Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque announced at a Feb. 28 press conference at UN headquarters in New York that he had just signed two human rights accords originally introduced in the world body in 1976. Opponents of Cuba’s revolutionary government have long criticized Cuba’s reluctance to sign the treaties until now.
James McKinley, writing in The New York Times, raised the possibility that Cuba’s action signified a loosening of restraints under the presidency of Raul Castro. Yet the government’s intention to sign the agreements had been announced on Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, 2007.
Perez Roque said the change of course was inspired by the United Nations’ decision in 2006 to replace its widely criticized Commission on Human Rights with a refurbished Human Rights Council. He said the former agency had unfairly subjected Cuba to U.S. “pressure and blackmail.”
Under the new circumstances, Cuba has agreed to allow the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights to visit Cuba for monitoring purposes, with the first visit expected in 2009. Last June, the UN Human Rights Council dropped Cuba from a special list of countries subject to mandated inspections, which Cuba had refused.
Perez Roque assured reporters that Cuba signed both treaties — the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights — as a “sovereign decision.” He pointed out that “Cuba has never and will never act under any pressures.”
He added that “it was the Revolution that made it possible for the Cuban people to enjoy those rights included” under the pacts.
The New York Times recalled objections to the treaties expressed by President Fidel Castro in 2001 that mandates for independent labor unions invite manipulation by imperialists and that provisions on educational rights may open the door to privatization.
Perez Roque pointed out that in Cuba “the most serious obstacle to the enjoyment of rights enunciated in those agreements” stems from “the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States and its policy of hostility and aggression against Cuba.”
In New York the Cuban foreign minister met with UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, General Assembly president Srgjan Kerim, and the Coordination Bureau of the Movement of Non-Aligned Nations. Cuba currently serves as president of that organization.
The next day in Geneva, Perez Roque met with Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, other UN officials, and representatives of the Movement of Non-Allied Nations to plan the group’s next gathering in Iran. He addressed the UN Human Rights Council on March 3.
atwhit @roadrunner.com
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Cuba signs UN human rights pact
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Venezuela, Cuba deepen their many-sided ties
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s visit to Cuba Oct. 13-15 was distinguished by poetic homage to revolutionary Latin American heroes and by practical agreements aimed at strengthening both the Venezuelan-Cuban alliance and regional economic independence.
The visit roughly coincided with worldwide observances of the 40th anniversary of Che Guevara’s capture and murder by CIA-assisted Bolivian soldiers in October 1967. Chavez broadcast his weekly television program from the memorial and museum complex in Santa Clara dedicated to Cuba’s internationalist hero. The day before he talked for four hours with Cuban President Fidel Castro.
The program included another long conversation with Castro and lengthy exchanges with Che’s surviving family members and comrades.
In his conversation with Castro, Chavez noted that Che had thought about joining guerrilla struggles in Venezuela against the U.S.-backed regime during that period. He also recalled Castro’s 1991 prediction that “In just a few years the revolutionary forces will arise in Latin America again [and that] Bolívar’s great homeland will play a decisive role.”
Castro replied: “We are seeing Che’s prophecy come true in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. There is an ever-increasing awakening of peoples’ consciousness in Latin America. This is part of the Bolivarian idea of regional brotherhood.”
Affirming Cuba’s commitment to the Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, Castro quoted Jose Marti, the Cuban national hero: “Should Venezuela command me to do anything, she will find a son in me.”
Chavez extolled Castro as a “sower of awareness [and] the father of all revolutionaries in this continent.” He emphasized, “We have a commitment to sow again and to harvest in order to save humanity. Only socialism can save humanity.”
In Havana, on Oct. 15, Chavez and acting Cuban President Raul Castro signed 21 economic agreements, including the creation of joint ventures to build cement factories, develop commercial fishing, conduct petrochemical research, and exploit nickel and oil deposits. They also signed agreements to expand telecommunication capabilities, including Cuba’s Internet service, and to build a tourist hotel.
At the signing ceremony, Raul Castro said ties between Cuba and Venezuela have grown within the context of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), initiated by Cuba and Venezuela in 2001 and since joined by Nicaragua and Bolivia.
Raul Castro noted that the founding document declared, “Commerce and investment must not be ends in themselves, but instruments for achieving a just and sustainable development, since true Latin American integration can not be the blind creature of the market.”
The day before, Chavez had journeyed to Cienfuegos, on Cuba’s southern shore, to inaugurate a refinery and industrial complex being built by a Venezuelan-Cuban joint venture. He congratulated workers for nearly completing the Camilo Cienfuegos Refinery with its anticipated daily capacity of 65,000 barrels of crude oil.
Chavez pointed to the area’s refinery, petrochemical complex, and re-gasification plant (with Venezuela supplying the liquid natural gas) as examples of ALBA in action, adding, “The union of Cuba and Venezuela is demonstrating how to make a regional power.”
Manufacturing plans at the complex include the production of oil by-products, plastic goods, fertilizer, cosmetics and cleaning materials.
atwhit @megalink.net
A Message from Fidel to Bush
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click here for related stories: Cuba solidarity
 | 10-23-07, 12:40 pm |
Bush is obsessed with Cuba. Yesterday [October 20], the news was received that a White House spokesman announced the president would present new initiatives for the transition period now begun. Another spokesman from the State Department later confirmed the statement, reiterating Bush’s demanding and threatening tone.
As affirmed by Ricardo Alarcón, the president of our National Assembly, a comrade who is well-informed about Bush’s scheming and intentions, after that would come the firing squads of the Cuban-American mafia, with permission to kill everyone suspected of being a faithful member of the Party, the Youth or the mass organizations.
Mr. Bush: Your genocidal blockade, your support for terrorism, your murderous Cuban Adjustment Act, your wet-foot/dry-foot policy, your protection of the worst terrorists in this hemisphere, your unjust punishment of the five Cuban heroes who exposed the danger posed to U.S. citizens and those of other countries of dying in mid-flight, must all end.
Sovereignty is non-negotiable.
Likewise, the shameful torture being carried out in the occupied territory of Guantánamo must also end.
We were never intimidated by your threats of preemptive and surprise attacks on the 60 or more dark corners of the Earth. The outcome of that has now been seen in a single country: Iraq.
Do not attack others; do not threaten humanity with a nuclear war. The peoples will defend themselves, and all would perish in that inferno.
Thank you for your attention.
Fidel Castro Ruz
