CUBA: 'Our weapons are morality, reason and ideas'

BY FIDEL CASTRO

The following is an abridged version of a statement issued on May
10 by Cuban President Fidel Castro in response to allegations by the US
government that Cuba is developing biological weapons (BW).

John Bolton, an undersecretary of state [told the right-wing Heritage
Foundation on May 6]: “We know that Cuba is collaborating with other state
sponsors of terror.

“Castro has repeatedly denounced the US war on terrorism. He continues
to view terror as a legitimate tactic to further revolutionary objectives.
Last year, Castro visited Iran, Syria and Libya — all on the [US] list
of terrorist-sponsoring states.”

Bolton made not the slightest mention of the fact that scarcely five
months and two weeks earlier, on November 19, 2001, he himself made absolutely
no mention of Cuba in a speech given to the conference of the parties to
the convention on biological weapons in Geneva when he cited many countries
that were a source of concern to him as potential biological weapons producers.
Why this sudden and unexpected change? 

Bolton's May 6 piece of tabloid journalism ends by saying: “For four
decades Cuba has maintained a well-developed and sophisticated biomedical
industry, supported until 1990 by the Soviet Union. This industry is one
of the most advanced in Latin America, and leads in the production of pharmaceuticals
and vaccines that are sold worldwide. Analysts and Cuban defectors have
long cast suspicion on the activities conducted in these biomedical facilities.

“Here is what we now know: The United States believes that Cuba has
at least a limited offensive biological warfare research-and-development
effort. Cuba has provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states.
We are concerned that such technology could support BW programs in those
states. We call on Cuba to cease all BW-applicable cooperation with rogue
states and to fully comply with all of its obligations under the biological
weapons convention.”

The international press immediately picked up Bolton's string of Olympic-size
lies, which is exactly what he wanted.

However, as the old saying goes, “lies have short legs”.

It is a false and manipulated assertion that our country has repeatedly
denounced the United States war against terrorism. I have said, and I stand
by it, that the solution to this scourge will not be reached through war,
which would only serve to breed hatred and fanaticism but rather through
a sincere and determined cooperation among all countries in the world and
by building a truly universal culture and conscience against terrorism.

We were the first to put forward this form of cooperation the very same
day of the tragedy in New York.

It is a slanderous invention, a fabricated lie, to say that Castro considers
terror as a legitimate tactic for furthering revolutionary objectives.
Actually, everybody knows that our revolutionary movement never used such
methods that do not fit in with our doctrine, our principles and our concept
of the armed struggle.

Mr Bolton, you'd better get your facts right. Never were the civilian
population and innocent people the victims of our actions. Our tactic always
was to fight against heavily equipped enemy units.

Presently, you want to call terrorism any armed resistance, regardless
of the legitimate causes that may justify it. Along that line you could
end up applying such definition to the struggle of the American colonists
who rebelled and fought against English domination. George Washington and
those who, after long years of war and enormous sacrifices, conquered the
independence of the United States of America were not terrorists.

I should thank Bolton for his praise of our pharmaceutical industry,
one of the most advanced in Latin America, which “leads in the production
of pharmaceuticals and vaccines that are sold worldwide”, according to
his own words. We only wish it was more advanced. Even his country could
benefit from some of its discoveries, but they would not allow it.

However, he lies shamelessly when he tells the American and world public
opinion that the United States believes that Cuba has at least a limited
offensive biological warfare research and development effort. This statement
is as false as it is grave.

Our researchers and doctors are educated with an elevated concept of
solidarity and ethics. Millions of people in the world can testify to that.
They work for the well-being and health of human beings. For 40 years,
34,307 Cuban medical doctors and health workers have worked free of charge
in a large number of poor countries saving the lives and safeguarding the
health of millions of people. Nobody in the world could beat them in their
dedication and their willingness to make sacrifices.

