THE German DPA news agency announced yesterday that the IACHR [Inter-American Commission on Human Rights] of the OAS has approved a report which notes that Cuba "was still infringing on" fundamental rights by maintaining "restrictions" on its population’s political and civil rights, while continuing to be the "only" country in the region where there is no freedom of expression whatsoever.
Can it be that an IACHR actually exists in that rotten institution? Yes, it exists, I tell myself. And what is its mission? To assess the human rights situation in OAS member countries. Is the United States a member of that institution? Yes. One of its most honorable members. Has it condemned the United States on any occasion? No, never. Not even the crimes of genocide committed by Bush, which have cost the lives of millions of people? No, never! It would never commit such an injustice. Not even the torture at the Guantánamo Base? That we know, not a word.
Via Internet, we obtained a copy of the anti-Cuba agreement. Pure garbage. It is dedicated to counterrevolutionary gossip mongering. It is lengthy, in the style of those from the State Department, the political paradigm and head of the OAS. How right [Raúl] Roa was to call it the yanki Ministry of the Colonies!
It is worth asking that shameless institution, given that we were expelled from the OAS for proclaiming our convictions and we are not a member of that institution, what right it has to judge us? Would the OAS do the same with the People’s Republic of China, Vietnam and other countries that, like Cuba, have proclaimed their adherence to Marxist-Leninist principles?
The OAS must be aware that we have not been part of that church for a long time, nor do we share its catechism. We start out from different positions. If we are talking about freedom of expression, it should be recalled that private ownership of the means of communication is not recognized. It was always the proprietors of the media who decided what was written and who would write what was transmitted or not, what was exhibited or not. Illiterate and semi-illiterate people were unable to do so and, for hundreds of years after the printing press was invented, while colonialism reigned and the capitalist system was developed, four-fifths of the population were unable to read or write, nor did free and public education exist.
The modern media has transformed everything. Today the only access to the centers that circulate news all over the planet is via massive investments and only those who manage them decide what is divulged and how it is divulged, what is published and how it is published.
The efforts being made by the Pentagon to monopolize information and the Internet are evident. Our own country is blocked from access to those sources. It would be better if the IACHR were to account to the world for the resources its bureaucracy is spending on nonsense, instead of analyzing these realities and informing the Latin American countries of the extremely grave dangers threatening the freedom of expression of all the peoples of the planet.
In order to question Cuba’s role in that terrain, it would have to begin by acknowledging, without circumventions, that this has been the nation, of all the peoples of the planet, that has done the most for education, science and culture and that its example is currently being followed by other revolutionary and progressive governments. If they have any doubts about that, they could ask the United Nations.
In this hemisphere the poor never had freedom of expression, because they never received a quality education and knowledge was reserved solely for the privileged and bourgeois elites. Do not be blaming Venezuela, which has done so much for education since the Bolivarian Revolution, nor the Republic of Haiti, brought down by poverty, disease and natural disasters, as if these were the ideal conditions for the freedom of expression proclaimed by the OAS. Do what Cuba is doing: first help to train en masse quality health personnel, send revolutionary doctors to the most isolated areas of the country, to contribute in the first place to preserving life, pass on educational programs and experiences; demand that the financial institutions of the rich and developed world send resources to build schools, train teachers, produce medicines, develop its agriculture and industry, and then talk about the rights of humanity.