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Havana, Cuba. Year 14 - Friday, March 19, 2010
Worldwide condemnation of anti-Cuba media campaign
THE Mexican chapter of the Defense of Humanity Network of Networks is circulating a petition titled "In Defense of Cuba" condemning the European Parliament for its interference in the island’s internal affairs, for violating UN nonintervention principles, and for thus joining "the criminal blockade to which the Cuban people have been subjected for the simple fact of not accepting impositions and defending the right to decide their own destiny with dignity and independence."
Signed by Pablo González Casanova, Víctor Flores Olea and Ana Esther Ceceña, the petition is also supported by Danny Glover, Frei Betto, Alfonso Sastre, Thiago de Melo, Ignacio Ramonet, Jorge Sanjinés, León Rozitchner, Víctor Heredia, Danny Rivera, Gianni Miná, Atilio Borón, Stella Callón and Belén Gopegui, among many other intellectuals and artists. The text is open to signatories via the website www.porcuba.org
The initial adherents come from Argentina, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Holland, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, Sweden, United States, Ukraine, Uruguay and Venezuela.
On Thursday the 18th, deputies from the Brazil-Cuba Parliamentary Group and representatives of social, youth and popular organizations in that country rejected the latest anti-Cuba media campaign.
Participants in a solidarity demonstration outside the Cuban embassy in Brasilia carried Cuban flags and placards in support of the release of the five Cuban anti-terrorists unjustly incarcerated in the United States and for an end to that country’s economic blockade of Cuba.
Using loudspeakers, various individuals expressed their support for the Revolution and condemned the current media campaign against the island in the wake of the death on hunger strike by a man convicted of common crimes, an event that has been manipulated by Havana’s enemies.
Deputy Vanessa Grazziotin, president of the parliamentary group, and Depty Jó Moraes delivered to the Cuban embassy a motion of support and solidarity signed by a large number of Brazilian deputies.
The Association of Cubans Resident in Uruguay reacted angrily to the phony campaign launched by a spurious section of the corporate media and condemned in particular the offensive interference by the European Parliament in Cuba’s internal affairs. "We know the dirty lies put out every day about Cuba."
In Spain, the State Coordinating Committee of Solidarity with Cuba (CESC) condemned the EU’s complicity with the policy of aggression implemented against the island by successive U.S. administrations.
It a statement widely circulated in Madrid, the CESC attacked the recent resolution passed by the European Parliament in its attempt to put Cuba on trial for alleged human rights violations.
In Lisbon, the José Martí Portuguese Association confirmed its solidarity with Havana in the context of the media campaign.
In Germany, members of the Cuba solidarity movement mobilized against these actions.
"For us, it’s very important to demonstrate to those paid lackeys that, independently of European Parliament resolutions and media manipulation, Cuba is not alone," said Justo Cruz, from the Cuba Sí solidarity organization. (PL)
Translated by Granma International
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Families of Guantanamo detainees want the truth about "suicides"
WASHINGTON, March 18.— The families of men who died in 2006 in the prison located on the illegal Guantanamo Bay Naval Base – whose deaths the U.S. army presented as suicides – have petitioned the courts to reconsider their lawsuit, given new testimony by army officers who were on the base when those events occurred, the AFP reported on Thursday.
In an appeal presented to the federal court in Washington – acquired by the French news agency – the relatives of the deceased state that they have discovered "extraordinary and disturbing facts" in relation to the deaths of their sons Yasser al-Zahrani (Saudi Arabian, aged 22) and Salah al-Salami (Yemeni, aged 33).
Their appeal is based on the statements of four military officers. One, Joe Hickman, a high-ranking officer, was on duty at a watch tower with a view of the cells where the two men were held overnight from June 9-10, 2006.
Hickman said that he witnessed three men being transferred from their cells to another area of the camp and then, when the van transporting them returned, saw something being deposited at the infirmary.
Three minutes later, when the camp was in full turmoil, Joe Hickman asked one of the nurses for details of what was going on. According to Hickman, the nurse responded that three dead prisoners had been delivered to the clinic, that they had died of asphyxia because they had rags stuffed down their throats." One of the prisoners was also severely bruised.
