Cuba Passes U.N. Review with Flying Colours
By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA (IPS) - The United Nations Human Rights Council report
on the status of human rights in Cuba reflected solid support for
Havana from an ample majority of countries, but also took note of
objections raised by a smaller number of governments.
Cuban delegates hailed the document, registering the opinions
expressed at the debate during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR)
mechanism, as a "victory for truth and justice".
Created in 2007, the UPR is a kind of expert tribunal that examines
the human rights record of all 192 U.N. member states once every
four years, within a common framework and with full participation by
the state concerned.
"I feel completely reassured. I can not only live with this report,
I can rejoice in it," an enthusiastic Bruno Rodríguez, the Cuban
deputy foreign minister, told IPS.
The report, adopted by the UPR on Monday, awaits final ratification
by a plenary session of the HRC in June. It summarises the opinions
of delegates from 60 countries who participated in the debate on
Cuba on Thursday, Feb. 5.
Of those 60 speakers, "I would say 51 were generous, because they
expressed recognition for the human rights achievements of the Cuban
Revolution," Rodríguez said.
Those delegates not only acknowledged the advances in the areas of
health, education, employment and social security, "but also the
social participation and the climate of freedom we have in the
country," he said.
In contrast, "a small minority of nine countries, including Israel
and seven European nations, were critical of aspects of Cuba's
internal affairs," the deputy minister admitted.
Israel expressed deep concern about "the absence in Cuba of an
impartial and independent judicial system". It also called for the
"immediate release of human rights defenders, journalists and other
illegally detained persons", and recommended guarantees for
exercising the rights to free speech and freedom of association.
In Rodríguez's view, these statements "violate the principle of
self-determination, and both the spirit and the letter" of the U.N.
General Assembly resolution that created the HRC in 2005. He said
"they interfere with matters that have to do with (Cuba's)
constitutional order".
"We rejected only a handful of recommendations from those nine
countries", he emphasised. In contrast, Cuba did not object to any
recommendation from the countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and
the Caribbean, Rodríguez said.
The document recording the outcome of the review includes a request
from Austria, calling on Cuba to report on any follow-up action it
has taken on the recommendations made in 2003 by the U.N. Working
Group on Arbitrary Detention, which identified 79 people under
"arbitrary" arrest and demanded an end to the practice.
Activist Adrien-Claude Zoller, the head of the non-governmental
Swiss organisation Geneva for Human Rights, told IPS he had
"expected more from Cuba". He had thought that Havana would extend
an invitation to visit the island nation to rapporteurs on human
rights from all parts of the U.N. system, he said.
Upon arriving in Geneva last week, the Cuban delegation announced
that the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, has been
invited to visit Cuba. They pointed out that the island had already
received a visit from the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food,
Jean Ziegler, in 2007.
The head of the dissident Cuban Commission for Human Rights and
National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), Elizardo Sánchez, had told IPS
that he "did not expect any changes" in the field of human rights in
2009.
"I am absolutely sceptical, because the HRC is in the hands of
governments that violate human rights," Sánchez said shortly before
Cuba's presentation to the UPR. The CCDHRN, which is not legally
recognised in Cuba, issues six-monthly reports about the situation
of prisoners on the island, based on the testimony of relatives and
the inmates themselves.
Cuba accepted 60 out of the 89 recommendations in the UPR report. Of
these, 57 were made by African, Asiatic, Latin American and
Caribbean countries, with the other three coming from Switzerland,
the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.
The Havana delegation announced that they will reply in writing to a
further 17 recommendations before the HRC plenary session in June.
Two of the demands, presented by Italy and Switzerland, call for
progressive reduction of the number of crimes punishable by the
death penalty, and consideration of future measures to eliminate
capital punishment altogether.
Rodríguez told IPS that "for fundamental reasons, we are
philosophically opposed to the death penalty". Under Cuban law, the
death penalty is an exceptional punishment for extremely serious
crimes, he said.
"When the circumstances surrounding Cuba change, we could make
progress on this topic," he said. It must be remembered that more
than 2,000 Cubans have been victims of terrorist attacks, which also
caused the death of an Italian tourist in 1997, and kidnappings of
tourists and European citizens in 2003, he said.
"But at this time we cannot eliminate the death penalty from the
statute books for two reasons," he said. Firstly, we need it to
defend our citizens' right to life, and secondly, to protect
national security, he said.
The deputy foreign minister remarked that "a substantial number of
speakers" in the debate referred to the U.S. embargo against Cuba as
"a flagrant, massive and systematic violation of the human rights of
the entire Cuban people".
Until now, alleged human rights violations in Cuba were used as a
pretext to justify the blockade, but this U.N. Council has just
decided otherwise, put it in writing in its report and approved it
by consensus, so this excuse is no longer valid, Rodríguez
concluded. |
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