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The absence of the United States on the Human Rights
Council is moral punishment for the arrogance
of an empire
SPEECH BY FELIPE PEREZ ROQUE, FOREIGN MINISTER OF
THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA, DURING THE HIGH-LEVEL SEGMENT
OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL
Excellencies:
Today is a particularly symbolic
day. Cuba is a founding member of the Human Rights
Council and the United States is not. Cuba was
elected with the overwhelming support of 135
countries, more than two-thirds of the United
Nations General Assembly, while the United States
did not even dare to run as a candidate. Cuba relied
on the secret vote for the same reasons that the
United States was afraid of it.
Cuba’s election epitomizes the
victory of principles and truth; it stands as
recognition of the value of our resilience. The
absence of the United States is the defeat of lies;
it is the moral punishment for the haughtiness of an
empire.
The election entailed a demanding
assessment. Each one got what they deserved. Cuba
was rewarded and the United States was punished.
Each one had its history and the voting countries
were well aware of it.
The African countries recalled
that over 2,000 Cuban fighters had shed their
generous blood in the struggle against the
outrageous Apartheid regime, which the United States
supported and furnished with weapons, even nuclear
ones.
The election for Cuba came at a
moment in which nearly 30,000 Cuban doctors were
saving lives and alleviating the pain in 70
countries, while the United States reached that
stage with 150,000 invading soldiers, sent to kill
and die in an unjust and illegal war.
The election for Cuba came with
more than 300,000 patients from 26 countries in
Latin America and the Caribbean who were recovering
their eyesight thanks to the cost-free surgeries
performed by Cuban eye specialists. It came for the
United States with over 100,000 civilians murdered
and 2,500 American youths dead in a war concocted to
steal a country’s oil and give away sumptuous
contracts to a group of cronies of the President of
the world’s sole superpower.
The election for Cuba came with
more than 25,000 youths from 120 Third World
countries studying in its universities and colleges
free of charge. It came for the United States with a
concentration camp in Guantánamo, where prisoners
are subjected to torture and where the official
statement of the prison wardens was that the suicide
of three human beings “is not an act of despair but
an act of war and propaganda.”
The election for Cuba came with
its airplanes carrying Cuban medical doctors and
field hospitals to places where there had been
natural disasters or epidemics. It came for the
United States with its aircraft secretly carrying
drugged and handcuffed prisoners from one jail to
another.
The election for Cuba came with
its proclamation of the prevalence of lawfulness
over force, defending the United Nations Charter,
demanding and fighting for a better world. It came
for the United States with its proclamation of “if
you are not on our side, you are against us.”
The election for Cuba came with
its proposal of setting aside the trillion US
dollars annually spent on weapons to fight off the
yearly death of preventable causes of 11 million
children under the age of five years and 600,000
poor women at childbirth. In the meantime, it came
for the United States with its proclamation of its
right to bomb and “preemptively” wipe out what it
scornfully called “any dark corners of the world” if
its designs were not obeyed. That included the city
of The Hague, if there were any attempts to
prosecute an American soldier at the International
Criminal Court.
While Cuba defended the rights of
the Palestinian people, the United States was the
main pillar behind Israel’s crimes and atrocities.
While under the striking force of
Hurricane Katrina the US Government abandoned
hundreds of thousands of people to their luck, most
of them black and poor, Cuba immediately offered to
send 1,100 doctors, who could have saved lives and
alleviated their suffering.
I could go on and on listing
reasons until tomorrow. I just want to add that it
is the Government of the United States, not its
people, which does not have a seat today as a member
of the Council. The American people will be
represented in the others, including Cuba’s seat.
Our delegation will also speak out for the rights of
the American people and, particularly, for the
rights of its most discriminated and excluded
sectors.
Now, the truth is that the United
States was not alone in its gross and desperate
schemes and pressures to prevent Cuba’s election. A
handful of its allies followed them to the very end.
The usual posse: beneficiaries of the unjust and
exclusion-oriented world order, most of them former
colonial metropolises, which have not yet paid off
their historical debt to their once-colonies.
Cuba is perfectly aware, even to
its barest details, of the secret agreement
negotiated in Brussels through which the European
Union undertook not to vote for Cuba and then work
closely with the United States against our
candidature. But they failed famously. It turned out
that Cuba was elected without its support and its
uncomfortable ally, which they need as a policeman
to guarantee its privileges and squandering
opulence, could not even run as a candidate.
