RIGHTS-CUBA: Moderation Triumphed at UN Commission – Dissidents

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Apr 20 2002 (IPS) - Dissident groups in Cuba say the government should consider the resolution passed Friday by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights a step in the right direction, despite the document’s criticisms, because of its unprecedented moderate tone.

The Commission on Human Rights, meeting in Geneva, approved a resolution – presented by Uruguay and backed by Canada and several Latin American countries – that urges Cuba to recognise its citizens’ human, civil and political rights.

The result of the balloting by the 53-member commission was 23 votes in favour, 21 against, and nine abstentions.

In an official statement, the Fidel Castro government said the stance taken by several Latin American countries was “inconceivable” and that they had bowed to the interests of the United States by sponsoring and co-sponsoring the initiative.

Of the 11 Latin American nations represented on the commission, seven voted in favour of the motion (Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay), while Venezuela joined Cuba in voting against it, and Brazil and Ecuador opted to abstain.

In addition to urging the Cuban government to guarantee civil and political rights, the initiative calls for sending a special representative of the UN Commissioner on Human Rights to work with Havana in applying the approved measures.

“We should expect the government to respond positively to that claim,” said Elizardo Sánchez, president of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, an organisation that is illegal, though tolerated by the Castro government, and which conducts twice-yearly assessments of the island’s rights situation.

Sánchez told IPS that, in his opinion, the resolution “is characterised by its notable moderation,” largely because it does not entail an official condemnation of Cuba.

The text recognises Cuba’s achievements in upholding the social rights – such as guaranteed access to education and health care – of the country’s 11 million inhabitants, “despite an adverse international environment.”

The resolution urges the Castro government to seek similar advances in human, civil and political rights, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and compliance with the principles of the state of law.

In the opinion of Manuel Cuesta Morúa, secretary-general of the Cuban Democratic Socialist Current, a moderate opposition group, the motion before the UN Commission marks a clear shift in the international community’s approach to the Cuban human rights problem.

“The resolution reflects high-level political craftsmanship. It takes the international context into account and gives Cuba the opportunity to make an effort towards getting in step with the rest of the global community,” said Cuesta Morúa.

In separate conversations with IPS, Sánchez and Cuesta Morúa agreed that the situation of civil and political rights is unfavourable for “the vast majority of the Cuban population.”

“What is being requested is a willingness to improve, and the government has no reason to refuse. It should not let this opportunity pass,” stressed Cuesta Morúa, a leader of the moderate sectors of the illegal dissident movement on the island.

The Castro government emphasised that the resolution passed only by a very close margin and that it was preceded by “very intense pressure and blackmail” by Washington, which targeted the UN commission’s member countries, particularly those from Africa.

“In spite of its coercion and brutal pressure, the United States achieved only a ridiculously small margin of two votes, the most eloquent proof that there are still many countries in the world that firmly defend justice and truth,” said the government in a communiqué dispatched shortly after the results of the vote in Geneva were known.

The 30 countries that voted against the resolution or abstained “refused to second the designs of Washington and its attempts to justify its policy of embargo and aggression (against Cuba) that it has followed for more than 43 years.”

A motion of non-action presented by China, which would have forced a withdrawal of the proposal presented by Uruguay, was defeated by a one-vote difference (23 in favour, 24 against).

In defence of Cuba’s human rights record, foreign minister Felipe Pérez Roque pointed out that 11,000 young people from developing countries are studying in Cuba free of charge, while 2,500 Cuban medical experts are providing health services, also free, in 20 countries of Latin America and Africa.

“Washington has to engage in this clumsy political manoeuvre to justify the political genocide caused by its embargo against Cuba,” Pérez Roque said in a national television broadcast.

The foreign minister has said repeatedly in recent weeks that Cuba does not accept being singled out on the human rights question and rejects the “shameful exercise” in which several Latin American countries took part on the UN Commission on Human Rights.

In this year’s vote, the UN resolution on Cuba won the favourable vote of Mexico, which in recent years had voted twice against and once in favour, abstaining in the rest.

In explaining the change of position, Mexico’s President Vicente Fox said that in this case the resolution was not an explicit censure of Cuba, but rather “a positive proposal in favour of human rights” that included a reference to matters related to the U.S. embargo against the island.

Cuba had received outright condemnations from the commission every year since 1990, with the exception of 1998. In 2001, the motion to censure the island came from the Czech Republic and was approved with 22 votes in favour, 20 against, 10 abstentions and one absence.

The Castro government says that Cuba respects its citizens’ social rights like no other country in Latin America or the Caribbean, and claims that what is really coming into question in the Geneva human rights deliberations is the island’s right to have its own political system, one based on socialism.

RIGHTS-CUBA: Moderation Triumphed at UN Commission – Dissidents

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Apr 19 2002 (IPS) - Dissident groups in Cuba say the government should consider the resolution passed Friday by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights a step in the right direction, in spite of the document’s criticisms, because of its unprecedented moderate tone.
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