Translated by Granma International
WHILE the European Parliament sets about issuing resolutions on human rights violations, it cannot or does not want to look within, where more than one of its nations is truly a true glass house in this context.
For example, European companies continue to market instruments of torture all over the world. Handcuffs that release electric shocks of up to 50,000 volts, thumb cuffs, and electroshock weapons are being utilized by police and security forces to torture people, even though Europe banned the international sale of these types of instruments in 2006.
However, several European countries are not complying with the regulation. The website Red Adital reveals that from 2006 to 2009, the Czech Republic issued export licenses for foot cuffs, electroshock weapons and chemical sprays, and Germany did so for foot currents and chemical sprays, and well as nine countries where the police and security forces had previously used these materials to inflict torture and abuse.
The website also reveals that Hungary, a member of the European Union, has stated that it intends to introduce instruments such as paralyzing electric belts into its jails and police stations. The problem is that this type of apparatus has been banned, because it is considered that its use inherently constitutes torture or abuse.
Translated by Granma International
HAVANA, March17.—In the face of another hostile media campaign directed by Washington, Cuba recalls today the 50th anniversary of former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower’s executive order approving covert and terrorist action against the island.
Called the Program of Covert Action against the Castro Regime, the document signed by Eisenhower gave the official green light to all kinds of illegal operations aimed at overthrowing the revolutionary government.
In violation of all international standards regulating relations between governments and peoples, instructions were given to create a CIA front organization made up of the remnants of the Batista dictatorship in exile in the United States.
In parallel, the entire U.S. military and espionage apparatus was put at the program’s disposition with the immediate objective of organizing a paramilitary force that would secretly enter Cuba to train and lead terrorist groups.
Declassified documents released by the U.S. National Security Archive reveal that the order included an international propaganda offensive and the creation on the island of a clandestine group to provide intelligence information.
Eisenhower issued instructions that the hand of the United States should not be seen in any of those actions and made those present at the signing of the order swear that they had heard nothing of what was said there.
Allen W. Dulles, then director of the CIA, subsequently received the president’s order that secret reports related to Cuba should not even be presented to the National Security Council.
A medium wave radio station was set up to broadcast to Cuba via Swan Island, located to the south of Cuba, to support the propaganda aspect of the program.
The executive order was equivalent to a declaration of war on a little country that had not attacked the United States, and Eisenhower himself acknowledged in his memoirs what happened next.
"On March 17, 1960 I ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to begin organizing the training of Cuban exiles in Guatemala… Another idea was to set up an anti-Castro force inside Cuba. Some thought the United States should quarantine [i.e., blockade] the island, arguing that if the economy suddenly collapsed, the Cuban people themselves would overthrow Castro," he wrote.
The result of that direct aggression against Cuba was quickly felt with a huge increase in terrorist attacks, the killing of campesinos by armed bands in the island’s central mountains, and the defeated Bay of Pigs invasion.
War had been unilaterally declared. Decades later, that attempt to destroy the Cuban Revolution is still latent within the government of the United States. (PL)
Translated by Granma International
WHILE the Book Fair was taking place from one end of our country to the other and hundreds of Cuban doctors were saving lives in Haiti, a new campaign against Cuba was being cooked up. A common criminal with a proven history of violence, who had become a “political prisoner,” announced that he was undertaking a hunger strike for the installation of a telephone, stove and television in his cell. Incited by unscrupulous individuals and despite everything that was done to prolong his life, Orlando Zapata Tamayo died and has now been converted into a regrettable symbol of the anti-Cuba machinery. On March 11, the European Parliament passed a resolution “energetically condemning the avoidable and cruel death of the dissident political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo,” and in an offensive act of intervention in our internal affairs, “urged European institutions to unconditionally support and unreservedly encourage the start of a peaceful process of political transition toward a multi-party democracy in Cuba.”
A petition titled “Orlando Zapata Tamayo: I accuse the Cuban government,” is currently circulating to collect signatures against Cuba. The petition claims that this inmate was “unjustly imprisoned and brutally tortured,” and that he died “denouncing these crimes and his country’s lack of rights and democracy.” At the same time, it shamelessly lies about our government’s alleged practice of “physically eliminating its critics and peaceful opponents.” On March 15, a Spanish newspaper displayed the face of Zapata Tamayo, when this man had died and was in his coffin, and announced that certain intellectuals had adhered to the petition, adding their signatures to those of old and new professionals in the internal and external counterrevolution.
