CUBA-CZECH REPUBLIC: Castro Considers Severing Ties

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Mar 27 2000 (IPS) - Cuban President Fidel Castro opened a third front in his “ideological war” against the enemies of the socialist regime in power here for four decades, with the announcement of a possible rupture of relations with the Czech Republic.

“If we’re going to maintain relations for things like this, it is preferable not to have any ties at all,” Castro said over the weekend, referring to a resolution condemning Cuba that was co- sponsored by the Czech Republic in the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

The 73-year-old president described the European nation as an ally of the United States, and maintained that more than half of the citizens of that country were nostalgic for socialism.

He called on the more than 1,000 youngsters gathered at a congress of the Federation of University Students (FEU) to hold a “march against lies” in front of the Czech Embassy in Havana.

FEU, the only union of university students in Cuba, is one of the main organisers of the marches, rallies and debates held here since early December, triggered by the case of six-year-old Elián González.

The almost daily demonstrations have targetted the hard-line sectors of the Cuban exile community in the state of Florida – dubbed the “Cuban mafia in Miami” – which the Castro administration accuses of “kidnapping” Elián when he was rescued at sea on Nov 25 after his mother drowned in her attempt to make it to the United States.

The demonstrations have been demanding that the boy be returned to his father, Juan Miguel González, in Cuba. And more recently, demonstrators began to protest the U.S. Cuban Adjustment Act, which automatically grants asylum to all Cubans who set foot on U.S. soil.

But the government’s ideological offensive could now be expanded to the dispute with the Czech Republic, which year after year has accompanied Washington, as co-sponsor of or by voting in favour of the resolution submitted by the United States in Geneva condemning Cuba’s human rights record.

Havana made it off the UN black list of human rights violators in 1998, which analysts attributed to the repercussions of Pope John Paul’s visit to the island in January that year, and his call for Cuba to open up to the world and for the world to open itself up to Cuba.

But last year the resolution condemning Cuba, co-sponsored by the Czech Republic and Poland, was approved 21 to 20, with 12 abstentions.

Castro challenged critics of his government to demonstrate the existence of a single death squad, political assassination, or victim of torture or forced disappearance in Cuba.

He stated that if anyone could prove “that any leader of the (Cuban) Communist Party knows about and has permitted this kind of human rights violation, we will do whatever is necessary…we will even hand over their head.”

The whole thing began when the then-Czechoslovakia and Poland, Cuba’s trading partners in the Council for Mutual Economic Aid, co- sponsored the resolution condemning Havana in Geneva in 1990.

In February of that year, the government of Castro deported a Czech reporter, and Czechoslovakia announced that it would no longer provide space in its offices in Washington for the Cuban Interests Section.

In 1991, relations between the two countries seemed to be simply awaiting a death blow, with Czechoslovakia’s open bashing of the Cuban regime and its demand that the Caribbean island nation pay a debt estimated at more than 300 million dollars.

But despite the tension, ties were maintained, and in December 1992, the Castro administration recognised the Czech Republic and Slovakia as independent, sovereign states.

Prague inherited the commitments assumed by the former unified nation, as well as its position on Cuba. Since then, diplomatic ties between Cuba and the Czech Republic have remained in place, but no ambassadors have been named.

Czech diplomats in Havana are known for their close ties to Cuba’s internal dissidents. Elizardo Sánchez, leader of the illegal Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, was received and decorated by Czech President Vaclav Havel.

“A new era demands a new diplomacy and exposing the truth,” Castro told the university students meeting in Havana Saturday.

The president described as “puppets” those who spoke in the name of the Czech Republic to accuse Cuba of human rights violations. Although Cuba is interested in “developing relations with the Czechs, if they don’t want to, they can be sure that we will not die of sadness,” he stressed.

Castro said that unlike in Cuba, “there are people sleeping in the streets and under bridges, with newspapers as blankets” in capitalist nations.

In Cuba, meanwhile, every citizen has the same right to public health services, education, safety, social assistance and state protection in case of need.

But the loudest criticism of the Castro administration focuses on restrictions of civil rights like freedom of expression and freedom of association.

The 1974 constitution, which was reformed in 1992, bans political opposition to the socialist regime.

Sources with the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation say more than 350 dissidents were arrested in Cuba from November to February, while 240 others saw their freedom of movement restricted.