| |
 |
Statement by Mr. Rodolfo Reyes Rodríguez, Deputy Director for Multilateral Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba.
Agenda item
14 g): Human rights questions.
21 July, 2004
New York.
Mr. President,
Few Agenda items, such as that of the promotion and protection of human rights, are of so much importance for the strengthening of peace, liberty, development and the welfare of human beings and the peoples. Contradictorily, it would be difficult to identify other entities within the United Nations system which, as the Commission on Human Rights, are so much affected by hypocrisy, double standards and political manipulation.
The Sixtieth Session of the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva was more of the like. Once more, we witnessed the sham made by the main Western Powers, who insisted in their attempts to deceive the world, by making believe that human rights are only subjected to violations in the South of the planet.
The session was full of political pressures, blackmailing, conditionings and threats which the powerful governments, based on transnational capital affluence, have accustomed us to. The system’s credibility was torn into peaces once more. Hence, condemnatory projects proliferated against those who disagree with and are reluctant to accept the global domination model that the imperial and hegemonic superpower attempts to impose, in complicity with ancient colonial metropolis, of those who look forward to getting their share from the new recolonization of resources and world markets and lastly, of those who act as vulgar lapdogs, claiming their leftovers in the plunder share-out.
The recently concluded session of the Commission on Human Rights witnessed one of the most evident and outrageous incidents of double standard, political cynicism and degrading evidence of impunity by those exercising power at world scale. The same governments that present, cosponsor, and support the condemnatory projects against Southern countries, did not allow the CHR to make a statement on the humiliating and inhuman situation several hundreds of people have been condemned to for more than two years, in the concentration camps established within the US Naval Base limits in the Guantánamo Bay and maintained against the will of the Cuban people.
As a matter of fact, those who tirelessly repeat they are against the Non-Action Motions within the human rights field, informed their decision of resorting to a procedural motion against the project submitted by Cuba, which not only wouldn’t have allowed the Commission to take action on the issue, but also would have censured or made impossible its debate and consideration.
In the next hours, the Members of this Council will have another opportunity to show their commitment to the human rights cause. With a novel approach, without identifying the responsibility of any country and with a clearly thematic nature, the draft resolution L.17 Rev. 1 entitled “Question of the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the context of international military operations launched to combat terrorism”, comes to fill an important gap in the consideration of a highly topical and serious subject in the works of the intergovernmental human rights forums.
Unfortunately, it is known that once again the great “champions”
of human rights, the Northern industrialized powers, are producing an arsenal
of pretexts and false arguments, to keep in force a kind of immunity in
the implementation of the norms of International Law of those responsible
for aberrant human rights violations. It seems that there is an interest
in preserving untouched the possibility to continue to commit similar atrocities
in the future. The international community is following our deliberations;
the peoples and the international public opinion will judge our positions
in due moment.
Mr. President,
Coherently with what has already turned into a useless routine, the US Government imposed on the 60th session of the Commission on Human Rights, a new episode of its anti-Cuban sham in terms of human rights. They know that our people has been defeating their imperialist pretensions in the field of ideas and, thus they resort to increasingly aggressive and hostile actions, with the objective of satanizing and destroying the symbol of resistance that the Cuban Revolution represents and the sovereign project of development and independence carried out by its people.
There is no reason or any ethic or moral principle whatsoever that the Government in Washington may put forward to justify an alleged concern for human rights in Cuba. They could not do it with a minimum of credibility, not even if they invented it, an administration that last 6 May announced an escalation without precedents in its hostile actions against the freedoms and most elemental human rights of the Cuban people, including the right to self-determination, to development, to peace and even to family institution itself and the links of affection and mutual support which have traditionally brought their members together.
While it is undeniable the electoral odor of this new strengthening of the hegemonic superpower’s policy of hostility, blockade and aggressions against our people, it would be incorrect to obviate the deepest motivation of the anti-Cuban measures announced last 6 May. We shall remember that the Cuban-American terrorist mafia, financed, protected and benefited by the impunity ensured by successive US governments, have had a determining role in the conclusion of the questioned presidential election of 2000 in the State of Florida, resorting to shady and fraudulent abilities developed in the neocolonial republic by means of which they made profits for more than fifty years in Cuba, and which were subsequently improved in the banana republic they have turned Miami into.
For the ultra conservative right wing sector currently in power in the United States -which has been carrying out an extremely aggressive and militarist foreign policy, markedly unilateral and openly opposed to International Law, described as neofascist in different parts of the world - the destruction of the Cuban Revolution constitutes a political and ideological obsession.
The group that surrounds the current occupant of the White House has never admitted the right of the Cuban nation to fully exercise its sovereignty. Each and every one of the measures announced by the current US Administration last 6 May, converge in the primary objective to promote the destruction of the political, economic, social and cultural system determined by the Cuban people, with the aggravating factor they perfectly know, that it could only occur throughout a massive military aggression against the Island and the annihilation of thousands of Cuban patriots.
When President George W. Bush himself presented the Report which he named “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba”, measures were made public which, besides strengthening the hostility, interference and provocations against the Cuban people; they notably strengthened the genocide economic blockade against our people.
In its stubborn will to destroy the revolutionary process carried out by our people, the current US Administration does not take any notice to flagrantly violate even the right of US citizens to travel freely to a country the United States is not in war with –at least it has not declared so publicly- and worse of all, it tramples the rights of Cubans based in their territory to freely visit their relatives in their native country. They have gone as far as restricting even limits of prohibition, the granting of licenses for educational and academic exchange trips to Cuba to US citizens and institutions.
Cuban residents in the United States suffer today the consequences of the restrictions and obstacles to visit their relatives in the Island being multiplied in more than 3 times, as well as, the reduction up to ridiculous figures of the amount of money they may spend during authorized visits to their country of origin.
The US Government has also advocated the right and the unconceivable power of redefining the reach and limits of the Cuban family, restricting their membership to “grandparents, grandchildren, parents, siblings, spouses, sons and daughters”. The visits or the sending of remittances have been prohibited, if the relatives are uncles, cousins or any other category.
Millionaire funds – at least 59 million in two years, without taking into account other amounts channeled through secret operations of the US official intelligence agencies- will indeed be earmarked to the recruitment and financing of a fifth internal column composed by mercenaries of the hostile anti-Cuban policy of the United States.
Likewise, new
steps will be taken as regards the escalation of radio electronic aggression
and campaigns of disinformation and encouragement to the destruction of
the constitutional order in Cuba. A C-130 military aircraft will be allocated
for the transmission of subversive radio and television signals towards
the Island, which constitutes a dangerous provocation and a serious violation
of the existent international norms in this matter.
Mr. President,
Our heroic people wages a strong battle today to continue to enjoy its right to self-determination and to independence, under the permanent threat of a powerful superpower whose current governors have proclaimed for themselves the right to intervene and make the “pre-emptive war” in 60 countries or more, which make more severe the aggressions aimed at destroying the Cuban Revolution.
Cuba rejects with all its might the Anti-Cuban Resolution imposed on the 60th session of the Commission on Human Rights. The Cuban people know they defend with their rebelliousness, for themselves and for the rest of the peoples worldwide, the right to sovereignty and to self-determination.
Cubans will always stand next to those that do not yield, or flag in front of difficulties, of those who bet for the value of ideas and principles, of those who do not renounce to the feasible dream of a world where all human beings have the guarantee of the full enjoyment of all their rights.
Thank you very
much
More Information
-CUBA
Draft Resolution