Banbose Shango: A-APRP(GC) on Human Rights: Cuba vs USA

These human rights are enshrined in two treaties — the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The United States has ratified the ICCPR.

But the U.S. refuses to ratify the ICESCR. Since the Reagan administration, it has been U.S. policy to define human rights only as civil and political rights. Economic, social and cultural rights are dismissed as akin to social welfare, or socialism.

The U.S. government criticizes civil and political rights in Cuba while disregarding Cubans’ superior access to universal housing, health care, education, and its guarantee of paid maternity leave and equal pay rates.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government has committed serious human rights violations on Cuban soil, including torture, cruel treatment, and arbitrary detention at Guantanamo. And since 1960, the United States has expressly interfered with Cuba’s economic rights and its right to self-determination through the economic embargo.

The U.S. embargo of Cuba, now a blockade, was initiated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower during the Cold War in response to a 1960 memo written by a senior State Department official. The memo proposed “a line of action that makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the [Castro] government.”

These violations of human rights accusations would be more credible if they were made against the USA. We could mention here Amnesty International, who often justifying the US involvement in ‘regime change’, torture and other HR abuses. (see: http://www.globalresearch.ca/amnesty-international-is…/32444) Yet the US speak of independent civil society. A bought civil society is not an independent civil society.
Hundreds if not thousands of demonstrations occur across the length and breadth of the USA each month, and jails are filled with demonstrators, many of whom are never formally charged, just tortured, roughed up, teargassed, intimidated and held to for both long and short periods.
Americans protesting against police violence to promote women’s rights, respond to labor disputes, demand release of political prisoners, to end mass incarceration, to demand fair housing, to protest against the myriad US wars all their connected ills, to call for protection of the environment, to demand improved health care and education, and for hundreds of other reasons in their attempts to rectify numerous instances of injustice that permeate American society. Demonstrations abound in the USA. Governmental entities often subject demonstrators to intimidation, assault, arrest, prosecution and other forms of persecution that deny the civil and human rights of protestors.
American attacks on human rights extend far beyond its mistreatment of protestors. Numerous incidents of racism and racial discrimination make the news daily. It is noteworthy that over1,150 people were killed by the police in the United States in the year 2015 alone. This number is an estimate because the US government does not track police killings.
Over-incarceration of its citizens and the overwhelming racial and class bias inherent in this condition constitutes one of the world’s most egregious assaults on human rights. The United States, with less than 5% of the world’s population, account for 20% to 25% of the world’s incarcerated population according to Google, the AULU and others. These figures do not include the US military prison at Guantanamo, Basra, or other network of ‘black sites’ that the US has around the world.
The U.S. ranks around the 30th percentile in income inequality globally, meaning 70% of countries have a more equal income distribution.
The entrenched racism and prejudice that are inflicted upon America’s Indigenous, African in American, Hispanic, Native Americans, Asian and other communities of color by the claim that the US is “the land of the free.” Continued denial of basic human rights to LGBTQ people, to Muslims, and to other marginalized people is a blot upon the American claim of being a bastion of democracy and equality.
From these and other indices of human rights violation, it is abundantly clear that the United States of America’s record on human rights has vast room for improvement.
The Human Rights violations of the USA both domestically and internationally, as well as the immoral and inhuman actions the USA has directed at Cuba are extensively documented and readily available. We do not need to spend paper or time listing them here.
The Cuban representative to the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), Pedro Nunez Mosquera, who is the Director of the Division of Multilateral Affairs and International Law at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba. Author Arnold August notes: In Geneva, Núñez Mosquera turned the tables on the US by calling it out for the gross violations of human rights that the US itself is responsible for, including racial discrimination, police violence, persecution of immigrants and torture that takes place in the Guantánamo prison. In addition,” he insisted, “the US is responsible for violations of the human rights of the Cuban people because of the blockade against the island.”
A small example of how Cuba perceives human rights can be gained by the fact that no demonstrator or citizens have being teargassed since 1959, the beginning of the current phase of the Cuban Revolution.
The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, following in the footsteps of Kwame Nkrumah one of the authors, through the state of Ghana, of the African Charter of Human and Peoples Rights, of the Organization of African Unity, which states clearly in its Preamble:
