http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2009/enero/juev29/Cuba-Human-Rights.html
Havana. January 29, 2009
Cuba to attend Human Rights Council with head held high
. Report for Council's assessment
Aida Calviac Mora
CUBA is to attend the Universal Periodic review (UPR) of the Human Rights
Council with its head held high and a clean conscience, given its work in favor
of human rights for all Cuban men and women, affirmed Foreign Minister Felipe
Pérez Roque, during a press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
(MINREX).
He described as intense and genuinely participative the drafting of the
island's national report to the UPR, the text of which is available on the
Cubaminrex and Cubadebate websites and is to be published in tabloid format.
The process involved many state institutions and 200-plus of the island's
NGO'S, as well as 150 from other countries, which submitted their contributions
to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
He explained that Cuba is taking on this exercise, scheduled for February
5, with all seriousness and a sense of responsibility, convinced that
respectful dialogue, based on the principles of objectivity, impartiality and
non-selectiveness, is the only way for international cooperation on human
rights issues.
The foreign minister also referred to the anti-Cuba mandate imposed on
the former Human Rights Commission, whose elimination, he stated, has made it
possible to qualitatively intensify our cooperation with the mechanisms applied
in this context on non-discriminatory bases; and which was an act of essential
justice toward our people, as well as a recognition of the prestige and the
work of the Revolution in protecting and promoting human rights for all.
Pérez Roque also announced that, next week, Cuba is to extend an
invitation to Manfred Novak, special rapporteur on torture and other cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, as part of the country's
disposition to continue relating to the Council's special procedures.
In the same press conference the minister announced the upcoming
ratification of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons
from Enforced Disappearance, in a country in which "in the last 50 years, there
has not even been one disappeared or tortured person, and not one
extra-judicial execution," he noted.
Cuba is party to 41 of the most important human rights treaties or
conventions, and last year signed the International Covenants on Civil and
Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, currently moving
through the ordinary procedure of constitutional consultation.
Cuba is sending reports to the Committees on the Rights of the Child and
on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and is likewise working on its
report to the Committee against Torture, which should be ready for submission
at the end of March.
The multimedia Cuba and Human Rights, made by MINREX for this exercise,
was launched at the press conference.
