Nobel Literature Prize Winner Joins Pro-Cuba Call
• "The US has created the apartheid of terror and is the last country that can speak of human rights"
Rome, Mar 23 (Prensa Latina) Italian writer Dario Fo, 1997 Nobel Literature Prize and one of the most important playwrights of all times, has joined the call over 2,000 intellectuals worldwide are making to defend Cuba.
"The US has created the apartheid of terror and is the last country that can speak of human rights", Fo stated.
A week ago, 900 intellectuals issued a document entitled "Let´s Stop a New anti-Cuba Maneuver," referring to the activities successive US administrations against Cuba at Geneva´s UN Commission on Human Rights.
"The US lacks moral as to human rights affairs, considering what it did in Abu Ghraib prison and continue doing in Guantanamo base," Fo, also poet and actor, stressed.
Brazilian singer songwriter and writer Chico Buarque de Hollanda, and Hebe de Bonafini, one of the notorious Mothers of Plaza de Mayo who fought the military dictatorship in Argentina, are some of the other important personalities supporting the pro-Cuba call.
Meantime, new Ecuadorian voices, including the Society of Writers and the Benjamin Carrion Culture House, today expressed support for Cuba and rejection of the US resolution.
Several Ecuadorian politicians, journalists, heads of families and intellectuals have demanded President Lucio Gutierrez that Ecuador refrains from supporting any anti-Cuba proposal in Geneva.
Pinter joins Nobel Prize Winners in Rejecting Moves Against Cuba
Geneva, Mar 21 (Prensa Latina) British dramatist, poet and activist Harold Pinter added his name to that of Nobel prize winners Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Rigoberta Menchú, Nadime Gordimer and José Saramago in signing a statement by world intellectuals that rejects manoeuvres organized by the US at the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.
Mr Pinter, Britain"s most honoured and prominent living playwright and actor, has been a sharp critic of US foreign policy for some years.
Latest reports by the international press agencies state that more than 500 intellectuals and artists from all over the world have signed the manifesto published by eight dailies mainly in Spain, Argentina and Mexico.
With the title, "Stop the new manoeuvres against Cuba," the call highlights that, until April 22, during the sessions of the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, the US government will try, by pressuring the member nations, to introduce a resolution against the island.
The document denounces the rigged and selective treatment of the matter year after year within that commission to justify the worsening of the blockade and the aggressions that the US, violating all international rights, exercises against a small nation.
The text confirms its disagreement with the fact that last year, it was not even possible to debate the atrocious violations of human rights in the US jails of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo at the commission.
The
manifesto, which can be subscribed on the Internet and has the support of
many outstanding US intellectuals, requests the governments of the countries
represented on the Commission not to allow the organization to be used to
legitimatise the anti-Cuban aggression of the Bush administration.
Guatemalan Intellectuals Call to Stop Aggression on Cuba in HRC
Guatemala, Mar 14 (Prensa Latina) Intellectuals, political, and human-rights activists joined a world´s call to stop a new US aggression on Cuba in the UNHRC (Human Rights Commission).
"We are requesting that the governments of the countries represented in the Commission do not let it be used to legalize the Bush administration´s anti-Cuban aggressiveness, a document elaborated by seven Guatemalans stated.
The text, accessed by Prensa Latina, has been signed by over 200 international figures, showing their solidarity with the Caribbean island, including Guatemalan Nobel Peace Price winner in 1992 Rigoberta Menchu.
Intellectual and politician Alfonso Bauer Paiz; writer and poet Luz Mendez de la Vega and other figures, as Margarita Carrera Molina, Jose Barnoya Garcia, Arturo Arias, and Arturo Taracena Arriola, also signed the document for this country.
The text called "Let us Stop a new ploy against Cuba" denounces that the HRC gives "a manipulated and selected treatment to this topic to justify intensification of the blockade and aggression policy" against the Island.
Other international figures as Portuguese Literature Nobel Price winner Jose Saramago, South African Nadine Gordimer, and Argentinian Nobel Peace Price winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel accused Washington of violating the international Law with its hostility towards Cuba.
The 61 Session Period of the HRC will be from Monday to April 22, and as in previous years, the White House is pressuring on the member countries to approve a resolution condemning the Island.
"The Commission should represent all the peoples in the United Nations, and protect the rights of all the men and women in the world," the signatories of the document demanded.
They considered significant that it was impossible to analyze in the HRC session of 2004, not even discuss, the terrible violations of human rights in the US prisons of Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and Guantanamo, in Cuban illegally occupied territory.
The letter, also spread on the Internet, launched an invitation to journalists,
writers, artists, professors, teachers, and social activists to address the
governments and "stop that dangerous anti-Cuban maneuver" in Geneva.
Oscar Niemeyer, Leonardo Boff, Thiago de Mello, and Frei Betto (Brazil), Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, Alice Walter, and Ramsey Clark (the United Sates), Mario Benedetti, and Eduardo Galeano (Uruguay), and Ernesto Cardenal (Nicaragua) also signed the text.
The are figures from Paraguay, Pakistan, France, Ecuador, Italy, Venezuela, Spain, Chile, Peru, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Canada, Puerto Rico, Bolivia, the United Kingdom, Japan, the Basque Country, Colombia, El Salvador, Sweden, Panama, Costa Rica, and other countries among the signatories of the document.
Dominicans Support Cuba on Human Rights Issue
Santo Domingo, Mar 14 (Prensa Latina) The American Association of Jurists (AAJ) has issued a statement of solidarity with their Cuban counterparts.
The statement released comes as a new US hostility chapter against the Island on the human rights issue is looming.
Under the title "Circus Coming Again", the statement signed by AAJ chairman and secretary Alfonso Torres Ulloa and Francisco de la Rosa warned that "Cuba is not alone."
It referred to the upcoming session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, where the Bush Administration will submit a resolution over alleged rights violations on the Island.
Torres Ulloa told Prensa Latina that his organization and the Human Rights National Commission will jointly mobilize Dominican Republic´s public opinion against these anti-Cuban maneouvers.
"We will be part of the popular mobilization to prevent the government from supporting US policy in Geneva as it would be acting against the Dominican people.
