Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Cuba. Published in the daily Granma, 8 November 2004.
- Individuals tried in 2003 were not “independent” activists but mercenaries who received orders and money from the U.S. government.
On November 4, the U.S. State Department released a press note titled: “Cuba: the Human Rights Situation,” in which the usual lies, calumnies and charges of alleged human rights abuses have been marshaled against Cuba.
The note affirms that in March 2003 Cuba launched a total raid against independent civil society activists. The State Department is brazenly lying. In virtue of our laws, the Cuban courts sanctioned not activists, but mercenaries who were receiving orders and copious amounts of money from the U.S. government to undertake illegal acts within Cuba in the service of its policy of blockade and aggression against our homeland. In any country, including the United States, conspiring with a foreign power likewise constitutes a crime.
With a certain logic, after learning of the incredible aberrations and human rights violations committed in Iraqi prisons and on the illegal Guantánamo Naval Base, international public opinion would have hoped that the U.S. government would assume a position of greater rationality and lesser arrogance at the hour of judging the human rights situation in any country of the world. However, barely two days after the U.S. elections, it is rapidly reinitiating its attacks on Cuba in a strange manner.
The U.S. government does not have the most minimal moral authority for accusing Cuba. The U.S. government is the greatest violator of human rights in the world. It is that government which, via a cruel, inhumane and genocidal blockade, has been violating the human rights of the entire Cuban people for more than 40 years. It is President Bush who has ferociously intensified this aggressive and hostile policy to unprecedented levels in his obsession to destroy the Cuban Revolution.
Our people are perfectly aware that Bush and his closest associates from the anti-Cuban mafia are angered by the example that Cuba represents in terms of social justice, genuine democracy and respect for human rights. We represent a viable political, economic and social policy that is completely counterposed to the ideals of world domination and unilateral hegemonism that the present leaders of the U.S. government are trying to impose.
It is the U.S. administration that, in flagrant violation of the principles of international law, is creating, organizing, and funding groups of unscrupulous mercenaries with an annexationist vocation to undertake illegal activities in conjunction with the U.S. Interests Section in Havana against the constitutional order of the Republic of Cuba.
It is the U.S. government that allows anti-Cuban organizations to plan, organize and execute acts of terrorism against Cuba from U.S. territory, while unjustly imprisoning five young Cuban anti-terrorist fighters, subjected to incredibly harsh conditions of confinement and isolation.
It is the U.S. administration that is violating the rights of millions of U.S. citizens by prohibiting them from traveling to Cuba, from doing business with our country or simply appreciating Cuban art and culture. Once again it is confirmed that they fear the work of the Revolution and for that reason are left with the sole resource of lying.
They are repeating an error if they believe that spurious accusations and diatribes against Cuba are going to change the course of Revolution and the unbreakable decision of our people to defend their independence to the last drop of blood.
We regret that we have been obliged to state these truths so soon after the November 2 elections.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Havana
5 November 2004
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