US is planning another attack on Cuba at the UN Human Rights Commission
Campaign News | Wednesday, 9 March 2005
Discreet and secret steps against Cuba, says Foreign Minister
Havana March 8: CUBAN Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque warned that the United States government is once again preparing to present a resolution against Cuba before the Human Rights Commission (HRC) in Geneva.
During a press conference at the offices of the Foreign Ministry (MINREX), also attended by Ricardo Alarcón, president of parliament, Pérez Roque affirmed that Washington is carrying out discreet and secret steps to find someone to present the document against Cuba.
He noted that to that end, it is seeking contacts in Eastern Europe, after difficulties in finding a sponsor in Latin America.
Cuba hopes that this year, no Latin American government will present, cosponsor or vote for any anti-Cuban resolution, which only serves Washington, he added, and later added that "we don’t rule out what the United States government itself may do."
The top Cuban diplomat said that Washington needs that anti-Cuban condemnation as a pretext to try to justify its criminal and unjust blockade against the country.
Later during the conference, he affirmed that even while Cuba understands that the HRC has lost legitimacy, the first would participate with a spirit of cooperation during the 61st Session meetings, which are set to begin on the 14th.
REJECTS US ACCUSATIONS
The foreign minister rejected accusations regarding supposed human rights violations contained in a report on that subject published by the US State Department.
Cuba believes that the US government’s unilateral practice of publishing a report judging the rest of the world’s situation without dedicating a single sentence to examining the situation of that issue in the United States is a practice that does not deserve our respect, he stated.
After affirming that the aforementioned document lacks credibility and shamelessly lies, he maintained that Cuba believes the US government does not have the moral authority to accuse any other country with respect to human rights.
It seems to us that the only violations of human rights, the only crimes, the only persecutions against prisoners committed on Cuban territory are those that take place at the illegal naval base of Guantánamo, he emphasized.
Pérez Roque declared that those are the violations that should be the object of condemnation and monitoring by the Human Rights Commission.
Previously, Juan Antonio Fernández, director of multilateral affairs for MINREX, had presented the second volume of the book Cuba y los derechos humanos (Cuba and Human Rights), which is divided into five parts.
In explaining the book’s content, Fernández noted that this volume includes the history of anti-Cuban maneuvers in the area of human rights, ever since the first failed attempts by the US government to impose a condemnation of Cuba in 1985 and 1986.
He recalled that after its 1988 failure to condemn Cuba, Washington modified the design of its maneuvering in the HRC, and to that end, using blackmail and pressure, began to recruit new presenters for an anti-Cuban resolution in the Commission.
He noted that in 2004, when the anti-Cuban resolution was adopted by a ridiculous margin of one vote, the disrepute and discredit of the Yankee maneuvering in Geneva was corroborated.
All of these details are included in the book’s 59 pages, which also include references to the current situation of the HRC, which - he said - remains shackled after losing its way and concerning itself less and less with human rights.
Another part of the book is dedicated to Cuba’s international cooperation in the area of human rights, in spite of the unjust, anti-Cuban maneuvering that the United States imposes at the HRC.
Fernández emphasized that Havana will continue to promote initiatives of interest to the majority of the Third World peoples, such as the right to food and to peace, and it will redouble its efforts to democratize and rescue the HRC, just as is proposed in this book.
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2005/marzo/mar8/11gesti.html
