-Cuban mafia based in Miami.

The big-shots of the Miami mafia and the mercenaries serving the anti-Cuban policies within the Island, promptly publicised their satisfaction for the re-election of the neo-conservative and imperialist Administration. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, congressman with a solid anti-Cuban record said that “those elections had indeed closed all the roads for Castro”.

Camila Ruiz, one of the leaders of the terrorist Cuban American National Foundation announced how pleased they were to be able to continue working with President Bush’s administration for a change in Cuba. The preferred “democratic” methods of the Foundation are, among other things, bombing hotels, assassination plots against President Fidel Castro and sabotages against economic targets in Cuba.

The United States tried to replay in 2005 the scheme they had used in previous years, by instructing a third country or group of countries to introduce the anti-Cuban draft. They were counting, to force a brand-new introducer of the resolution, on the subordination and the deep dependency towards its hegemonic policy of some Central American governments and Eastern Europe.

The Bush Administration exerted great pressure on the Central American countries in order to force them to introduce the anti-Cuban draft as a "joint initiative" of the sub-region. Nevertheless, their efforts were not successful. Honduras refused to repeat the pitiful role it had played the previous year and other governments of the region also rejected to assume that task.

It was then that United States decided to take over and introduce a draft that had always been theirs. On the other hand, Washington had come to the conclusion that by publicly appearing as main sponsor, they could stop the steady decline of the voting pattern.

The Bush Administration profited from the high degree of subordination towards its anti-Cuban policy of several countries members of the European Union, interested in mending the damage caused to its relations with the superpower after having timidly questioned American invasion to Iraq. The European Union tailed after Washington as they unconditionally supported the anti-Cuban exercise in the 61st CHR. Several governments of Eastern and Central Europe stood out as pawns advocating the policies of United States within the Union.

Like the previous year, the United States discreetly exerted pressure to have the anti-Cuban draft adopted, concentrating its efforts in Washington and the capitals of the countries members of the CHR.

In its anti-Cuban lobby, not only did the United States work to gain the vote in support of its draft resolution, but also requested the rejection of the members to whatever initiative of procedural character that might be introduced by the Cuban delegation.

The anti-Cuban hunt unleashed by the United States included efforts and pressures that involved even President Bush and the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

Representatives of the anti-Cuban mafia out of Miami also joined the pressures in favor of the anti-Cuban draft, including its representatives in the American Congress.

In September 2004, the representative of the United States to ECOSOC, Ambassador Sichan Siv, toured the Persian and Arabic Gulf region with the objective of engaging support to the initiatives that the North American government would promote in the forthcoming CHR. In the Press conference he attended during that tour, Sichan Siv criticized the presence in the CHR of countries like Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

On September 15, 2004, an article by Europe Press titled "For the freedom of the prisoners of conscience in Cuba", revealed that the FAES Foundation, chaired by the Spanish fascist Jose Maria Aznar, had organized a meeting in defence of the mercenaries convicted in Cuba because of serving the anti-Cuban policies of the government of the United States. The Secretary of International Relations of the Spanish People’s Party, Jorge Moragas; the president of the Spanish Association Cuba in Transition, Rafael Rubio; and the Cuban-born terrorist Carlos Alberto Montaner, attended the event.

Events of Cuban propaganda, summoned with the money and the sponsorship of Washington also they took place In the Czech Republic. From September 17 to 19, 2004, the so-called “International Committee for Democracy in Cuba (CIDC) and the government-sponsored Czech organization "People in Need” held a meeting titled "Towards Democracy in Cuba", in the seat of the Senate in Prague. The media show was attended, with US Government funding, by the former president of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, by the former president of the Spanish Government, the ousted Jose Maria Aznar, and by Jeanne Kirkpatrick, former US Ambassador to the UN, in the heat of Cold War.

In Latin America anti-Cuban pressures also were exerted with full imperial force. Several Latin American ambassadors accredited to Washington were summoned in March to a round table on the 61st CHR that was held in the seat of US Congress. Cuban-born congresswoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, compelled, with her traditional blackmailing style, the presence of several diplomatic representatives of the region.

Outstanding pressures were exerted on the governments of Mexico, Peru and Guatemala.

In the case of Guatemala, the media reported that on the occasion of the visit to that country of Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on March 2005, he demanded the Guatemalan vote in favor of the anti-Cuban resolution as a prerequisite to lift the military ban imposed by Washington and to release the grant of 3,2 US million dollars, which the Guatemalan government had been promised for its Air Force, the maintenance of military bases, plus training and equipment for the military who would participate in international peace-keeping operations.

