3-17-05, 12:54 pm

This week's opening of the 61st Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights began with a call by the Cuban delegation for major reform in the Commission.

In thinly veiled references to the 'selectivity, polarization, blackmail, double morals and hypocrisy' employed by the large countries on the panel – mainly the UK and the United States – to accomplish their political objectives, the Cuban delegation insisted that the deteriorating human rights situation in the world required a new course.

Cuba's Minister of Foreign Affairs Felipe Pérez Roque spoke at the 61st session of the United Nations Commission on Human rights and his statement was followed by an unusually loud ovation. But Perez Roque didn't let Europeans of the hook. He accused the European Union of abdicating its responsibility to human rights by refusing to support a resolution 'that proposed to investigate the massive, flagrant and systematic human rights violations still committed today against over 500 prisoners at the naval base that the United States keeps, against the will of the Cuban people, in the Harbor of Guantánamo.' The EU delegates blocked the resolution in a show of 'hypocrisy and double standards.' Perez Roque also lashed out at the Bush administration’s concepts of permanent and preemptive wars and the system of economic inequality that rules the globe. 'For a small group of nations represented here,' Perez Roque pointed out, 'the United States and other developed allies [have] the right to peace has already been achieved. They will always be the attackers and never the ones under attack. Their peace rests on their military power. They have also achieved economic development, based on the pillage of the wealth of the other poor countries that were former colonies, which suffer and bleed to death for those to squander. However, in those developed countries, incredible as it may seem, the unemployed, the immigrants and the impoverished do not enjoy the rights that are most certainly guaranteed for the rich.'

Perez Roque also despaired at the thought the US might change its ways soon and engage in real and constructive dialogue about remedies to the deteriorating situation.

Cuba's foreign minister added a moving accolade to the struggles of the Cuban people and of the real meaning of human rights: The Cuban people strongly believe in freedom, democracy and human rights. It took them a lot to achieve them and are aware of its price. It is a people in power. That is the difference.

There cannot be democracy without social justice. There is no possible freedom if not based on the enjoyment of education and culture. Ignorance is the cumbersome shackle squeezing the poor. Being cultivated is the only way to be free! – that is the sacred tenet that we Cubans learned from the Apostle of our independence.

There is no real enjoyment of human rights if there is no equality and equity. The poor and the rich will never have the same rights in real life, proclaimed and recognized as these may be on paper.

That is what we Cubans learned long ago and for that reason we built a different country. And we are just beginning. We have done so despite the aggressions, the blockade, the terrorist attacks, the lies and the plots to assassinate Fidel. We know that the Empire is chagrined by this. We are a dangerous example: we are a symbol that only in a just and friendly society; that is, socialist, can there be enjoyment of all rights for all citizens. Perez Roque also sounded a stern warning to the Bush administration that threats against Cuba's national sovereignty or any attacks on that country's right to exist will be met with fierce resistance. He closed by promising Cuba's continued willingness to fight for a Commission on Human Rights that defends equality and justice and peace, not the political goals of big nations.