Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------------------------Original: Spanish
>
> Key address by Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz, President of the Republic of
> Cuba at the World Conference against racism, racial discrimination,
> xenophobia and related intolerance
> Durban, South Africa. September 1, 2001
>
> Excellencies:
>
> Delegates and guests:
>
> Racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia are not naturally
> instinctive reactions of the human beings but rather a social,
> cultural and political phenomenon born directly of wars, military
> conquests, slavery and the individual or collective exploitation
> of the weakest by the most powerful all along the history of
> human societies.
>
> No one has the right to boycott this Conference which
> tries to bring some sort of relief to the overwhelming majority
> of mankind afflicted by unbearable suffering and enormous
> injustice. Neither has anyone the right to set preconditions to
> this conference or urge it to avoid the discussion of historical
> responsibility, fair compensation or the way we decide to rate
> the dreadful genocide perpetrated, at this very moment, against
> our Palestinian brothers by extreme right leaders who, in
> alliance with the hegemonic superpower, pretend to be acting on
> behalf of another people which throughout almost two thousand
> years was the victim of the most fierce persecution,
> discrimination and injustice that history has known.
>
> Cuba speaks of reparations, and supports this idea as
> an unavoidable moral duty to the victims of racism, based on a
> major precedent, that is, the indemnification being paid to the
> descendants of the Hebrew people which in the very heart of
> Europe suffered the brutal and loathsome racist holocaust.
> However, it is not with the intent to undertake an impossible
> search for the direct descendants or the specific countries of
> the victims of actions occurred throughout centuries. The
> irrefutable truth is that tens of millions of Africans were
> captured, sold like a commodity and sent beyond the Atlantic to
> work in slavery while 70 million indigenous people in that
> hemisphere perished as a result of the European conquest and
> colonization.
>
> The inhuman exploitation imposed on the peoples of
> three continents, including Asia, marked forever the destiny and
> lives of over 4.5 billion people living in the Third World today
> whose poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and health rates as well
> as their infant mortality, life expectancy and other calamities
> --too many, in fact, to enumerate here-- are certainly awesome
> and harrowing. They are the current victims of that atrocity
> which lasted centuries and the ones who clearly deserve
> compensation for the horrendous crimes perpetrated against their
> ancestors and peoples.
>
> Actually, such a brutal exploitation did not end when
> many countries became independent, not even after the formal
> abolition of slavery. Right after independence, the main
> ideologists of the American Union that emerged when the 13
> colonies got rid of the British domination at the end of the 18th
> century, advanced ideas and strategies unquestionably
> expansionist in nature.
>
> It was based on such ideas that the ancient white settlers of
> European descent, in their march to the West, forcibly occupied
> the lands in which Native-Americans had lived for thousands of
> years thus exterminating millions of them in the process. But,
> they did not stop at the boundaries of the former Spanish
> possessions; consequently Mexico, a Latin American country that
> had attained its independence in 1821, was stripped off millions
> of square kilometers of territory and invaluable natural
> resources.
>
> Meanwhile, in the increasingly powerful and
> expansionist nation born in North America, the obnoxious and
> inhumane slavery system stayed in place for almost a century
> after the famous Declaration of Independence of 1776 was issued,
> the same that proclaimed that all men were born free and equal.
>
> After the purely formal slave emancipation, African-Americans
> were subjected during one hundred more years to the harshest
> racial discrimination, and many of its features and consequences
> still persist after almost four more decades of heroic struggles
> and the achievements of the 1960=92s, for which Martin Luther King,
> Jr., Malcolm X and other outstanding fighters gave their lives.
> Based on a purely racist rationale, the longest and most severe
> legal sentences are passed against African-Americans who in the
> wealthy American society are bound to live in dare poverty and
> with the lowest living standards.
>
> Likewise, what is left of the Native-American peoples, which were
> the first to inhabit a large portion of the current territory of
> the United States of America, remain under even worse conditions
> of discrimination and neglect.
>
> Needless to mention the data on the social and
> economic situation of Africa where entire countries and even
> whole regions of Sub-Saharan Africa are in risk of extinction the
> result of an extremely complex combination of economic
> backwardness, excruciating poverty and grave diseases, both old
> and new, that have become a true scourge. And the situation is no
> less dramatic in numerous Asian countries. On top of all this,
> there are the huge and unpayable debts, the disparate terms of
> trade, the ruinous prices of basic commodities, the demographic
> explosion, the neoliberal globalization and the climate changes
> that produce long draughts alternating with increasingly
> intensive rains and floods. It can be mathematically proven that
> such a predicament is unsustainable.