In the week from April 4 to 6, the Deputy Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean of the USAID, Adolfo Franco, visited Argentina with the objective to attain the vote of that country in favor of the anti-Cuban project. Furthermore, Franco requested the Argentine Foreign Ministry Chancellery to open the doors of its Embassy in the Habana to the mercenaries serving US anti-Cuban policies.

In Mexico, the pressures were focused directly on the Foreign Minister Derbez, interested in obtaining the approval of Washington to be able to be placed to take over the Chair of its so-called Ministry of Colonies - the Organization of American States. Guided by his ambition and his eagerness for prominence, Derbez committed the vote against Cuba, in exchange for American support to his aspiration to the General Secretariat of the O.A.S. The year before, Derbez had obtained the approval of the Bush Administration to an eventual vote of Mexico in support to the resolution on Guantánamo - provided it maintained his vote against Cuba unalterable. Its vote was decisive in the case of the anti-Cuban manoeuvre. In the case of Guantánamo, after ensuring the complicity the European Union, Washington could do without the Mexican vote without much cost.

On April 7, 2005, in an interview of the then US Under¨-Secretary of State for Latin America, Roger Noriega, to CNN channel in Spanish, he indicated that their main goal was to maintain the subject of Cuba in the agenda of the Commission and that the United States would go to any length to obtain it.

The United States extended their pressures to countries that were not members of the Commission, with the objective to increase the number of cosponsors of the draft.

To be able to achieve their objectives, the United States resorted again to the services of the Personal Representative for Cuba of the High Commissioner of the United Nations for Human Rights, Mrs. Christine Chanet.

Mrs. Chanet presented her second report to the 61st session of the CHR. This document repeated in its basic lines the one that she had presented in 2004. Of course, nor a letter was dedicated in the text to honour the memory of the Cuban victims of the terrorism promoted and allowed by the Government of the United States. Not a word of sympathy was written for the relatives of the Five Heroes of the antiterrorist fight who remain kidnapped in American jails.

In her anti-Cuban pamphlet, Mrs. Chanet echoed the lies fabricated by US authorities and the terrorist and anti-Cuban Miami-based mafia, intended to impose “a change of regime in the Island” and to deprive the Cuban people of the exercise of its sacred right to self-determination.

The premises of Mrs. Chanet serve the intentions of the superpower and the former colonial metropolis to impose on the international cooperation in the promotion of democracy the human rights, rules and patterns that favor their schemes of domination.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Chanet has been playing a despicable role associated to the discharge of a spurious mandate, conceived and imposed by the United States, in order to facilitate a pretext to the intensification of its policy of aggressions and annexation against the Cuban nation.

If there is some reserve of ethics and honour left in her, Mrs. Chanet should resign to continue carrying out a mandate designed to support blatant intentions of imperial conquest and domination. As long as she remains discharging those functions, she should not expect nothing from the Cuban people, but the loathing and scorn that deserve all those who collaborate with the attacking power.

Once the session started, the United States again refused to change a single comma of the anti-Cuban draft resolution previously drawn in Washington. The European Union and others were forced to endorse a document on which they were not consulted whatsoever.

On April 12, shortly before the deadline for registration (3:00 PM, Geneva time) the US delegation officially tabled its draft resolution with 37 cosponsors (the 25 members of the European Union, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Monaco, Albania, Israel, Croatia, Japan, Rumania, Australia and Canada. Other countries, mostly from the North subsequently joined the initial sponsors. The superpower, stopping at nothing to raise the number of sponsors of the anti-Cuban scheme, ridiculously brought in the signature in Washington of 2 small Island States, whose foreign policy is subordinated to the United States – Palau and Marshall Islands - and then sent their signatures to Geneva. The total number of sponsors amounted to 44 countries.

The anti-Cuban draft met the basic goals that the United States had set out: to give continuity to the anti-Cuban exercise; to ensure headlines throughout its media monopoly censuring Cuba and to keep alive the pretext for the escalation of their anti-Cuba hostility and aggressiveness.

The text enforced in the voting has three preamble paragraphs and two operative paragraphs. It did not include an explicit condemnation of Cuba, in order to ensure the minimal number of votes required for its adoption and the highest possible sponsorship.

