CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

Cuba Charges US Lacks Moral Authority on Human Rights

Havana, Mar 8 (Prensa Latina) Cuba"s foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, categorically rejected a recent U.S. State Department report criticizing the island"s human rights record, charging that Washington has no moral authority to judge other countries after its own scandals over treatment of war prisoners.

"We urge the U.S. authorities to worry about their own problems," Felipe Perez Roque said at a news conference on Monday.

"Cuba recognizes that there are violations of human rights in our country, but they are at the Guantanamo Naval Base, in territory occupied against Cuba´s will," Roque remarked of the U.S. base used as a giant prison for alleged terror suspects.

Perez Roque noted that the State Department had not issued a report on the United States, based on the ongoing accussations by international human rights groups about inhumane prisoner conditions and harsh treatment at the Guantanamo base, and earlier scandals at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The Feb. 28 U.S. report on rights practices in Cuba is a repetition of Washington´s allegations over freedom of speech, press, assembly, as well as the imprisonment of individuals who were tried and sentenced for serving as foreign agents and that the U.S. government hails as dissidents.

The news conference was called to discuss the annual spring meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, where a U.S.-backed resolution to condemn Cuba´s rights record is presented every year.

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