We Cuban writers and artists are fully aware of how the corporate media and hegemonic interests link up with international reactionary forces on any pretext whatsoever to damage our image. We are aware of the merciless and ghoulish distortion of our realities and the daily fabrication of lies about Cuba. We also know the price that is paid by those people who have tried to express themselves within culture with their own nuances.
Never in the history of the Revolution has a prisoner been tortured. Not one single person has disappeared. There has not been one single extrajudicial execution. We have founded our own form of democracy, imperfect, yes, but far more participatory and legitimate than the one they want to impose on us. Those who have orchestrated this campaign do not have the moral authority to teach us lessons in human rights.
It is essential to halt this latest aggression against a blockaded and pitilessly harassed country. To that end, we appeal to the conscience of all intellectuals and artists who do not harbor spurious interests with respect to the future of a Revolution that has been, is, and will be a model of humanism and solidarity.
Secretariat
of UNEAC (Union of Cuban Writers and Artists)
National Leadership, Hermanos Saíz Association
16-03-2010
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Cuba criticizes the North’s hypocrisy on human rights
GENEVA, March 16.— In a speech at the UN Human Rights Council, Cuba today strongly attacked the hypocrisy and selective memory of the countries of the North, in the hope that their own atrocities will remain forgotten.
Exercising his right to speak in the debate on situation requiring the Council’s attention,” Resfel Pino, the Cuban delegate, emphasized that neither the United States nor the European Union (EU) have the moral authority to question other nations.
“Throughout this entire debate we have listened to other Western countries repeating their politicized and endless lists of countries in which human rights are allegedly violated,” Pino stated.
The diplomat questioned the United States, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and Spain, “countries which we reminded in yesterday’s session of some of their most horrendous pages in the context of human rights.” He also addressed other nations, such as Germany, “which has been publicly signaled as one of the countries complicit in the practice of secret detentions, and whose territory was frequently utilized in the case of the CIA’s secret flights.”
Translated by Granma International
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Latin American School of Medicine enrollment in Cuba reaches 10,000
THE Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in Cuba is now 10 years old, and has an enrollment of 10,000 students from dozens of countries, who are studying to be doctors without any cost for their families.
"Our current enrollment is close to 10,000 students. We have had five classes graduate so far (after completing the six-year program), for a total of 7,248 graduates from 28 countries," Midalys Castilla, academic vice rector, commented.
Currently, young people from 55 countries — including Africa and small Pacific islands — take classes at the ELAM, 75% of them from working-class and farming families, and there are students from 104 indigenous communities in Latin America.
The only thing required from the students (from 17 to 25 years old) is that once they earn their degrees, they will return to their hometowns to practice medicine, thus returning what they have received in knowledge.
That was the situation with the first 34 U.S. graduates — now there are 113 — from the United States, which obliged the institution to obtain accreditation from the California Medical Board.
In Cuba there are also 11,000 scholarship students as part of the ALBA project, the integration agreement of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America, formed by Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, among others.
Initially, "there was great resistance from medical associations in some countries," the vice rector commented during a tour of ELAM’s facilities, located outside the capital.
She noted that the medical associations’ concern diminished as they discovered that these colleagues were returning to their hometowns, to places generally neglected by doctors.
Even some governments in the region who were somewhat distrustful of the program – whether or not they expressed it – later changed their perceptions, Castilla said.
In places like Honduras, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, the youthful graduates have had to struggle for recognition of their degrees. Little by little, though, the universities, medical associations, and governments have begun to cede. In contrast, the diplomas are automatically recognized in Spain.
"We are at an important moment in terms of the program’s validation," Castilla said.
Classes began in February 1999 with about 1,900 young people, especially from Central America. At that time, two hurricanes had devastated poor communities in that region.
Then-president Fidel Castro said the time had come to train "humanistic" professionals who were committed to their communities, a veritable "army of white coats."
Currently, the students and alumni are working to form an international association. (With information from AP)
Translation by Granma International
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Editor-in-chief:
Lázaro Barredo Medina
General Editor: Oscar
Sánchez.
SPONSOR: Teledatos-Cubaweb.
La Habana
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