As expected, the resolution does not make the slightest reference to the blockade and other edges of the policy of hostility of United States against the Cuban people. It does not acknowledge either the new outbreak of the measures against Cuba decreed by President Bush in May 2004

The resolution was adopted on April 14, 2005, with a vote of 21 in favor, 17 against and 10 abstentions. The pattern of votes reflected a distinct polarization North-South, with the exception of few Latin American countries, which because of their subordination and vulnerability towards Washington, joined as accomplices its anti-Cuban policy.

The pressures exerted by the United States were particularly brutal in the 24-48 hours that preceded the voting. Only two days before the vote, according to the intentions of vote informed to our representatives, the resolution would have been defeated or adopted by a much narrower margin.

On April 19, 2005, Mr. Christopher Smith, Chairman of the Subcommittee of Africa, Human Rights and International Operations of the Foreign Relations Committee of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress, admitted at a hearing of the Committee that he chairs, that the adoption of the resolutions against Cuba and Belarús in the CHR required a full-fledged deployment of the US delegation, in addition to personal requests of president Bush to the presidents of the Ukraine and Mexico.

To be able to attain its objective, the United States threatened to block the negotiations of resolutions in United Nations, with restricting the imports from certain commodities to North American territory and/or to remove the benefits of the US African Growth Opportunities Act (AGOA).

The Washington regime threatened and conditioned its aid to several governments in strategic subjects that had a vital significance for the national security of his associates, like the possibility of acquiring brand-new US armaments, the support to these governments to control the opposition during the elections and even in subjects related to border conflicts. The threats included the potential suppression of financial aid from the World Bank and other international financial organizations.

In order to reinforce the Cuban lobbying in Geneva, the delegation of the United States once again formed a Task Group that included the Head of Delegation, Mr. Rudy Boschwitz, US Ambassador in Geneva, Mr. Kevin Moley, and the US Ambassador to ECOSOC, Mr. Sichav Siv.

Other participants in the anti-Cuban efforts were the Republican congressman from New Jersey, Mr. Chris Smith, and Mr. Michael Kozak, former Head of the Cuban Bureau of the Department of State and the USIS in Havana.

Like in previous years, the advocates of the anti-Cuban Miami-based mafia arrived in the Swiss city one or two days before the voting of the Cuban draft resolution; in order to let loose all their hatred against the Cuban people.

As the spaces for the accreditation to the sessions of the Commission of these elements had been gradually shut, several of them were forced to resort to press credentials to be able to enter the Room where the body was meeting.

Unlike the last few years, terrorist Luis Zúñiga did not participate in the CHR. Apparently, the United States learned the lesson of the political attrition derived from having facilitated accreditation and a rostrum for the well-known terrorist the year before.

The manipulated and selective treatment of the subject of human rights in Cuba in the Commission at Geneva was denounced by the appeal "Let us stop a new manoeuvre against Cuba" signed by thousands of outstanding personalities, among them Peace Nobel awardees, renowned journalists, writers, artists, and professors.

In the 2005, it was confirmed once again that the pattern of permanent conduct in the design of the policy of Cuban hostility of the United States is deceit. Once it is verified that the United States is the main source of demand for sexual tourism - which is a fact -, automatically false allegations will be made in Washington declaring then Cuba as the "main destiny of the sexual tourism".

The basic objective of the Bush administration is to project the image that the Cuban Government deprives its citizens of the most elementary basic rights and functions outside international law – describing it as a "Rogue State" -- thus creating false perceptions that serve as pretext for stepping up their policies of hostility, blockade and aggressions against the Cuban people.

Lying —perhaps equalled only by its pride, arrogance, aggressive attitude and contempt for law, the interests and the aspirations of other people — will be the identifying characteristic that will make this current neo-fascist US administration go down in history.

The United States government has not the slightest moral right to accuse Cuba of anything. The outrageous, ruthless behaviour of the present US administration has been responsible for some of the most serious, large-scale human rights violations in the whole history of humanity. This has been aggravated by the fact that it has trampled on and made a dead letter of a significant part of one of the most important advances of the international community in the sphere of international law, particularly human rights and international humanitarian law.

Using false pretexts, the Empire’s military forces have killed more than 100, 000 Iraqi civilians, whose numbers include a high proportion of women and children. The dimensions of the human tragedy in Iraq and the extensive use of torture, extrajudicial executions and collective punishment on the civil population has led many to call this war of imperial conquest nothing other than genocide.

On the other hand, around 500 human beings remain arbitrarily imprisoned in territory illegally occupied by the US naval base on Guantanamo Bay, languishing in inhuman conditions. They have neither been charged nor prosecuted for over four years.