At this very moment, 2671 of them are working in isolated and inhospitable
places in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. It would be very difficult
to persuade these men and women to produce viruses and bacteria to kill
children, women, old people or the people of any country. The pride and
high moral standards of our people, which have led them to stand firm against
43 years of attacks and blockade, rests on the rationality of a policy
that does not contradict their ethics and principles.

Cuban children are vaccinated against 13 diseases and enjoy wonderful
health. The infant mortality rate for every thousand live births is lower
than that of the United States itself. Medical care is guaranteed to 100%
of the population absolutely free of charge.

Unfortunately in the United States, with a population of over 280 million,
16% of the people do not have medical insurance, and that includes more
than 10 million children. What gives them the moral right to claim from
over there, and who is going to believe their heinous slander, that we
Cubans are developing biological warfare programs?

On the other hand, never in the 43 years of the Cuban Revolution's history
has anyone in our country launched or taken part in a terrorist act against
the United States from our territory. Not one drop of US blood has been
shed nor has any US company lost a single screw due to terrorist acts originated
in Cuba.

Those who in the United States are accusing our country of terrorism,
or of supporting or sponsoring terrorism, cannot say that about Cuba. Thousands
of our compatriots have died and tens of thousands of acts of sabotage
have been recorded as part of terrorist actions and US aggression against
Cuba.

The overriding question of the powers given to US government officials
to effect extrajudicial executions and to kill people anywhere in the world
has not even been clarified. I have personally often been the target of
these sinister plans. That was how they operated in the past. Have they
or haven't they gone back to such disgusting methods? Why doesn't Mr Bolton
tell us a little bit about that subject?

As for weapons of mass destruction, Cuba's policy has been irreproachable.
No one has ever produced a single piece of evidence that any program for
developing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons has been set up in our
country.

Those who have no sense of ethics, or who fail to understand that the
government of Cuba abides by truth and transparency, might at least understand
that it would have been utterly stupid to behave in any other way. Any
such program would lead the economy of any small country to bankruptcy.
Cuba would never have been able to transport such weapons.

Moreover, it would be a mistake to use them in battle against an enemy
that has a thousand times more of those weapons and that would be only
to happy to find an excuse to use them.

From a political point of view, we are living in an era when there are
and there will be weapons much more powerful that any produced through
technology, namely: the weapons of morality, reason and ideas; with them
no country is weak, but without them no nation is powerful.

Adherence to such a maxim requires exceptionally strong convictions,
steel nerves and talent. They should know by now that, as far as the Cuban
people is concerned, the ideals that inspire freedom, dignity, love of
one's homeland, its identity, its culture and the strictest sense of justice
that human beings can conceive of are more valuable than anything on Earth.
These are not weapons of mass destruction, but rather weapons of mass moral
defence, and we are willing to fight and die for them.

I understand that for a man like Bolton, intoxicated with the military,
economic and technological might of the superpower on whose behalf he speaks,
it might not be easy to understand these things. However, it would be a
good idea if he tried.

Cuba has absolutely nothing to hide. On the contrary, it is proud of
its development in the biomedical research field.

Countless politicians, scientists and businesspeople have visited Cuban
biotechnology institutes. In the year 2000, 1520 people visited just one
of the most important centres; 484 of them came from the United States.

The doors of our research centres are opened to any international institution.

We are urged to stop any kind of cooperation applicable to biological
weapons with “rogue” states and to meet all our obligations under the convention
on biological and toxin weapons. What is the international organisation
that decides whether a country is or is not a “rogue” state? What is the
rule of the convention on biological weapons that Cuba has violated?

Is it perhaps that on top of the criminal blockade they are now trying
to prevent us from marketing our medicines and using our most wholesome
and noblest products, the fruit of the talent of our scientists, to place
them at the service of any person's health anywhere in the world?

Anyway [Mr Bolton], you and your government could draw inspiration from
Cuba's decent and honourable behaviour. I can assure you that we will charge
absolutely nothing for this technology transfer.

From Green Left Weekly, May 22, 2002.

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From GLW issue 493