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Presentation by the Cuban Ambassador to India on the work of Cuba on Human Rights. INDIA, December 10, 2008. When in December 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 62/219, as a result of the action of the Non-Aligned Movement that Cuba chairs at the moment, approving the institutional building of the Human Rights Council, we who struggled for years, convinced that it was possible and indispensable to create a new body to replace the discredited Commission on Human Rights, finally saw the fruits of our patience and our serious and honest labor. From now on, the legitimacy of the Council will depend, to a great extent, on how the Universal Periodic Review Mechanism will end up functioning. The Council has to function under the strictest respect for the principles of objectivity, impartiality and non-selectivity. Otherwise, it will be a resounding failure. And I have here the balance sheet on this uneven conflict: Cuba, the defendant, transformed into a founding member of the Council, presiding over the Non-Aligned Movement and working constructively to strengthen the Council. The United States, our accuser, transformed into a “failed State” in the matter; responsible for the most grievous crimes and human rights violations; foe to the new Council because it has not been able to manipulate or control it. We see it here, lacking direction and authority, thrashing around, always backing the worst of causes, defending torture, administrating secret prisons, organizing clandestine flights. For us the date is a joyous occasion to celebrate, because after an unrelenting battle of 20 years Cuba was able to defeat the US policies adopted year after year for two decades through blackmail, threat and coercion in the already disappeared Human Rights Commission. One year has passed since the United Nations General Assembly’s Committee on Socio-Humanitarian Affairs adopted, with 168 yeas and only 7 nays, the draft resolution presented by Cuba, on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement, endorsing the agreement on the constitutional building of the Human Rights Council and definitively removing the mandate that the United States had imposed against Cuba at the now-defunct Commission on Human Rights. And now, and only now, we, by our own free will, in an independent and sovereign manner, are doing what could not , nor will ever, be wrested from us as concessions. Therefore now and not before, we once again invited a Special Rapporteur of the Council and, if the constructive climate prevailing today continues and the campaign against Cuba does not resume, we will invite others in the future. Therefore now and not before, we have signed the International Covenants on Human Rights. Therefore now and not before, we are ready to work seriously to present ourselves in 2009 at the Universal Periodic Review Mechanism. Perhaps no other people have contributed such a high level of sacrifice and pain in order to achieve the right of all the people to live in a free, independent and democratic country that sets itself the goal of achieving all the justice and well-being for its children. In this sense, Cuba has constructed a social system based on a State of rights, where legal protection and material conditions are ensured so that the Cuban citizen may exercise all human rights, especially the civil and political ones. The theory of human rights in the First World prioritizes the protection of civil and political rights. Economic, social and cultural rights are presented as objectives of progressive realization or as simple aspirations for the future. The motive behind creating this unfair and selective hierarchy of rights is plain: if all categories and generations of human rights were evaluated with equal rigor and if their intrinsic interdependence were acknowledged, most of the governments which today claim to champion those rights would inevitably be identified among their worst violators. The Cuban Government places the greatest importance on its citizens’ full enjoyment of the human right to education. Quality education which totally respects cultural identity and which includes values and principles that foster solidarity, social justice, mutual respect, patriotism and a profound knowledge of humanity’s historic, cultural and artist heritage and of its peoples’ customs have been the clear guidelines followed in developing Cuba’s educational system, from the triumph of the Revolution on. The goals set out by UNESCO for 2015 have already been met. One of the first acts of the revolutionary government was to stamp out illiteracy. This was followed by the widest and most extensive development on education and knowledge with equal opportunities to everyone, turning Cuba into an undeniable referent on the educational, cultural and scientific field. The 12,784 teaching institution of the country, including 2,368 rural schools that use photovoltaic solar panels utilize information and communication technologies supporting the teaching programs to the benefit of 2,5 million students. An innovative experience on the access to information and communication technology are the Computer Clubs for Young People, which in the 20 years following their establishment have provided training for more than 1,200,000 Cubans, the majority of these children and young people. Providing free medical attention to the Cuban population became one of the revolutionary government’s basic social pillars from the time it assumed power. After the triumph of the Revolution, public health services in Cuba showed an impressive level of development in successive stages together with a continued development of pharmaceutical drug production. Cuba’s achievement in the field of health mean that ever since 1983 it has more than met the requirements of Health for Everyone agreed to in the context of the World Health Organization (WHO). Some of the Cuban public health’s achievements in the last ten years can be summarised as follows: 67% of the medicines the country need are domestically produced; Programme for pre-natal diagnosis of congenital diseases; medical genetics programme to reduce Down Syndrome and other diseases; Improvement of intensive pre-natal, paediatric and adults therapies; Increase in the number of organ transplants performed; Discovery of the group B anti-meningococcus vaccine, the only one of its kind in the world; Production of Hepatitis B Vaccine; Discovery of PPG (atheromix), first choice therapy for treating high cholesterol; Decrease in the number of cases of cancer in the advanced stage and an increase in the survival rate; Production of monoclonal antibodies for cancer treatment. Manufacture of vaccines against the disease; Cure or control of retinitis pigmentosa; and Production of melagenina, a pharmaceutical used for treating vitiligo. Cuba today has 381 health areas which are fully covered by the family doctor programme. There are more than 30,000 spread throughout the country. The whole population is covered by a family doctor and a nurse. When the Revolution emerged victorious, 14.2% of deaths were caused by infectious diseases. Today the proportion of deaths from infectious