Cuban diplomats seek to thwart censure by UN rights forum
by Carlos Diaz
Thursday, April 15, 2004
HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Cuban leaders launched a
final diplomatic offensive Wednesday in an attempt to prevent the UN's human
rights watchdog from censuring the island's government for its crackdown on
political dissidents. The Geneva-based United
Nations Commission on Human Rights is scheduled to vote on a measure Thursday
urging Cuba to cooperate with UN officials to improve rights on the island,
and to allow the entry of a UN independent monitor.
In April 2003 the Cuban government launched its toughest crackdown against
dissidents in years, netting 75 opponents who were given summary trials,
convicted and sentenced to lengthy jail terms. The move brought an outcry from
the United States and the European Union. For
the past two years Cuba has prevented Christine Chanet of France, the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights, from visiting.
President Fidel Castro's government, the only one-party communist system in
the Americas, argues that the United States wants to use a condemnation to
justify the economic and political sanctions it has had on Havana for 42
years. Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque
blasted the Honduran government of President Ricardo Maduro -- which will
present the measure for a vote in Geneva -- charging him with "surrendering to
US pressure" to present the motion, which he described as "a shameful decision
and an ignominious gesture." Perez Roque's
rhetoric has toned down: in 2001 he blasted Argentina as US "lackeys," and in
2002 ripped Uruguay for being "yankee boot lickers" for presenting a similar
resolutions. The Geneva body has 53 rotating
members elected for a three-year period, including 11 from Latin America,
including Cuba. Peru, Guatemala, Costa Rica
and Honduras said they will support the measure. Argentina and Brazil have
said they would abstain, while the positions of Paraguay, Mexico and the
Dominican Republic have not been announced.
Chilean Foreign Minister Soledad Alvear said her country's socialist
government would support the measure, but that Santiago would also express
"concern" over the detainees at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and
push for a measure condemning the 40-year-old US economic blockade on Cuba.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday that President George W.
Bush and Mexican counterpart Vicente Fox agreed in a brief telephone
conversation that the UN body should condemn Cuba.
But on Wednesday Fox's office said the two presidents had only "exchanged
points of view" on Cuba. A former top foreign ministry official described the
White House characterization of Mexico's position as "a mistake," and analysts
suggested that Mexico might abstain. In
Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said supporters of the
measure are "looking to pass a good resolution on Cuba that makes clear the
concerns many of us have about the deterioration in the human rights situation
and the Cuban government's abuses of human rights in the past year."
One prominent Cuban dissident, Oswaldo Paya, is urging the UN body to condemn
the Cuban government. Not doing so "would be condemning the Cuban people," he
said in an open letter to the commission. But
another dissident, Vladimiro Roca, said that even with a vote against Cuba "it
is difficult for that to contribute to the improvement of human rights here on
the island." Since 1990 the commission has
condemned Cuba 12 times.
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