The Government of the United States is also responsible for having made secret flights across Europe, where prisoners of its so-called war against terrorism were then taken to secret detention and torture centres.

It is the United States, which, through the imposition of a cruel inhuman and genocidal blockade, has violated the human rights of the whole Cuban population for a period of more than 40 years.

It is the US administration which, flagrantly violating the principles of international law, conjures up, teaches and finances groupings of unscrupulous, annexation-inclined mercenaries so that, under the guidance of its Interests Section in Havana they may undertake actions aimed at destroying the Republic of Cuba’s constitutional order.

It is the US administration that violates the human rights of millions of US citizens by forbidding them to travel to Cuba.

Cuba, as an example of social justice, true democracy and respect for human rights is a thorn in the side of President Bush and his closest associates from the anti-Cuban mob. By dint of its sacrifice, talent and steadfastness the Cuban people has built a viable political, economic and social alternative, which is the complete opposite of the ideals of world domination and unilateral hegemony, which those currently controlling the United States government are trying to install worldwide. They fear what the Cuban Revolution has accomplished and for that reason all they can do is lie.

The US administration is worried about the increasing challenging of its anti-Cuban manoeuvre in Geneva. The number of voices that oppose the manipulation of the works of the Commission against the peoples of the South increase steadily.

Faced with the fighting spirits and the strong Cuban denunciation made by Cuba and other countries of the South, the Government of the United States unleashes important heavy-handed actions aimed at neutralizing their impact.

The attempts to condition access to the newly-created Council of Human Rights are part of a strategy that try to ensure for the superpower the automatic exclusion of dissident voices that oppose its domination project.

Its anti-Cuban strategy includes several lines of action. One of them is the initiative of the so-called “Community of Democracies”.

What is this farce called “Community of Democracies”?

Once it plans to manipulate the New and Restored Democracies Movement as a tool for aggression, condemnation and domination failed — because of the concerted action of Southern countries and some Northern governments which understood the danger arising from sacrificing international cooperation aimed at consolidating democracy to extremely petty political motivations— the United States decided to cook up a new mechanism which serves its imperial needs.

So it created the “Community of Democracies” at a meeting in Warsaw organised, directed and financed by the United States. The so-called community has no universality, legitimacy or credibility but does have, yes indeed, a great deal of money donated by Washington and access to the dirty practices developed at the height of the Cold War.

The government of the Empire hopes to achieve various aims by manipulating this “community” which Washington oversees and controls using mechanisms that are far from democratic:

• Ensure it has a permanent presence on bodies like the CHR and thus avoid having to submit itself to periodic elections and eliminating any danger that its might once again have to go through the bitter and humiliating experience of being excluded from membership on the Commission on Human Rights.

• Controlling the membership of “bodies useful” for condemning governments and for imposing its ideological patterns — focussing particularly on the Commission on Human Rights— offering membership to countries vulnerable to its pressure and threatening to block the access to those who oppose its policies of hegemonic domination.

• Inventing and imposing false consensus that, ideologically, complements and consolidates its unquestionable military hegemony.

Over the last few months it has been common to see the ambassador of the Superpower at the Economic and Social Council or even Mrs. Dobriansky herself either in New York or Geneva or the Middle East proselytising for her anti-democratic sect which they have euphemistically christened “Community of Democracies” and urging that the door of the CHR be closed to countries which are not in agreement with its aspirations to world domination. One of them, there, with a seat in the first row, is Cuba.

In February 2006, it was difficult to anticipate the format that would have the 62nd session of the Commission. The United States and their main allies advocated a short session of procedural character that would serve as a fast transition for the first session of the Council of Human Rights. Thus, they would manage to move away the substantive debate on human rights issues, eluding therefore the consideration of subjects like Guantánamo, that has motivated so much headlines in the press all over the world.

For Cuba it is clear that in any future scenario, the Government of the United States will persist in the continuity of his anti-Cuban manoeuvre in Geneva. We are getting ready to confront it, defending truth and reason and demanding the justice that its people deserves, as opposed to the annexionist hunger of the Empire.

Those governments which agree to cosponsor and support the anti-Cuban draft in Geneva will be accomplices of the imperialist plan which the Bush administration is implementing, the aim of which is to destroy by any means necessary —direct military intervention is not ruled out— the social, economic and political system freely chosen by the Cuban people. These governments will be contributing to the fabrication of a pretext Washington can use to step up its strengthened policy of blockade, hostility and aggression towards the Cuban people.