4-15-05, 3:05 pm

'The US has no moral authority to condemn Cuba on human rights issues,' reads a recent editorial in Britain’s The Guardian. The comment came after 21 of the 53 members of the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) voted to adopt a resolution pushed by the US calling for a UN representative to investigate the situation on human rights in the island country.

Thirty-two of the members of the commission voted against or abstained on the resolution.

Cuban Foreign Affairs Minister Felipe Perez Roque denounced the outcome of the vote stating, 'Cuba does not recognize the legitimacy of the resolution, much less will cooperate in any form with the spurious mandate it establishes.'

In the wake of a call for reforms of the UNCHR due to declining credibility by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Cuba provided the passage of this resolution as a prime example. The resolution, Havana said, was a scandalous, selective and discriminatory manipulation, because there were no just reasons to impose a resolution on Cuba.

Condemning the anti-Cuba resolution because it stemmed from 'the world’s most obstinate and largest human rights violator,' Cuba’s Foreign Minister pointed to the enormous pressures the US put on UNCHR delegates to get passage of its resolution.

One country that bowed to that pressure was Mexico. The Mexican daily El Universal quoted Roque as saying that Mexico 'opted for confrontation with Cuba,' and had 'negotiated its vote against Cuba, trading it for the [Organization of American States] secretary general’s post.'

In the highly controversial effort to select a consensus leader of the OAS, the inexperienced US-backed candidate, Mexico’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ernesto Derbez is in a tie with the Chilean Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza, who strongly opposed Bush’s war on Iraq.

In a charged editorial for the Jamaica Observer, Cuban ambassador to Jamaica Gisela García Rivera wondered if the passage of the resolution didn’t further reduce the credibility of the UNCHR.

'Are we talking about the same commission that has failed to even raise a discussion on human rights violations in developed countries? Ask the African Americans in the prisons of the United States!' she wrote. Much of the work of the commission, García Rivera added, was 'a result of political manipulation and double standards. It is also a reflection of the inequities in the world in which we live. It is a kind of court of the inquisition trying countries of the South and all who oppose the Empire.'

If the US was really interested in human rights, the Bush administration 'would not force the vote for an anti-Cuban resolution with promises of financial aid, direct or veiled threats to block loans and grants from international financial institutions, pressure to withdraw bilateral trade and immigration concessions or simply intimidating the countries on political matters of vital importance to them.'

García Rivera expressed sarcastic amusement at Bush’s interest in human rights. The Bush administration is 'responsible for some of the most serious, wide-ranging human rights violations in the whole history of humanity.'

Meanwhile, Cuba has prepared a more relevant resolution for consideration by the UNCHR demanding an independent and impartial investigation into the situation of the prisoners currently held at the Guantánamo Naval Base in eastern Cuba.

The resolution, if passed, would require the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to submit a report in the next period of sessions on the situation of the people being held at Guantánamo Bay based on UN-led investigations.

Cuba expects a vote on the matter next week.

Havana has also denounced the embarrassed silence of the Bush administration surrounding the request for asylum by Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative suspected of planting a bomb on a Cuban airliner in 1976 that killed 73 civilians, killings of tourists in Cuba, and other terrorist activities aimed at Cuba.

In a nationally broadcast speech in Cuba earlier this week, President Fidel Castro asserted that to accept Posada Carriles’ request for asylum while claiming to fight international terrorism is the height of hypocrisy. Castro also stated that Cuba doesn’t want Posada Carriles returned to them, but that he should be tried in an international court.

Castro also refused to call for the death penalty.



--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs. Reach him at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.