Cuba favors genuine cooperation in human rights field
Campaign News | Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque today affirmed that his country favors authentic international cooperation in the field of human rights, under the principles of objectivity, impartiality and non-selectivity.
Addressing over one hundred foreign personalities and representatives of Cuban civil society, Perez Roque inaugurated the International Workshop titled “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 60 Years Later,” at Havana’s Convention Palace.
After stressing the significance of respecting diversity and understanding national and regional particularities, the Cuban Foreign Minister backed the right of every nation to choose its own economic, social and political system.
Perez Roque blasted the constant manipulation of the human right subject by several US administrations and their allies, who have used the issue as an instrument of blackmail and pressure against some countries which, like Cuba, defend their self-determination and independence.
He said that Cuba will again launch its struggle at the new UN Human Rights Council if once again the already discredited discriminatory and selective actions practiced by the former Human Rights Commission come back on the scene.
Felipe Perez Roque denounced torture at the detention center located on the US naval base in the illegally occupied Cuban territory of Guatanamo; he also demanded the immediate shutting down of the camp and he urged the Us government to extradite terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela, as well as the release of the five Cuban antiterrorist fighters held for over 10 years in US prisons.
The event is being sponsored by the Cuban National Commission with the UN Education, Science and Culture Organizatio(UNESCO) and it was called by the Cuban and the Venezuelan Chapters of the Network in Defense of Humanity.
Some participants at the Human Rights workshop include US activist Cindy Sheehan, former US presidential candidate for the Green Party Cynthia McKinney; Brazilian priest Frei Betto, Puerto Rican nationalist leader Rafael Cancel Miranda and Spanish Javier Couzo and Luis Eduardo Aute, among other personalities.
