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MINREX
STATEMENT
• The 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,
November 5,
2004 (Granma)
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