“… Convinced that it is henceforth essential to pay a particular attention to the right to development and that civil and political rights cannot be dissociated from economic, social and cultural rights in their conception as well as universality and that the satisfaction of economic, social and cultural rights is a guarantee for the enjoyment of civil and political rights”
Conscious of their duty to achieve the total liberation of Africa, the peoples of which are still struggling for their dignity and genuine independence, and undertaking to eliminate colonialism, neo-colonialism, apartheid, zionism and to dismantle aggressive foreign military bases and all forms of discrimination, particularly those based on race, ethnic group, color, sex. language, religion or political opinions;
Reaffirming their adherence to the principles of human and peoples’ rights and freedoms contained in the declarations, conventions and other instrument adopted by the Organization of African Unity, the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries and the United Nations…”
The A-APRP-GC stands in solidarity with the people of Cuba and oppressed people everywhere, believes that the Cuban people and the Cuban nation have inalienable rights, including:
• The right to political sovereignty and economical independence devoid of any international intrigue focused on disruption of their society as a prelude to regime change.
• The right to control its geographical territory and to deny foreign military bases access to its land and sea areas.
• The right to be free of efforts to destabilize its lawful government by aggressive broadcasts of radio and TV propaganda from outside its national boundaries by a hostile country.
• The right to be free of economic, and political blockade and embargo imposed by the USA for regime change over 50 years ago.
• The right to be free of hostilities and interference in their internal affairs from mercenaries and agents provocateurs paid by other countries.
On Wednesday March 9, 2016, for the 54th consecutive year, President Barack Obama renewed US Proclamation #9398, continuing the blockade of Cuba for one more year, which is another major and unjust violation of the human and civil rights of the Cuban people.
In the end it is quite possible that a country like Cuba can find itself capable of continuing the establishment of diplomatic relations with the USA, hoping that it can change a society whose egregious record of human rights violations casts shame upon its self-proclaimed role as a leader in and purveyor of democracy.
Update (3-24-2016)
President Obama in all is arrogance, exemplifying the ugly American spokesperson of the US capitalist system, in his speeches in Cuba, told the Cubans what they must do to become neo-liberal, neo-colony under the control of US imperialism. Garry Leech in his article in “Counter Punch” (http://www.counterpunch.org/…/obamas-cuba-visit-illustrate…/), in which he made some very astute observations, he noted;
“…Obama frequently referred to human rights in Cuba, particularly “political prisoners.” In his speech to the Cuban people, he declared, “I believe citizens should be free to speak their mind without fear, to organize, and to criticize their government, and to protest peacefully, and that the rule of law should not include arbitrary detentions of people who exercise those rights…”
My interpretation is that this statement must hold true for everywhere except in the US and among its allies. Leech observation continued:
“Media coverage of Obama’s visit has repeatedly focused on the Ladies in White organization, which protests weekly in Havana in support of so-called political prisoners in Cuba. The US media highlighted the fact that the Ladies in White protesters were rounded up by police during a demonstration on the day Obama arrived in Havana. These arrests have been repeatedly pointed to by the media and pundits as a graphic example of how Cuba violates the human rights of peaceful political protesters. As such, it would appear that arrested members of the Ladies in White constitute prisoners of conscience. But these analysts have conspicuously ignored an important component of Amnesty International’s definition of “prisoner of conscience,” which states, “We also exclude those people who have conspired with a foreign government to overthrow their own.”
Last August, Wikileaks published a memo dispatched from the US Special Interests Section in Havana to the State Department requesting $5,000 in funding for the Ladies in White. The memo also revealed that the US government had previously funded the group. It is illegal under Cuban law for Cuban organizations to receive funding from the US government, which is not surprising given that Washington’s stated objective for decades has been the overthrow of the Cuban government and socialism. Consequently, imprisoned members of the Ladies in White cannot be considered prisoners of conscience but they could be considered political prisoners that broke the law by receiving funding from the US government.”

Just a few more thoughts, a few more nails in the coffin.

Quote from Fidel Castro, speech at the Polytechnic Institute, University Gamal Abdul Nasser of Conakry (Guinea) May 5, 1972: “Every revolution must have one thing in common,” and that is “the struggle against exploitation, injustice, privileges, backwardness, against any form of injustice and oppression of man.”