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Louis Farrakhan: The United States
should lift the blockade
and provide justice for the Five
• The leader of the Nation of Islam,
an African-American religious/socio-political
organization, visits the island • In order for there
to be no repeat of New Orleans, delegation came to
learn from Cuba’s experience in natural disaster
prevention
BY NIDIA DIAZ—Granma
International staff writer—
THE
demand for the U.S. government to “lift the blockade
and provide justice for the Five” Cuban
anti-terrorist fighters held in U.S. prisons was
made public by African-American religious leader
Louis Farrakhan during a press conference in Havana,
right before ending his visit to Cuba.
The
top leader of the Nation of Islam, a
religious/socio-political organization, explained to
Cuban and foreign reporters at the International
Press Center on March 27 that after the devastating
Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma, they wanted to visit
the island due to its experiences accumulated over
the last 47 years in successfully confronting the
devastating consequences of those natural phenomena.
He
recalled the sadness that he felt in learning that
the Bush government had rejected the selfless aid
offered by the Cuban government at the time,
consisting of sending 1,100 doctors to New Orleans
to help the victims in situ.
“We
do not want bear witness again to what we saw in New
Orleans. People did not know what to do, where to
turn and the government failed them.” That is why
they were in Cuba, he said, to learn from the Cuban
experience and to return and meet with mayors and
the community and make an assessment, draw up a
prevention plan and prepare people so that the same
thing does not happen again when devastating
hurricanes strike.
According to Farrakhan and the delegation
accompanying him, it was an encouraging lesson to
see how in Cuba, the situation of each citizen is
known, house by house, block by block, and how
everybody knows where to go when the time comes. All
of that, he added, has enabled Cuba to prevent the
loss of human lives and decrease preventable
material losses.
He
added that he was impressed that the Cuban people,
who in spite of living with many deprivations
because of the policy of blockade imposed by the
U.S. government, have a “level of humanity that
makes it immensely rich.”
By
visiting Cuba, he said, he was able to learn about
the Revolution’s original ideas, which are much more
humanistic that those of all the religions he knows
about. “All religions can learn from the experience
of Cuba,” where the government guarantees health and
education free of charge to all of its citizens,
while in his country, any medical student finishes
his studies with a debt of no less than 100,000 or
$150,000.
In
that sense, he noted that the Cuban Revolution
offered 500 scholarships to young people from the
United States to study medicine free of charge, the
only requirement being that when they finish, they
go back to their communities to help their people.
Farrakhan said that in his country, with all of its
enormous power, there are 30 million functional
illiterates, 40 million people who do not have
medical insurance and millions who live below the
poverty line.
He
reaffirmed his commitment to telling the truth about
Cuba to the U.S. people, about how the Cuban people
prepare for natural contingencies; about the miracle
of Operation Miracle; about the training of young
people who were on the streets and are now social
workers. The U.S. people, he said, would be better
if they were more informed.
“If
we are not too proud and arrogant in the United
States,” there is a lot to be learned from Cuba.
In
response to a foreign reporter’s question, he noted
that the U.S. government loves to get involved in
the internal affairs of other countries. “We are
always concerned about creating problems for
governments who do not like our policies, who do not
like the interests of transnational corporations, of
the bankers.”
Thus, he said, “it is not hard for me to realize
that our government in very busy in the case of Cuba
to create problems for the Cuban Revolution,” by
paying its agents on the island.
Further on, he condemned Washington’s policy of
“sucking the blood of the peoples without sharing
its riches and its advances with the poor and weak
of the Earth.”
In
that sense, he noted that he who lives by the sword
will die by the sword, and thus the entire world is
rising up against the U.S. government.
The
Nation of Islam delegation, which visited Cuban at
the invitation of the National Assembly of People’s
Power, met with high-ranking government officials
and toured place of economic, social and cultural
interest.
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