Still top on Washington's hit list Cuba is strengthening its ties in the Middle East, reports Faiza Rady Manuel Aguilera de la Paz "Everybody knows there are gross human rights violations occurring in Cuba," said Manuel Aguilera de la Paz, Cuban deputy minister of foreign affairs. On a tour of the region, De la Paz was in Cairo this week for consultations with his Egyptian counterpart. "Such violations happen daily, namely at the United States detention centre in Guantanamo Bay from which horrifying accounts of torture continue to leak and where some 600 detainees have been holed up in a legal- free zone for the better part of the past three years." Established in 1903, the US military base in Guantanamo Bay is in fact occupied Cuban territory, a "heritage of the neo-colonial period", De la Paz said. Since 1959, the Cuban Revolution has unsuccessfully tried to pressure successive US administrations to dismantle the base and pack up. But the world's sole superpower is a hard nut to crack for the small Caribbean island. Moreover, since 9/11 and the Bush administration's crusade on terror, the base has become a judicial no-man's land -- a conveniently remote niche for the Pentagon's extra-territorial human rights violations. Differing definitions of human rights, in fact, figured prominently on De la Paz's agenda in Cairo. "Cuba is a member of the UN Human Rights Commission (HRC) and so is Egypt. We are interested in coordinating positions within the HRC with Egypt, and other countries of the South, because the present situation raises much concern in the wake of the Bush administration's political machinations against Cuba in particular," De la Paz said. "The US recently drafted yet another resolution accusing Cuba of human rights violations, although an HRC delegation visited our country and found no evidence of torture or political disappearances." On the other hand, it is practically impossible to indict the US for its flagrant human rights violations in many parts of the world. "In the HRC we proposed to send a fact-finding mission to Guantanamo Bay to investigate the situation," said De la Paz. "But our initiative was defeated by the US which pressured the EU to vote against the motion, although the European Parliament had previously requested a similar investigation." Cuba has been a member of the HRC since 1989 and was reelected on 1 January 2004 for another three-year term despite a well-orchestrated US defamation campaign to block its re-election. Cuba's outstanding record in the HRC includes the support of initiatives promoting a Southern agenda. In this context, Cuba has drafted and voted for resolutions defining the right to food as a basic human right, cancelling the foreign debt for the poorest and least developed countries and condemning the use of mercenaries to effect "regime change". The US, on the other hand, has voted against all these resolutions. "The HRC is holding its 61 session on 14 March and we want to establish a common Southern front. We also want to strengthen our ties with the Non-Aligned Movement and prepare for the 14th summit of Non-Aligned countries scheduled to convene next year," said De la Paz. Egypt, in turn, assured the Cuban delegation that it would vote against any resolution aimed at condemning Cuba for alleged human rights violations. Egypt has in fact consistently voted against the resolution which the US has pushed on the HRC agenda since 1994. The Bush administration is currently attempting to try "enemy rogue states" like Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Libya and the Sudan before an HRC tribunal for alleged human rights violations. "This poses a real national security threat to Cuba," said De la Paz, "because the US intends to use mantras like 'human rights violations' and the 'lack of democracy' to justify an invasion." "Cuba has become a symbol of courageous resistance to attack. It has been invaded, subjected to more terror than maybe the rest of the world combined... but it survives," commented distinguished linguist and political writer Noam Chomsky. Although facing a crippling US embargo, which has cost the Cuban economy an estimated $80 billion in losses since 1962 -- and which has been condemned by successive UN General Assembly resolutions for the past 12 years -- the Cuban Revolution has struggled to guarantee its people what it defines as fundamental human rights. These include the right to life, the right to work, the right to free and mandatory education and the right to free healthcare. By all accounts, Cuba's investment in its people has paid off. The Caribbean island provides Cubans with one of the world's best healthcare systems and some 23,000 Cuban physicians work for free in 69 poor countries. "Cuban doctors were the only foreign health workers to remain in Haiti after the latest anti-Aristide coup," said De la Paz. According to recent UN Human Development reports, Cuba has the highest health and educational indicators in Latin America: life expectancy is 76 years and 97 per cent of Cuban women and men are literate. It's a success story by all accounts and one that is frightening the US and fuelling its aggression against the socialist state. In lieu of invasions, successive US administrations have bankrolled countless assassination attempts against Cuban President Fidel Castro -- under cover of the CIA. "The latest of which took place on 17 November 2000 in Panama where Fidel was attending the Iberian-American summit," De la Paz said. Tipped by Cuban intelligence, the Panamanian police arrested four right-wing Cuban-Americans, with records of extreme violence, carrying explosives in their rental car. They were preparing to hit Fidel at the university auditorium, where he was scheduled to speak. The gang leader turned out to be none other than Luis Posada Carriles, a renowned Miami-based terrorist who has spent most of his adult life plotting to assassinate Fidel and destabilise Cuba. On CIA payroll, Posada and fellow terrorist Orlando Bosch organised the bombing of a Cuban passenger plane over Barbados on 6 October 1976. When Cubana flight 455 exploded in midair, 73 people were killed. Posada and his accomplice reportedly boasted about their feat and were arrested in Venezuela. But the pair's Cuban-American Mafiosi connections dished out $50,000 to bribe prison officials and they were let loose. Considered a "good" terrorist by the Reagan administration, Posada resurfaced in the 1980s, earning his keep on a US government- cum-CIA payroll. Hired by Oliver North, the colonel in charge of the Contra army, which was established in Honduras to overthrow the democratically-elected Sandanista government, Posada became a central operative in the terror campaign against Nicaragua. But Posada was only a small fish in a big pond, all things considered. Besides the unsavoury North, Posada's real boss in the Contra war against Nicaragua was John Negroponte, former US ambassador to Iraq and President George W Bush's new appointee to the post of director of national security. Duly rewarded for services most recently rendered in Iraq, Negroponte will be in charge of managing 15 intelligence agencies. Not a plebeian field terrorist like Posada, but a polished diplomat, Negroponte directed and supervised Contra operations against Nicaragua from 1981 to 1985 in his capacity as US ambassador to Honduras under CIA cover. "Negroponte was really the regional CIA man for Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. His job was to manage the region's destabilisation and to crush all opposition. Negroponte supported death squads and falsified US State Department human rights reports. His hands are full of blood," explained De la Paz. Given this context, it is evident that the US has lost its credibility in many Central American countries. In an open letter to Bush, Fidel made the point and expressed the Cuban people's feelings. "You have neither the morality nor the right -- none whatsoever -- to speak of freedom, democracy and human rights."
