Against terrorism, in defense of humanity: An appeal
Campaign News | Wednesday, 15 June 2005
New movement is launched
Havana June 10: In view of the recommendations made at the International “Against Terrorism, For Peace and Justice” Symposium, the undersigned, members of the “In Defense of Humanity” network of networks, have reviewed the denunciations, proposals and reports submitted by the 681 participants from 67 countries who met in Havana on 2, 3 and 4 June 2005, and make a call to create a movement against terrorism that will denounce and condemn the age of terror spawned by the United States in our hemisphere, affecting us since the second half of the 20th century.
The moving testimonies of victims and their relatives and the well-documented reports of respected jurists, statespeople, journalists, economists and other intellectuals committed to the defense of human rights, allowed us to reconstruct the history of terrorist actions, committed with impunity, which numerous US administrations perpetrated in Souther Cone countries, Central America and the Caribbean, in complicity with Latin American and Caribbean leaders, armies and police forces.
The people have a right to know the truth. Those who wage a genocidal war in the name of a war on terrorism must not be allowed to cover up their systematic use of the most perverse of terrorist methods against the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. There is an urgent need to break the silence which shrouds the past, present and forseeable future of this criminal policy.
It is impossible to suppress the intimate, proven and documented ties of international terrorsits to the US White House, State Department and intelligence services. One cannot forget the atrocious consequences of Operation Condor, that International of Terror, as Nobel Prize for Peace recipient Adolfo Pérez Esquivel would call it, nor those of the dirty war waged in Central America and the Caribbean. The crimes of those who have worked for the CIA and of the high officials of successive US administrations cannot go unpunished.
George H. W. Bush, father of the current US leader, must be held accountable, as ex CIA director, for the creation, with Cuban born terrorists, of CORU, an organization responsible for the assassination of ex Chilean Minister of Foreign Affairs Orlando Letelier and the murder of US citizen Ronnie Moffit, the midair bombing of a civilian plane with 73 people on board and other crimes against humanity. The same terrorists collaborated with Pinochet’s DINA, and other repressive bodies of South American military dictatorships, in the planning and execution of Operation Condor. Then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger must also be held accountable for these genocidal crimes.
The close ties of Florida’s current governor, Jeb Bush, to the Cuban American National Foundation and other terrorist groups based in Miami must be denounced. These organizations made a decisive contribution to the fraudulent electoral victory of his brother in the 2000 presidential elections; they financed terrorist actions against Cuban tourist facilities, actions Posada Carriles admitted to in an interview for the New York Times and American television, the latter’s “pardon” in Panama and his stay in the United States the past two months; they organized and financed his escape from a Venezuelan prison and coordinated his work with the White House in Iran-Contra and US-supported state-terrorist and dirty war strategies in Central America. Today more than ever, we must denounce this long-standing network of accomplices which sustains the impunity and the protection illegally granted by US authorities to Luis Posada Carriles, ignoring the well-founded extradition request submitted by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. It is the same protection they have offered an hope to maintain for Orlando Bosch, securing impunity for his crimes.
We must reveal the terrorist nature of the alliance that, against the interests of the American people, the Bush dynasty has established with the Miami mob and which dishonours the memory of those who perished on 11 September 2001 and in the name of a supposed war on terrorism. The US people, who mobilized against fascism in World War II and contributed to ending the Vietnam war, who supported the civil rights struggle and the return of Elián González to Cuba, must be informed, through all the mass media, about the criminal actions of its government.
The impunity of terrorists cannot continue. No crime can go unpunished.
BECAUSE OF ALL THIS, WE HAVE DECIDED TO INITIATE AN INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT AGAINST TERRORISM BASED ON THE “IN DEFENSE OF HUMANITY’ NETWORK OF NETWORKS, TO UNDERTAKE THE FOLLOWING ACTIONS:
1. Establish an Anti-Terrorist Observatory for the hemisphere.
2. Create a data base which gathers information on these genocidal policies.
3. Prepare and publish an Encyclopedia on Terrorism in the hemisphere, to include the essential concepts and categories, the background of the genocidal agents, repressive bodies and terrorists involved, a chronology of these criminal actions and a description of the national and supra-national components of the terror apparatus.
4. Create a collection of works on historical memory and terrorism.
5. Create the “Against Terrorism, in Defense of Humanity” Hemisphere Court, to be made up of prestigious jurists, intellectuals and human rights activists, to try Henry Kissenger, George Herbert Walker Bush, Jeb Bush, George Walker Bush and the following current or ex State Department or National Security Council officials Oliver North, John Dimitri Negroponte and Otto Reich, for setting in motion and encouraging state terrorism in Latin America, the Caribbean and even the United States, in flagrant violation of international and US law, putting the lives of their own citizens in danger; for recruiting, training and financing terrorist groups and for the protection they have offered and continue to offer Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles and other renowned perpetrators of criminal actions that have claimed the lives of ten of thousands of innocent people.
The work of this court will be handled by four commissions: a commission for the gathering of testimonies and documentary evidence; for research and analysis; for technical and juridical matters and for information and dissemination.
This is the commitment assumed in Havana: to defend ethical values and dignity, in defiance of brute force and terror, and to carry out law and justice. All voices must be raised against these crimes. We shall not rest until the murderers are tried and convicted. Silence only benefits terrorists and those who protect them. We shall not rest until the path is cleared for truth. As Fidel has said: “Humanity yearns for justice”.
Havana, 10 June 2005
Francois Houtart, Belgium; Isabel Parra, Chile; James Cockcroft, USA; Pablo González Casanova, Victor Flores Olea, Gilberto López y Rivas and Juan Bañuelo, Mexico; Thiago de Mello, Beto Almeida, Roberto Amaral, Beth Carvalho, María Ciavatta and Marilia Guimaraes, Brazil; Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Cuba; Marcos Roitman, Manuel Talens, Jaime Losada, Alicia Hermida and Carlos Tena, Spain; Miguel Bonasso, Stella Calloni, Ana de Skalon, Tristán Bauer, Atilio Borón, Néstor Kohan, Carlos Ruta, Luciano Alzaga and Marcelo Cafiso, Argentina; Hernando Calvo Ospina, Colombia; Jorge Sanjinés, Bolivia; Antonio Pecci, Paraguay; Raúl Pérez Torres, Ecuador; Gennaro Carotenuto, Italy; Tarik Souki, Venezuela; Samuel Blixen, Uruguay.
