tatus:
>
>neglected, are not priorities for anybody other than us - the poor
>and underdeveloped countries.
>
>It requires a high level of altruism to fight for something which
>you have, but others do not, and great humility to acknowledge that
>you are not the absolute owner of the truth. It requires a spirit of
>deep democracy to accept that poor people can also be right. And a
>knowledge of the history of our peoples - whose countries have been
>colonised and ransacked for centuries - is essential, if the poor
>are not to be condemned for their poverty.
>
>Mr President:
>
>Non-Governmental Organisations have played a very important role in
>promoting and protecting human rights. Who would question, for
>example, the considerable contribution that non-governmental grass-
>roots organisations have made to the human rights cause, and to the
>fight against military dictatorships in Latin America over the past
>decades?
>
>However, we must acknowledge, with regret, that the non-governmental
>organisations that work to defend the human rights of the majority
>of the inhabitants of this planet, are not adequately represented in
>the meetings held by this Commission.
>
>A few organisations, calling themselves non-governmental, and
>functioning as true transnational companies, financed and closely
>linked to the main power groups in the developed countries, nowadays
>impose themselves as leaders. They are the ones who have all the
>money and receive all the coverage provided by the media
>transnationals. Where does the money come from, and what is it used
>for?
>
>Why do we not establish a Fund to finance the participation in the
>Commission of representatives of non-governmental organisations of
>the South, and non-governmental organisations that deal with the
>protection and promotion of economic, social and cultural rights, and
>the right to development?
>
>Mr.President :
>
>It is a matter of great concern, that whilst less and less resources
>are devoted to promoting development, combating hunger and poverty,
>and compensating for centuries of lack of progress - the true causes
>of the humanitarian crises in underdeveloped countries - the
>theoretical and political stance of a purported "right to
>humanitarian intervention", gathers force among the principal
>western powers, and has already been applied several times in
>practice. The blatant tendency to ignore the principles, which for
>half a century have been the pillars of international post-war world
>justice, is alarming. These principles provided the moral foundation
>of the United Nations: sovereign equality of States, their
>territorial integrity, non-interference in their domestic affairs,
>and non-use of force or threat of use of force in international
>relations.
>
>Cuba fully commits itself to, and emphatically calls on Member
>States to pay particular attention to the resolution approved by the
>Subcommission for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights, in
>which the firm conviction is expressed, that the alleged "duty" and
>"right" to carry out humanitarian interventions, in particular
>resorting to force or the threat of use of force, has no legal basis
>whatsoever and, accordingly, Cuba cannot condone such violations of
>the principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter. We, the
>peoples of the South, know from personal experience, the
>consequences of doctrines of this sort, drawn up in the North, to
>legitimize intervention and the interests of domination. You, our
>colleagues who here represent member countries of NATO, should
>understand us. You belong to a very powerful military alliance and
>have no reason to fear aggressive action, but we, the Third World
>countries, we have good reason to worry. Our countries need to be
>bombarded, yes, but not with missiles and smart bombs, but with new
>technology, long-term funding for development, access to the
>increasingly inaccessible markets, and the cancellation of our
>foreign debt. That would be the best contribution that you could
>make to demonstrating true respect for the human rights of our
>peoples! The most important of our human rights that must be
>respected, is the right to development and a decent life - it is the
>right to bequeath our children a future with hope!
>
>Who will establish the guidelines that justify the invasion or
>ruthless bombing of a country? Will the United Nations Security
>Council even be informed? Can you imagine there being a coalition of
>countries of the South, which bombed the city of New York, in order
>to punish the United States for its continuing violation of the
>rights of poor people and ethnic minorities in that country?
>
>Will this Commission ever be capable of condemning the United
>States? Would it dare to approve a resolution condemning them for
>child prostitution and pornography there, for widespread violence and
>the proliferation of fire arms, for police brutality and the
>inequalities of its judicial system, for the unfair and arbitrary
>application of the death penalty, for its practices of racial,
>sexual and religious discrimination, for its lack of care for the
>growing masses of poor and dispossessed people living at the heart
>of the most affluent society in the history of the world? Will this
>Commission be able to condemn the United States Government for the
>dirty war that it has waged against the people of Cuba for forty
>years, with the single, and self-professed aim of destroying the
>political, economic and social system that the Cuban people have
>built through their own free and sovereign will? It seems very
>unlikely under the current circumstances. In Vienna we declared that:
>"All peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that
>right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue
>their economic, social and cultural development." And we are
>determined, Your Excellencies, to be a free and independent people -
>not a colony of the United States!
>
>In Vienna, the states were also asked to refrain "from any
>unilateral measures not in accordance with international law and the
>Charter of the United Nations". How do you explain then, Your
>Excellencies, the persistence and toughening of the genocidal north
>American blockade against Cuba, which has been going on for forty
>years? Will anyone ask for the floor, when I have finished speaking,
>in order to defend the idea that the blockade and the economic war
>waged by the United States against my country promote respect for
>human rights in the world?
>
>What does the Commission on Human Rights have to say to the 11
>million Cubans who are fully aware that more than five years ago you
>declared that: "food should not be used as a tool for political
>pressure" ? How will the Commission on Human Rights explain to our
>children, to our pregnant women, to our elderly and to our disabled,
>that whilst the United States Government tries to starve them into
>defeat, in a flagrant violation of their human rights, not only has
>that government not been condemned by this Commission for its
>actions, but what is more, it sets itself up as supreme judge and
>ruling authority over the conduct of the other countries on the
>planet?
