Cuba denounces US 'human rights' hypocrisy
At the session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva on March 24, Cuba's vice-president, Dr Carlos Lage Davila, replied to charges by the US government that in Cuba there has been a "crackdown on dissidents". Reprinted here are major excerpts from his speech.
For 40 years, we Cubans have been under a blockade, we have been attacked and consistently slandered, and more than once, we have been criticised and condemned for the laws and measures we have been forced to adopt in our defence.
A lot has been said about the amendments to our Criminal Code and our Law on the Protection of the National Independence and the Economy of Cuba, both passed by our parliament on February 16, and about a trial whereby, in full compliance with the law, four unpatriotic individuals were sentenced.
The changes introduced in our Criminal Code are consistent with the characteristics and circumstances of the crime situation in the world today, and include three new crimes: money laundering, trafficking with persons and the sale of minors. In addition, increased sentences have been established for crimes and other conduct with a most deleterious effect on the citizens' peace, societal morale and ethical values, and people's health.
We do administer the death penalty in extremely serious cases to the perpetrators of particularly obnoxious crimes — such as the use of our country for international drug trafficking — and serious acts of rape and corruption of minors, since under the prevailing global circumstances we deem it indispensable to discourage such repulsive behaviour.
We respect those who are opposed to capital punishment and share the hope that the day will come when such sanction will not be required in any society. However, as a country where contempt of court is encouraged from abroad through thousands of illegal broadcasting hours each week, Cuba cannot, for the time being, give up capital punishment, a sanction currently applied in other countries that have not been under similar hostility and siege.
No-one is penalised in Cuba for thinking or speaking up. The Law on the Protection of the National Independence and the Economy is designed to penalise any citizen whose actions supplement the goal of the aggressive power in its economic warfare. This law defines crimes of collaboration with the enemy, rather than crimes of opinion, as some have deliberately misrepresented it.
The United States' intense and unscrupulous war has prompted not only Cuba, but also the European Union and countries like Canada, Mexico and Argentina, to pass legislation designed to protect their individual sovereignty and independence in the face of extraterritorial decisions adopted by the US Congress.
Orchestrated from the United States and for more than a year, a media campaign of malicious stories has been launched over the arrest of four citizens who were recently prosecuted for incitement to sedition and sentenced to from three and a half to five years' imprisonment.
Their fate would have been different had any US court prosecuted them. There, for just some of the crimes they committed in Cuba, they would have been considered transgressors of the Cuban Assets Control Regulations of the Treasury Department and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison and forced to pay a $250,000 fine. In fact, any attempt to contact a foreign government or agent, let alone try to subvert or plot against the [US] government, is punished with a fine of up to $5000 and three years in prison under the Logan Act.
Their trial produced abundant evidence of their consistent collaboration with the enemy through the US Interests Section in Havana, from which they received instructions, funds and means, aimed at obstructing foreign investments, internationalising the criminal blockade suffered by our country and upsetting domestic order. As any other nation would do, we claim our right to penalise those who act at the service of a power that besets their own homeland.
No-one has the right to attack a country for 40 years, nor try to criminally blockade it into submission, nor finance the annexationist dreams and counter-revolutionary activities of isolated groups who are selling out their homeland, and accuse it later for having acted in its own defence.
If the Helms-Burton Act, the blockade and the economic warfare against Cuba were not a fact, then the Law on the Protection of the National Independence and the Economy of Cuba would not have been required.
One may wonder, in this Human Rights Commission, who has authorised the United States to seize the right to act, apparently for life, as a prosecutor against Cuba? Who gave the US the right of self- appointment as "chief justice" for human rights worldwide?
Why should we accept that year after year, the US State Department drafts thick reports describing the human rights performance of every nation, except, of course, the United States itself?
Why can the United States ignore the fact that the [UN] General Assembly has voted time and again opposing the blockade against Cuba?
Why is the United States allowed to pass 61 unilateral sanctions against countries that account for 42% of the world's population, without even being admonished for it?
The United States sets itself above everything and everyone to require accountability for human rights violations, while its records in that area leave much to be desired. In the US, the wealthiest and most powerful nation ever: a) nearly 1 million people live on the streets, under bridges or in emergency shelters, while just one of its nationals amasses $80 billions; b) 43 million people, including 11 million children, have no health insurance; c) millions of low-income people, ill persons, elderly and single mothers have been excluded from welfare coverage.
In the wealthiest and most powerful nation ever: a) 20% of the total population are functional illiterates; b) 17 million women have been raped or sexually abused, and over half the female population have been victims of violence; c) the 45 million poor people are mostly Hispanic, blacks and children: black children have twice as many chances to die in their first year as their white counterparts; d) the black population has been used for government-sanctioned experiments that have caused premeditated health damage.
The nation that attacks Cuba: a) is the leading drug consumer on Earth; b) is characterised by police brutality against blacks, Hispanics and immigrants; c) has the largest penal population in the world; d) enforces the death penalty quite easily, albeit hardly ever against a white national.
The wealthiest and most powerful nation: a) keeps in maximum-security institutions more than 100 political prisoners, including 15 Puerto Rican men and women who fought for the independence of their country; b) allows the spread of neo-fascist and xenophobic groups that advocate discrimination and increase their violent actions; c) has created the deadliest weapons of extermination; d) among the industrialised countries, is the lowest contributor to development aid, and among the UN members, the biggest debtor to this organisation.
The nation that intends to judge the world dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, invaded Cuba and waged a war in Vietnam that killed almost 4 million sons and daughters of that courageous people. It is the country that invaded the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama and Somalia; it is the country that waged a dirty war in Central America, supported the most genocidal dictatorships in our region and trained their most bloodthirsty leaders in methods of torture.
Universal consciousness cannot tolerate the attempt to annihilate a people from hunger and disease. Our homeland has endured it for 40 years. Has such a monstrous crime ever been subjected to analysis in this commission?
The US government is aware of the existence of terrorist organisations based in its territory acting against Cuba; it keeps ties with them.
Recently, two court cases in Havana heard irrefutable evidence that executives of the well-known Cuban American National Foundation and its paid assassin Luis Posada Carriles have been involved in terrorist activities against Cuba, and are connected with US institutions and authorities. It must be recalled that Luis Posada Carriles, currently based in El Salvador, and Orlando Bosch, based in Florida, neither of whom have served their sentence, masterminded sabotage against a Cubana airliner in midair that killed 73 people in October 1976.
Two Salvadoran nationals hired by notorious counter-revolutionaries of Cuban origin, with proven ties with both the CIA and the Cuban American National Foundation, were indicted for planting explosive devices in hotels in Havana, one of which killed a young Italian tourist and injured other Cubans and foreigners. The purpose was to damage Cuba's growing tourist development.
From 1992 to date, the US has passed 21 statutory provisions, including the Helms-Burton and Torricelli Acts. Warning letters have been sent and US entry visas have been denied to scare off foreign business people with investments in Cuba. Those trading with Cuba have been black-listed, and licences for flight connections with Cuba and exhibitions of medical equipment and medicine in Cuba have been withheld. Criminal lawsuits have been filed, threats have been made, and fines have been enforced against US firms and individuals for their relations with Cuba, and even medical donations have been turned down.
Can a country sit idly by while its neighbour passes legislation and enforces measures time and again to colonise it anew?