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Tue 29 Apr, 2003 02:07 pm
Reuters
U.S. Enraged as Cuba Returned to U.N. Rights Body
Updated 2:28 PM ET April 29, 2003
By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Cuba was reelected without opposition on Tuesday to the United Nations' top human rights body, prompting a fierce response by Washington that it was "like putting Al Capone in charge of bank security."
The voting took place in the 54-nation U.N. Economic and Social Council, which two years ago ousted the United States from the Human Rights Commission for the first time since Washington helped found it in 1947. The United States was returned to the body in a vote the following year.
In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters: "Cuba does not deserve a seat on the Human Rights Commission. Cuba deserves to be investigated by the Human Rights Commission."
In the last month, the Cuban authorities have rounded up 75 dissidents and imprisoned them for terms of up to 28 years. As part of the crackdown, Cuba also executed three men who hijacked a ferry in a failed bid to reach the United States.
"Having Cuba serve again on the Human Rights Commission is like putting Al Capone in charge of bank security," Fleischer said. "It is an inappropriate action that does not serve the cause of human rights in Cuba or at the United Nations."
Cuba's U.N. ambassador, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, accused the United States of executing minors and the mentally retarded people and abusing the rights of Afghan fighters long confined without charges in a U.S. base on Cuban territory.
Britain, whose soldiers last month invaded Iraq alongside U.S. forces, also won reelection to the Geneva-based 53-nation rights commission, easily fending off a challenge from states which opposed the war and defeating Portugal.
HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATORS
Human rights groups said this year's elections carried on a trend of increasing domination of the commission by noted human rights violators, many of whom, like Cuba, were proposed on a regional slate without opposition.
"You have a huge powerful and very well organized bloc that doesn't want any country criticized, opposes U.N. human rights monitoring and wants to weaken the office of the U.N. high commissioner for human rights," Joanna Weschler of Human Rights Watch told Reuters.
"It's almost a rule now. You get criticized by the commission or you might be, so you get a seat on the commission and you vote as a bloc against criticism," Weschler said.
Among other members with rights records that have come under fire are Democratic Republic of Congo, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
Countries are nominated for three-year seats on the commission through their U.N. regional groupings. most of this year's candidates were unopposed within their group.
Seats were contested only within the Asian group and the "Western Europe and Others" group, which includes the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Sichan Siv. U.S. ambassador to the Economic and Social Council, briefly walked out of the session following Cuba's uncontested reelection, because, he said, Havana was "the worst violator of human rights in this hemisphere."
Winning a three-year term on the commission were Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Mauritania, Bhutan, Indonesia, Nepal, Qatar, Hungary, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Italy and Netherlands.
Reelected to new three-year terms were Britain, Costa Rica, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, India, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.
Fleischer said. "It is an inappropriate action that does not serve the cause of human rights in Cuba or at the United Nations."
Well, that's perhaps the only thing in which I've agreed with Fleischer in this year,
More information about recent Castrist repression can be found in this A2K forum:
http://able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6238&highlight=
P.S. The 3 "terrorists" executed by the Cuban regime were all black. One of them was 21. Their families did not receive the bodies, but were told where the government buried the corpses. If they want to retrieve, there is a lot of expensive papaerwork to be done.
"Having Cuba serve again on the Human Rights Commission is like putting Al Capone in charge of bank security," Fleischer said. "It is an inappropriate action that does not serve the cause of human rights in Cuba or at the United Nations."
Cuba's U.N. ambassador, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, accused the United States of executing minors and the mentally retarded people...
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Ari-- 01
Parrilla-- 01
We do need to stop executions in this country. ESPECIALLY OF RETARDED CITIZENS!!! (Do we execute minors? I don't think so?)
Well, if syria can be a member of the Security Council, then there is no surprise that Cuba and Saudi Arabia, and not so long ago, Libya, can be members of the Human Rights commission. There is no country in the world where situation regarding human rights is absolutely flawless, but we cannot compare in this respect USA and Cuba.
Election of Cuba into this body was a dirty political trick aimed to promote status of the anti-American regimes (when I say American, I mean the USA; please, do not remind me that Cuba is also a North American country; such semantic sophisms are not new, linguistic games around the term "anti-Semitism" is a classic example, but this does not add anything to understanding of the problem); it has nothing to do with the human rights issues. Such things give grounds to refer to the UN as to an irrelevant organization.
"Let he who be without sin....."
Oooops!...
I'm to late with the criteria right?
Sofia, mental sickness is not an automatically exonerating circumstance. The person is not responsible for his/her actions when he does not understand what is he/she doing and what can be the immediate consequences, or is unable to distinguish between right and wrong. In case of mentally retarded people, only some of them do not realize that if you stab a man he may die. By the way, the latter people are not usually involved in crime, they are disabled and do not walk alone in the streets. The ones that understand that they want to take money by force from some person/business (hence, they understand the role of money; this proves that they are able to abstract thinking), are smart enough to realize that violence causes harm to their victim. They also can distinguish right and wrong in such simple and unambiguous cases. They are not intelligent enough for studying mathematics or philosophy, but they are not idiots; therefore, if they commit a dangerous crime, they should bear all the consequences.
Booman, no one is without sin; but there is a critical mass of sin that makes it impossible to make some person or regime an arbiter. Castro, IMO, possesses such a critical mass.
Yes, the US has a less than perfect human rights record.
