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Bush’s policies shame Americans
Affirms pacifist Cindy Sheehan, who is in Cuba
BY ULISES CANALES—Granma daily
staff writer—
FERVENTLY embracing a cause that
she took up after her son’s death, pacifist Cindy
Sheehan affirmed in Cuba that the atrocities
committed by the government of George W. Bush in the
world is shameful for many Americans.
“The war against terrorism has
begun in my country and has spread to others,
condemning more than 600,000 Iraqis to death and
killing more than 3,000 U.S. soldiers (in Iraq) and
many Afghans,” she said, criticizing Washington’s
crusade.
In an interview with the Prensa
Latina news agency, Sheehan deplored the fact that
in the name of fighting terrorism, the Bush
administration is torturing prisoners held on the
Guantánamo naval base, on territory usurped by the
United States against the wishes of the Cuban
people.
“We are also fighting against my
country’s foreign policies on human rights, because
it is violating them all over the world,” emphasized
Sheehan, the mother of U.S. soldier Casey Sheehan.
“The death of my son (in Iraq)
changed my life,” she affirmed, with evident pain,
but with the strength of one who has three more
children, and is proud to say that “they know about
what I’m doing; they think it is necessary, and they
support me.”
Cindy Sheehan arrived in Cuba on
Saturday, together with four other women who are
also members of the non-governmental organization
CodePink: Women for Peace, which organizes against
the military aggression in that Arab nation, for the
prevention of future wars and for social justice.
The pacifist group, which will be
joined by other Americans, plans to go to the
surroundings of the Guantánamo base in eastern Cuba
to protest the continued presence of the prison
established there on January 11, 2002.
“We thought that our trip should
coincide with the fifth anniversary of the opening
of the prison, to protest against the inhuman
treatment of the prisoners, who are being held
without due process,” noted the so-called “Peace
Mom.”
Sheehan, who sees the pain and
struggle of the detainees as her own, attended a
prayer service on Sunday at Ebenezer Baptist Church
in the Havana neighborhood of Marianao, and toured
several social projects in the working-class
neighborhood of Pogoloti.
“We are here to represent the
American community of peace, which is fighting for
understanding and peace among all people,” she told
the congregation at the service.
“It may be true that our mouths
don’t speak the same language, but our hearts do,
the language of love, and in the name of that love,
we are going to Guantánamo,” to support the
prisoners, she said.
She emphasized to Prensa Latina
her shame regarding “our government and the
atrocities that are being committed in Guantánamo,”
and expressed satisfaction at the warmth, unity and
hospitality of the Cuban people, and because after
arriving in this Caribbean country, “I have been
able to dream better.”
“I wish everyone in my country
could come and see how beautiful you all are, and
see how much life there is here. I am going to fight
so that my government ends the embargo (the economic
blockade imposed by the White House almost 50 years
ago).”
The likewise cofounder of the
organization Gold Star Families for Peace, an
anti-war group created in January 2005 by parents of
soldiers killed in Iraq, said that before her trip
here, she knew about Cuba’s struggle to end the
blockade.
But until the death of her son,
she admitted, she, like many Americans, knew only
one side of the story: “the side of the Bush
administration.”
Through her humanitarian
activism, which led her to a long anti-war protest
outside Bush’s vacation ranch in Texas, she was able
to learn about the causes of Venezuela, Iran, North
Korea and other countries that Washington has
unilaterally placed on its list of the “axis of
evil.”
“Americans need to find out about
and learn the other side of the story, and we are
here now to learn about the Cuban side of the
story,” she concluded. (PL)
(Translated by
Granma International)
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