diseases and parasites has fallen so greatly it has all but disappeared. The major causes of death are heart and cerebrovascular diseases, malignant tumors, etc. As a result of the development of this educational structure, there are more than 70,000 doctors in the country compared to the 3000 that the Revolution had when it emerged victorious —another 3000 emigrated in the first few years after the Revolution in response to the incentives offered for this very purpose by the United States government whose aim was to dismantle the Cuban health service. Many countries have benefited from the unselfish and ongoing commitment of Cubans with the advance of human rights for all regions of the world. I would like to recall today, on the World Day of Human Rights, that as we speak there are 37,000 Cuban health workers providing services in 79 countries. Of those, over 18,000 are medical doctors. There are 37,000 health cooperators in 79 countries and over 18,000 of them are doctors! In a few days, we will hit the target figure of 1 million patients with free surgeries through Operation Miracle. A million patients from 32 countries have regained their eyesight over the last few years as a result of the implementation of Operation Miracle, fostered by our country. These patients have been operated on by Cuban doctors, nurses and technicians, either in Cuba or in their respective countries. I would also like to underscore the fact that our universities have provided government-sponsored scholarships to nearly 30,000 students from 121 countries that are currently enrolled in them. These are children from poor families, on many occasions from rural areas in their countries. Of those nearly 30,000 students, some 23,000 are being trained in Cuba as doctors. In recalling that our country has graduated more than 45,000 Third-World youths in these years of the Revolution, of which almost 35,000 are from Africa, we must evoke Fidel’s remarks: “Without culture, there is no freedom possible”. And we must recall Martí, who said that “Being educated is the only way to be free.” And I must also underscore – because of what I have just said – that with the Cuban literacy method Yes, I Can, designed by Cuban professors and implemented with the participation of thousands of Cuban pedagogical advisers, some 2.7 million illiterate people in 22 countries have been taught to read and write; and another 600,000 illiterate people are currently studying, learning to read and write in the languages of their countries, not only in Spanish. In recalling these figures and confirming with modesty but with healthy pride that the Cubans are not only fighting to build a society with all fairness and full equality of opportunities for all its children, a socialist society with equality of opportunity for all, where justice can be attained, I must also express our pride in knowing that our fellow countrymen and women did go to cure, to teach and to fight off apartheid and colonialism in Africa – where over 350,000 Cuban voluntary fighters, both men and women, went to defeat the troops of apartheid, making it possible to obliterate, right in the midst of the 20th century, a brutal form of discrimination and exclusion of men over skin color, where more than 2,000 sons and daughters of our nation laid down their lives fighting and were instrumental in preserving Angola’s territorial integrity, in the inception of Namibia as an independent country, in the release of Nelson Mandela and the dismantling of the cruel apartheid system, which was kept alive through the shameful support of many who now try to forget that past in which they were accessories to the apartheid regime, which they provided with weapons and which they helped violate UN resolutions, the first of all being the US Government. Therefore, in doing so, I would like to express our pride that we are not only working for and defending in Cuba the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights for our people, but that we are also fighting in other countries of the world so that these can finally become real rights within everyone’s reach and stop being rights just proclaimed in paper. In the most remote mountain communities and difficult landscapes of dozens of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, thousands of Cuban collaborators arrive to share the accomplishments of Cuba in health, education, sports and a wide range of areas of knowledge. The main contribution is the valuable help of its professionals, despite the island’s modest resources as a country of the South additionally submitted to a criminal blockade that is the greatest violation of human rights against the Cuban people. More than 17,000 young people from more than 110 countries are studying various subjects in Cuba, most of them at the higher level. Cuba has also offered its support for a universal literacy program. Cuba would contribute a large part of the technology and specialist human resources needed. More than 30,000 healthcare professionals give services in almost 70 Latin American, Caribbean, African and Asian countries through the Comprehensive Health Programme which is welcomed by Governments and by the populations that benefit directly from it. Under the programme thousands of Cuban cooperators are serving in 25 countries, and through the Miracle operation Cuban doctors have carried out 800 000 eye operations to recover the sight of poor people in Latin America. By 2006 the Latin American School of Medical Sciences (ELAM) expects registration had risen to 10,000 with Latin American students whose numbers include representatives of 66 ethnic groups and indigenous peoples from very isolated places where there is no health care. I should not finish my intervention related to the respect of human rights without mentioning with great admiration five young Cuban anti-terrorist fighters and human rights defenders of the Cuban people, who continue to be arbitrarily imprisoned for more than 10 years by the U.S. government that have subjected these five young men to systematic and sustained practices of torture and degrading treatment. These brave young men, risking their own lives, arrived in the United States from Cuba with the mission to infiltrate armed and mercenary organizations established in the Cuban exile community and, thus, disclose their potential terrorist activities against Cuba that these organizations carry out with impunity, and are even protected in the State of Florida. Lastly, I would like to express our satisfaction over the news that the Cuban Medical Brigade currently working in Guatemala, composed of some 300 health workers, stationed there since Hurricane Mitch swept through Central America in 1998, was presented with the National Human Rights Awards, bestowed by that brotherly country. Cuba celebrates this day, 10 December, World Day of Human Rights, standing tall and with the conviction that its people has maintained and will always maintain in victory a Revolution that truthfully ushered in for our people the real enjoyment of human rights, of all human rights for all the children of our homeland! Thank you very much! (Cubaminrex- Embacuba India)
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