Cuba Has Never and Never Will Give in Under Pressure

In the first trimester of 2008, Cuba will sign the Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Pact of Civil and Political Rights. That political decision was announced yesterday on World Human Rights Day, marking the 59th anniversary of when the UN General Assembly proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  

The information was offered to the national and foreign press by the Cuban Minister of Foreign Relations, Felipe Pérez Roque, who pointed out that the rights reflected in both documents are already broadly protected by national law and by the leadership of the revolution. 
 
In the conference, held at the office of the Foreign Ministry (MINREX), the chancellor noted that manipulation persists around the issue of human rights. He highlighted that while the US had transformed the former UN Commission on Human Rights into an inquisitorial tribunal to impose resolutions that justified the blockade (the so-called “embargo”) against Cuba, conditions did not exist to evaluate new commitments on the part of Cuba with the mechanisms of the UN in those matters. 
 
That has changed, he specified, with the new Council on Human Rights (CDH), to which Cuba was elected a member with more than two thirds of the votes of the member countries of the UN General Assembly. 
 
Cuba has never given in, nor will it ever give in, under pressure, Pérez Roque emphasized. He added that once the CDH confirmed the discontinuation of the anti-Cuban structure, the island has advanced several initiatives on the issue of the human rights, among these being the recent visit of a leading UN authority on food, with other invitations being considered. 

According to the head of Cuban diplomacy, when the nation soon signs the two mentioned pacts —what he called “formal commitments,” since real commitment to those rights that these protect has always existed— this will be an example of what can be achieved without political conditions or unjust singling out. “It will be a decision that is made freely, with sovereignty, in agreement with the will of our country,” he added. 
 
In a same way, Pérez Roque pointed out that Cuba is preparing to undergo the a universal periodic review by the CDH in the first trimester of 2009. This is occurring by virtue of random drawing carried out in a spirit of cooperation and with the openness to express the island’s achievements and shortcomings, and to listen other opinions. 
 
This position, he said, shall not change if the CDH system does not change. “If it returns to impositions, to politicizing the issue, to making the atmosphere of cooperation thin, our country will be forced to fight to defeat any effort at manipulation. 
 
Pérez Roque took advantage of the occasion to spotlight the concrete human rights work of Cuba around the planet. He expressed his satisfaction that a Cuban medical brigade has served in Guatemala since 1998, after the lash of Hurricane Mitch hit that country. The island has become worthy of the National Prize on Human rights in that nation in which our doctors have carried out more than 22 million consultations and assisted in 55,000 childbirths. 
 
During the meeting with the press, the Secretary of Foreign Relations made several appeals to the government of the country that proclaims itself the champion of human rights. He called on the US to cease the economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba; to free the five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters; to prosecute terrorists such as the criminal Luis Posada Carriles, or to deport him to Venezuela; and to permanently close the shameful torture center located in Guantánamo naval base, in addition to returning that illegally occupied territory to Cuba.