>
>The U.S. blockade of Cuba, vigorously rejected every year in the
>United Nations General Assembly, is an act of genocide, clearly
>established by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment
>of the Crime of Genocide.
>
>
>Your Excellencies:
>
>Once again the United States attempts, in this Commission, to accuse
>a country such as Cuba, which has done so much for the rights of
>each and every one of its citizens. I am not going to tire you,
>esteemed colleagues, with the sordid story of how they have tried to
>manipulate the Commission on Human Rights in the case of Cuba. For
>several years, reason prevailed over pressure and manoeuvres. Only
>with the fall of the European socialist block, and the subsequent
>change in the balance of forces at the heart of this Commission,
>could the U.S. start to achieve its aims.
>
>What real reason could the Czech Government have for presenting a
>resolution against Cuba, other than to carry out orders given by the
>United States? Everyone in this Commission knows that the price the
>Czech Republic is paying for its entrance into NATO, is its
>political and economic dependency on the United States. Everyone in
>this Commission knows that whilst the Czech Deputy Foreign Minister,
>Martin Palous, was touring the world, reciting the anti-Cuban script
>that was dictated to him in Washington, during the first week in
>March, the American Deputy Secretary of State, Harold Koh, was
>announcing in Geneva, that the Czech Republic would present the
>American resolution against Cuba.
>
>Cuba, for its part, is proud of its people's high values, their
>unshakeable unity, their capacity for resistance, their commitment
>to work, their spirit of solidarity, and of their dignity and
>sovereignty, and will never stoop, as others have done, to serving
>an imperial power.
>
>Mr.President:
>
>The shameful case of the kidnapping and illegal detention on United
>States territory, for more than 4 months, of the Cuban child, Elian
>Gonz�lez Brotons, has stirred up public opinion as the world has
>watched on in amazement over the past few months. They have seen just
>how extreme the irrational hatred is of those who, from United
>States territory, violate the human rights of Cubans by defending
>the economic blockade and the constant hostility towards Cuba. No
>sensible person of good will can understand how this situation could
>have gone on for so long, in flagrant violation of the most basic
>and universally recognised rights of a father to decide the future of
>his six year old son. How can it be that the Government of the
>greatest world power in history allows itself to be put in the
>absurd and ridiculous position of being hostage to the demands of a
>minute, but noisy, anti-Cuban terrorist Mafia, in the city of Miami?
>
>Today I am here to denounce this monstrosity on behalf of an
>aggrieved people, who speak with one voice when they forcefully
>demand that their child, who has been kidnapped, be returned to them.
>We did not come here to seek a solution to a case that can only be
>resolved through the enforcement by the United States Government of
>its own decision to respect the indisputable parental rights of a
>Cuban father. What we have indeed come here to do, is to stop this
>Commission from becoming an accomplice, through its silence, to a
>most serious violation of human rights, that could even place in
>doubt the effectiveness and credibility of the international system
>for the promotion and protection of the rights of the child. Because
>there is no doubt that this deplorable act rocks the very
>foundations of all legislation that has been passed in the world
>regarding human rights and the coexistence of nations.
>
>Is there a parent anywhere in the world who can understand how it is
>that the Commission on Human Rights refrains from condemning such an
>evil international crime that is so well-known by public opinion
>world-wide? Is there not the danger that by remaining silent, we
>endorse a precedent that would encourage the vile practice of
>international child kidnapping, for such repulsive purposes as organ
>trafficking, or child pornography and prostitution? It is not just
>the future and happiness of a child that is at stake here. What is
>at risk, at the end of the day, is the right of all children in the
>world to live and grow up alongside their parents.
>
>Cuba, which by reducing the infant mortality rate to almost 6 per
>thousand live born, has, over a period of forty years, saved the
>lives of 273 thousand Cuban children, of less than one year of age,
>and whose doctors are today saving thousands of children in many
>other countries of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, will
>never allow this precedent to be established. Our struggle is not
>just for Eli�n, but for all the children in the world.
>
>If the international community does not oppose this attempt to
>impose a foreign society and culture on a child of 6 years old, it
>will be seen to make a significant contribution to world disorder, to
>uni-polarity and to the failure to recognise one of the most
>fundamental human rights.
>
>We will not rest, until our child is freed and returned to his
>homeland and his family, as reason, international law, and the laws
>of all nations -- including the United States itself -- demand. We
>will show that there is a limit to the shamelessness and arrogance
>of an empire, when there is the will to oppose it.
>
>Mr.President, Delegates:
>
>The Cuban Adjustment of Status Act, which grants automatic and
>immediate access to Cubans who illegally emigrate to the United
>States by giving them exclusive privileges, and is responsible for
>many sorrowful deaths, as in the case of those who died in the
>shipwreck which Eli�n Gonz�lez survived, and is the main cause of
>his kidnapping, constitutes a serious violation of the human rights
>of our peoples. And must be repealed!
>
>The Torricelli Bill, a collosal obstacle, which prevents us from
>buying food and medicine, constitutes a serious violation of the
>human rights of our people. And must be repealed!
>
>The Helms-Burton Law, an illegal and genocidal monster, constitutes
>a serious violation of the human rights of our people. And it must
>be repealed!
>
>The blockade and economic war against Cuba by the United States
>an attempt to exterminate an entire nation through hunger and
>illness constitute the most serious violation of our human rights.
>And they must cease completlely, as soon as possible.
>
>Thank you very much. " JC
>
>
>
>
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