>
> The developed countries and their consumer societies,
> presently responsible for the accelerated and almost unstoppable
> destruction of the environment, have been the main beneficiaries
> of the conquest and colonization, of slavery, of the ruthless
> exploitation and the extermination of hundreds of millions of
> people born in the countries that today constitute the Third
> World. They have also reaped the benefits of the economic order
> imposed on humanity after two atrocious and devastating wars for
> a new division of the world and its markets, of the privileges
> granted to the United States and its allies in Bretton-Woods, and
> of the IMF and the international financial institutions
> exclusively created by them and for them.
>
> That rich and squandering world is in possession of
> the technical and financial resources necessary to pay what is
> due to mankind. The hegemonic superpower should also pay back its
> special debt to African-Americans, to Native-Americans living in
> reservations, and to the tens of millions of Latin American and
> Caribbean immigrants as well as others from poor nations, be they
> mulatto, yellow or black, but victims all of vicious
> discrimination and scorn.
>
> It is high time to put an end to the dramatic
> situation of the indigenous communities in our hemisphere. Their
> own awakening and struggles, and the universal admission of the
> monstrosity of the crime committed against them make it
> imperative.
>
> There are enough funds to save the world from the
> tragedy.
>
> May the arms race and the weapon commerce that only bring
> devastation and death truly end.
>
> Let it be used for development a good part of the one
> trillion US dollars annually spent on the commercial advertising
> that creates false illusions and inaccessible consumer habits
> while releasing the venom that destroys the national cultures and
> identities.
>
> May the modest 0.7 percentage point of the Gross
> National Product promised as official development assistance be
> finally delivered.
>
> May the tax suggested by Nobel Prize Laureate James Tobin be
> imposed in a reasonable and effective way on the current
> speculative operations accounting for trillions of US dollars
> every 24 hours, then the United Nations, which cannot go on
> depending on meager, inadequate, and belated donations and
> charities, will have one trillion US dollars annually to save and
> develop the world. Given the seriousness and urgency of the
> existing problems, which have become a real hazard for the very
> survival of our specie on the planet, that is what would actually
> be needed before it is too late.
>
> Put and end to the ongoing genocide against the
> Palestinian people that is taking place while the world stares in
> amazement. May the basic right to life of that people, children
> and youth, be protected. May their right to peace and
> independence be respected; then, there will be nothing to fear
> from UN documents.
>
> I am aware that the need for some relief from the
> awful situation their countries are facing has led many friends
> from Africa and other regions to suggest the need for such
> prudence as would allow something to come out of this conference.
> I sympathize with them but I cannot renounce my convictions, as I
> feel that the more candid we are in telling the truth the more
> possibilities there will be to be heeded and respected. There
> have been enough centuries of deception.
>
> I have only three other short questions based on
> realities that cannot be ignored.
>
> The capitalist, developed and wealthy countries today
> participate of the imperialist system born of capitalism itself
> and the economic order imposed to the world based on the
> philosophy of selfishness and the brutal competition between men,
> nations and groups of nations which in completely indifferent to
> any feelings of solidarity and honest international cooperation.
> They live under the misleading, irresponsible and hallucinating
> atmosphere of consumer societies. Thus, regardless the sincerity
> of their blind faith in such a system and the convictions of
> their most serious statesmen, I wonder: Will they be able to
> understand the grave problems of today=92s world which in its
> incoherent and uneven development is ruled by blind laws, by the
> huge power and the interests of the ever growing and increasingly
> uncontrollable and independent transnational corporations?
>
> Will they come to understand the impending universal chaos and
> rebellion? And, even if they wanted to, could they put an end to
> racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and other related
> issues, which are precisely the rest of them all?
>
> From my viewpoint we are on the verge of a huge
> economic, social and political global crisis. Let=92s try to build
> an awareness about these realities and the alternatives will come
> up. History has shown that it is only from deep crisis that great
> solutions have emerged. The peoples=92 right to life and justice
> will definitely impose itself under a thousand different shapes.
>
> I believe in the mobilization and the struggle of the peoples! I
> believe in the idea of justice! I believe in truth! I believe in
> man!
>
> Thank you.
>
>
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