Yes, the US prefers not to see human rights violations of friendly countries, and to stress those of unfriendly countries.
Yes, the US is lagging, instead of making progress.
But the US is not a dictatorship.
But there is freedom of speech in the US.
But there is freedom of association in the US.
But there is freedom to travel overseas in the US.
But there is freedom to do business in the US.
You draw a mean spirited, well deserved, cartoon of GWB and you get paid for it.
You touch Castro with more than a rose petal, you go to jail for decades.
You try to escape that island-prison, you're shot at ("illegal departure" is the crime).
Before I get read wrong; I have to admit, thanks to the constitution, This country, internally, is one of the lesser of the evils. I'm just disenchanted that we are worse than others. ( that's american right? I want us to be the best in everything)
...BTW, I firmly believe that a young idealistic, Castro, with the checks, and balances of our constitution, would have been, Kennedyesque. I also believe the mean-spirited GWB, with the corruptuble power that Castro has, would be closer to Stalinesque.
...BTW, what does IMO mean
?
Do you think that Castro was an idealist? IMO, he wanted an absolute power. If the country supporting him was the USA and not the USSR, he would develop into a clone of Somoza and would pursue Communists.
I can't get inside his head Striessd, but from historical accounts I believe he was an Idealistic revolutionary, before he came to power. Then he probably fooled himself into thinking he had to remain the sole power, just for "a little while", until things got settled. Do you have REASON, to believe differently?
Idealists usually do not succeed either to get to power, or to keep it. Remember just Ernesto Guevara, Leon Trotsky or Ernst Röhm. It is necessary to be pragmatic, opportunistic and cynical for being a dictator. Examples: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong. And, of course, Fidel Castro Ruz.
I respect your theory. I just thinks it takes a balance. Even Dubya has a certain amount of conviction and righteousness in him. I just think he leans more towards the people you mentioned than Castro.
...Your rousing debate has kept me from supper long enough. I'm being threatened. I won't be able to resume, for a few minutes. .Later my friend.
Castro belongs to a special Latin American category: the enlightened caudillo.
Absolute power is a necessity; reshaping of the country with a given set of ideas, another.
He belongs to the Juan Domingo Perón, Getulio Vargas, Porfirio Díaz branch of dictators.
So, he would never have been a JFK, or a Somoza either.
Well, Mr. Bush certainly has convictions based on his religious faith, but he is far from being a bloodthirsty fanatic of Hitler's or Stalin's type. IMO, he is quite satisfied with his abilities to act in framework of the American Constitution and does not feel necessity to modify it. And he also pays tribute to opportunism: for example, attempts to get authorization from the UN were obviously a concession to the public opinion both in the USA and abroad. I think that Mr. Bush has never been a strong admirer of this inefficient and biased organization.
steissd is quite right when he likens Trotsky and Guevara.
I will add another name Camilo Cienfuegos.
In the first days of the Revolution, Camilo was the only figure with a popularity similar to Fidel (Raúl Castro was always disliked, and there was diffidence towards Guevara, a Marxist foreigner).
"Am I doing it right, Camilo?", was a famous Fidel phrase.
Camilo was to Fidel what Bukharin was to Stalin, with a difference. Camilo was not the son of a university professor (Bukharin) or a rich farmer (the Castros), but your average Cuban.
He died in a strange plane accident in 1959, when "idealist" Castro was 33 or 34.
Some authors say that Guevara had given away his idea of "making the revolution" in Bolivia after the Bolivian Communist Party withdraw its support. Fidel did not like Guevara's growing popularity and read to the masses in the Plaza de la Revolución Ché's departure letter... before Ché actually had left. Guevara, an honorable man, went to Bolivia for only one reason: defending the credibility of the Cuban revolution.
They tell me this explains the incredible fact that Guevara was killed in plain daylight. "Rest during the day; move and fight during the night", had written Guevara in his book: "Guerrilla Warfare".
Cienfuegos was the name of the town even before Camilo. My grandmother was born there.
Cienfuegos was kept in Cuban Revolutionary iconography because he didn't have time to openly oppose Fidel.
Other first day revolutionaries did not have the same luck.
Carlos Franqui, purged in the late sixties, has had his picture erased from all official iconography.
Huber Matos, one of the few officers in the Rebel Army who held the rank of comandante, has had the same fate as Franqui. He lives now in exile, after being jailed for 22 years. He does not exist in the Official History.
You may wonder. Why was not Matos sentenced to death, like Stalin's victims? First of all, it was early in the Revolution. But also because he stirred too much sympathy in his trial, which was expected to be a showcase for the Castros.
"Now, Fidel, you are destroying your own work. You are burying the revolution. Perhaps there is still time. I plead with you, comrade. Help us save the revolution", said Matos. "We fought for something else. We fought in the name of Truth, for all the sound principles that bind civilization and mankind together... Please, in the names of our fallen comrades, our mothers, of all the people, Fidel, do not bury the revolution."
"I consider myself neither a traitor nor a deserter," Matos said. "My conscience is clear. If the court should find me guilty, I shall accept its decision - even though I may be shot. I would consider it one more service for the revolution." As he completed his testimony, a large number of soldiers rose spontaneously and applauded him. Castro demanded that they be thrown out. Later he denounced them as "degenerates and traitors," and they were subsequently discharged from the Revolutionary Armed Forces.
But he could not condemn Matos to death.
No,noplease...no aplause..keepyour seats. 
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