US Could Not Find Anyone
to Present Anti-Cuba Resolution

By Raisa Pages

Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque has announced that Cuba is to present nine resolutions during the current session of the Human Rights Commission (HRC) in Geneva, and he called on the U.S. administration to acknowledge that no reason can be found for presenting a document against Cuba.

Pérez Roque said that the first defeat of the U.S. delegation was its inability to find another country that would lend itself to the maneuvering of prior years, when the text was drafted by the U.S. but presented by one of the powerful empire’s mercenary or puppet governments.

Cuba has charged the U.S. with irrationally and rashly using the theme of human rights against the island by utilizing multilateral spaces as arenas for its aggression.

Its theory that the international community is concerned about the state of human rights in Cuba has been dramatically deflated, he noted. Likewise, its notion that a group of Latin American countries would sponsor the resolution has also fallen apart, given that it has been unable to find allies in the region, he said.

Instead of going to the Commission to set out the countless abuses being committed against people held in its jails or the Dantesque horror of its naval base in Guantánamo—visible to all the world—the Bush administration wants to appoint itself judge of everyone else, the Cuban foreign minister observed.

“We have numerous indications,” he emphasized, “that the United States is seriously worried that its text will not be approved due to growing resistance to its threats. In its desperation, the U.S. delegation is begging countries to abstain from voting, given that it cannot make them vote against Cuba.

Without peace, there is no protection for human rights

One of the resolutions that Cuba will present refers to the need for peace as a basic requirement for protecting those rights of humanity, Pérez Roque affirmed.

Under interventionist or “preventative” wars—of which the U.S. is the chief promoter—basic human rights cannot be enjoyed, he emphasized.

During a press conference at the Foreign Ministry, Pérez Roque noted that another resolution sponsored by Cuba refers to the guarantee of food as a universal right, a subject that has been presented on other occasions but has not been approved due to U.S. opposition.

Foreign debt and the structural adjustments imposed on Third World nations are the subject of another resolution that the Cuban delegation will put forward in Geneva. Another is the right of the peoples to a more just, democratic and equitable world order, the foreign minister said. Opposition to coercive, unilateral measures in violation of people’s collective or individual rights, such as the blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba, is the subject of another document drafted by the Cuban delegation in Geneva.

Respect for the cultural and intellectual rights of the peoples, without the powerful invasion of consumerist ideas that sweep away national distinctions, is at the core of another resolution to be put forward in the current HRC session. Grass roots participation as the exercise of true democracy for social justice among the nations is the thesis of the seventh resolution to be proposed by the Cuban delegates, Pérez Roque explained.

An analysis of the social, geographic and gender breakdown of personnel in the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is the subject of the eighth resolution that the Cuban government will present. Currently, staff in that office all come from rich and powerful countries, the foreign minister noted.

The use of mercenaries in order to violate the human rights of other peoples is the subject of the ninth Cuban resolution.

Rescuing the HRC from its current level of discredit, hypocrisy and double morality imposed by the United States is the central objective of these resolutions, Pérez Roque affirmed.

—Granma International, March 26, 2005