The corridors and halls of this
building are now reverberating with repeated calls
for “a fresh start” and “breathing fresh air into
the new Council” – precisely by those who are
responsible for the manipulation, hypocrisy and
selectivity that caused the Commission on Human
Rights to run aground. It is fitting to point out
that a fresh start cannot be built on the oblivion
of what has been happening or the simulation that
some sugar-coated rhetoric is a problem-solver. What
we need are deeds and not words.
If there is any truth to the
statements by the spokespersons of the European
Union and we are actually faced with a mea culpa,
then we are still awaiting their rectification. Not
because of Cuba. Not because they colluded with the
United States to try to prevent our election. Not
because they have never been able to have an ethical
and independent policy towards Cuba.
We are awaiting a rectification
to the attitude of the European Union, which last
year prevented the Commission on Human Rights from
adopting an investigation into the massive, flagrant
and systematic human rights violations at Guantánamo
Naval Base.
A rectification to the silent
complicity with which they allowed hundreds of
secret CIA flights carrying kidnapped people and the
establishment of clandestine prisons right on
European soil, where prisoners are tortured and
harassed. So far, the European Union has
hypocritically hindered the investigation and the
clarification of these events.
The European Union has not
mustered the courage to serve exemplary sanctions on
the miserable manifestations of lack of respect for
other religions and customs.
The European Union was an
accomplice to the United States in turning the
former Commission into some sort of Inquisition
Tribunal against the countries of the South. We just
hope that it will not happen again now.
The European Union has not even
acknowledged its historical debt to the nearly 100
countries – currently independent nations after
years of struggle and sacrifice – which were its
pillaged colonies when, fifty-seven years ago, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted,
which paradoxically stated that: “All human beings
are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
Excellencies:
This session can usher in a new
stage in the struggle to create a real system for
the promotion and protection of all human rights for
all the inhabitants on the planet, and not just for
the rich and privileged. A radical change will be
required to that end; a real revolution in the
concepts and methods that weighed down the defunct
Commission.
Cuba does not indulge in wishful
thinking about the real willingness of the developed
countries – allies of the United States – to take
that significant and historical step. However, it
will give them the benefit of the doubt. It will
wait and watch them.
Cuba can be counted upon if we
work towards fulfilling the promises that have been
trumpeted. If the past repeats itself and the
Council becomes a battlefield again, from now on
Cuba can be counted upon to turn, one more time,
into a fighter in the trenches of ideas of the Third
World.
Cuba cannot be counted upon to
turn the Council into an exclusive tribunal against
the underdeveloped countries and ensure the impunity
of those in the North. Nor can it be relied upon to
use the Council’s suspension clause against
rebellious countries or to continue using, in a
politicized and selective fashion, the country
resolutions to punish those that do not bow their
head.
Cuba cannot be counted upon to
use the new universal periodical review mechanism as
an instrument of new pressures and media campaigns.
Nor can Cuba be counted upon to
defend lies and act hypocritically.
Cuba can be counted upon to fight
for truth and transparency, to defend the right to
independence, to self-determination, to social
justice, to equality. And also to defend the right
to food, to education, to health, to dignity, the
right to a dignified life.
Cuba can be counted upon to
defend real democracy, true participation and the
real enjoyment of all human rights.
Cuba’s cooperation cannot be
counted upon to assist the spurious mandate of any
envoy, representative or rapporteur imposed through
force and blackmail. Cuba can be counted upon to
cooperate, on an equal footing, with the Council and
its non-selective mechanisms.
Cuba’s cooperation cannot be
counted upon to make silence and fail to speak out
against the ruthless economic blockade that we have
endured for over four decades, nor can it be relied
upon not to demand the return to our Homeland of
five pure and courageous Cuban youths that were
fighting terrorism and are currently imprisoned in
US jails unjustly and illegally.
Cuba’s cooperation cannot be
counted upon to relinquish a single principle. Cuba
will always be counted upon to uphold the noble
ideal of building a better world for all.
Finally, on behalf of the Cuban
people, who dream, build and defend their Revolution
back in our Homeland, I would like to extend a
special gratitude to our Third World brothers and
sisters for their decisive support for Cuba’s
election as a member of the Human Rights Council –
and I hereby reiterate that the Cubans will never
betray the trust that you have placed in us.
For those who support Cuba’s
struggle for its rights, which is also the struggle
for the rights of all the nations in the Third World
and the progressive and democratic forces in the
First World, we have a message: Until victory
onwards!
For those who attack Cuba and for
their accomplices, we have another message: ¡Patria
o Muerte!
¡Venceremos!
(Translated by ESTI)
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