Gisela García Rivera

I am obliged to respond to a statement appearing in the Observer of April 13, in the Opinion section, written by the chargé d'affaires of the US Embassy in Kingston. The Cuban Embassy does not wish to use a Jamaican newspaper as a battleground, but because the offensive has already been launched by the United States Embassy, it is my duty to tell the truth to the Jamaican public. We have over the years become accustomed to the US government's behaviour. The Bush Administration is not the first one, and probably will not be the last one, to threaten, insult and slander us.

I will address some of the issues arising from the article:

With regard to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, I must agree that "human rights are not the patrimony of selected nations". But I must say how amazed I was to find that the United States agreed with that! Are we talking about the same commission that has failed to even raise a discussion on human rights violations in developed countries? Ask the African Americans in the prisons of the United States!

Is it the same commission that has not been able to review or even to discuss serious human rights violations by US authorities both in Guantanamo Bay and in the Abu Ghraib prison and others in occupied Iraq? The impunity of the powerful! Shame!

Is it the same commission that did not pass a Cuban amendment condemning the US blockade, even though it is well known that every year the whole world, except the United States and two or three "friends", condemn the blockade in the UN General Assembly?

The Commission on Human Rights is a result of political manipulation and double standards. It is also a reflection of the inequities in the world in which we live. It is a kind of court of the inquisition trying countries of the South and all who oppose the Empire.

If the way the United States behaved in Geneva was really motivated by a desire to protect human rights, it would not force the vote for an anti-Cuban resolution with promises of financial aid, direct or veiled threats to block loans and grants from international financial institutions, pressure to withdraw bilateral trade and immigration concessions or simply intimidating the countries on political matters of vital importance to them.

We cannot accept that countries who do support us do so because they are "uncomfortable" or because of "neighbourhood considerations". The truth is that because of the pressures of the US, and their own vulnerability, some
Latin-American governments had agreed to co-sponsor and support the anti-Cuban resolution in Geneva, against the will of their own people. We contend that the governments which have voted in favour of the anti-Cuban resolution are US accomplices in this confrontation aimed to maintain the blockade and the pressure over Cuba for a "change of regime".

It is true that the Commission on Human Rights should belong to all peoples and not just to some!

Regarding the "commitment" of the Bush Administration to human rights, I am even more amused, because this government has been responsible for some of the most serious, wide-ranging human rights violations in the whole history of humanity. This administration has taken issue with every country's so-called violations of human rights, except their own.

In our case, I can proudly say that the US government has been unable to fabricate or show a single case of torture, assassination or disappearance in Cuba. Not even among the "dissidents" who are on the payroll of the government of the United States.

Cuba has been a victim of terrorist actions for more than 40 years by groups that act with impunity from US soil.
Everybody remembers the bombing of the Cuban flight in Barbados in 1976 that killed Cubans (the whole youth fencing team), Koreans and Guyanese. Where is Posada Carriles? The one who proudly said, "We put the bomb, so what!". Now in Miami. We demand that the US Embassy refute that the US government is not giving, right now, protection to Posada Carriles, one of the most recognised terrorists! A person that put in danger not only the life of the president of Cuba but the lives of hundreds of Panamanian students who were to be gathered in an auditorium during the Ibero-American Summit in 2000. Are we to conclude that for the Bush Administration there are "good" terrorists and "bad" terrorists?

Why is there is no Human Rights Commission intervention in the case of the five young Cubans condemned in United States prisons, some of them for more than one life sentence? Is it for trying to prevent more terrorist acts from the Cuban-American mafia in the US against our land that they are been punished so harshly? Their rights to a fair trial out of Miami, as well as the rights of their mothers, wives and children to visit them, have been shamelessly denied.
Information about this covert human rights violation can be found in www.freethefive.org

With regard to the "most blatant act of repression against peaceful democracy and human rights activists", the Cuban government and courts were obliged to act and apply the law, our indigenous and constitutional law, to neutralise the criminal act of mercenaries paid and controlled by the US Interests Section in Havana.

The international community knows well the importance that Cuba places on basic human rights, the right to education, health, the right to vote and select their representatives.

Recently, a statement "Let us stop a new manoeuvre against Cuba" was signed by more than 4000 well-known and highly recognised intellectuals and artistes worldwide, including famous personalities from the United States, requesting the countries represented in the commission not to allow themselves to be used to legitimise the Bush Administration's anti-Cuban aggressiveness.

We think that the international community has a responsibility to express its solidarity with the Cuban people, those same people who despite the criminal blockade of the US government of the last 46 years have resisted and continue to develop while supporting other brotherly third-world countries. Governments and people around the world will always have the opportunity to reaffirm their solidarity and stand firm with Cuba in spite of the pressures of the empire.

Gisela García Rivera is the Cuban ambassador
to Jamaica.

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