CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

Submission by Jorge Iván Mora Godoy, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Cuba, of Draft Resolution L.94/Rev. 1 entitled: “Question of the detainees in the area of the United States naval base in Guantánamo”

Agenda Item 3

Geneva, 21 April 2005

Mr. Chairman:

Cuba, in response to the steadfast outcry of the international community, assumes the duty to submit Draft Resolution L.94/Rev.1 entitled “Question of the detainees in the area of the United States naval base in Guantánamo”, to the decision of this Commission. It is co-sponsored by: Belarus, Syria, Libya, Venezuela and the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea.

None of the self-appointed “tutors” of human rights has dared to do it.

This initiative responds to the need to put an end to the impunity and conspiratorial silence in the face of one of the gravest chapters of massive and flagrant violations of human rights in recent history. It does not prejudge or condemn. It does not seek sanctions. It only demands the right to know objectively what is happening at the international torture center established within the territory illegally occupied by the naval base in Guantánamo.

With this action, Cuba acts consistently with the express will of the vast majority of citizens of the world, and with the decisions of their elected institutions in the most diverse regions, among them the European Parliament, which in October 2004 called on the United States Government to allow an impartial and independent investigation into allegations of torture and mistreatment of all persons deprived of their liberty in United States custody.

We repeatedly ask each and every one of the 25 members of the European Union and others who are always willing to submit and join actions against countries of the South to co-sponsor this draft. We are still waiting for their responses. Not even one of them dared to challenge the threat of the hegemonic superpower.

The European Union and those who add their fraudulent complicity to the aggressions which are wielded by the neo-fascist hawks of the Bush administration against Cuba and other peoples of the South, are now spreading the shameful and criminal mantle of impunity over the Washington regime, which seeks to institutionalize and promotes aberrant forms of torture; which keeps hundreds of people kidnapped to whom it denies even their identity and access to justice; which violates the most elemental norms of international law and international humanitarian law; which launches wars claiming to be combating terrorism while harbouring in its territory hundreds of anti-Cuban terrorists among them Luis Posada Carriles, the most dangerous terrorist of the Western Hemisphere.

The European Union’s position on this resolution is the expression of its subordination to the United States policy and of its incapacity to adopt an independent position when it comes to addressing any issue concerning the Empire.

The countries of the North will not support this draft resolution today—we know they have already yielded to them. They will leave their names registered in the pantheon of ignominy and will definitively push the Commission towards the abysm of discredit. The world demands justice and also demands that this Commission stop being an instrument of the interests of the powerful.

I am not going to call upon the European Union and other allies of the United States, yet again, to take off their masks because there is no way to hide their hypocrisy and cowardice. They have been left completely exposed.

Thank you very much.

 

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