Cuban+reply+to+USA+in+UN+debate+on+Human+Rights+Council

Permanent Mission of the Republic of Cuba to the United Nations
==STATEMENT BY AMBASSADOR ILEANA NÚÑEZ MORDOCHE, DEPUTY PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF CUBA, IN EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT OF REPLY TO THE UNITED STATES IN THE SESSION OF THE PLENARY FOR THE ADOPTION OF DRAFT RESOLUTION A/60/L.48 ENTITLED “HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL”. NEW YORK, 15 MARCH 2006==

Mr. President:

The United States cannot reply to Cuba and Venezuela because it lacks arguments and morale to do so.

The empire persists in its stubborn tradition of proclaiming itself morally superior, in order to accuse and defame those who defend human dignity.

Its demagogy intends to turn the main massive violator of all human rights, who does not recognize the right to development and not even the right to health, into their great supporter and undisputed champion of their defense.

While it continues to draft long reports on others and repeating hollow and hypocritical speeches, the Bush Administration claims the right to practice torture as an instrument in the fight against terrorism, to make arbitrary detentions and to deny their most basic rights to numerous human beings from simple suspicions of links to terrorism, to spy on its own citizens and even to bomb cities in the name of freedom and democracy.

How can a country like the US demand conditions to become a member of the Human Rights Council?

The US government has no morale to demand anything from any nation in human rights matters. Let us recall that just a few weeks ago, when analyzing the violations committed in the detention center of the US government based in the territory that it illegally occupies in Guantánamo, five special mechanisms of the CHR condemned this government’s attempts to legalize torture, to proclaim itself judge, prosecutor and defense lawyer, and to violate international human rights instruments which Washington itself is part of.

With what morale can the US government demand anything from any nation in human rights matters when its military gives inhumane treatment to prisoners at everybody’s sight in the Abu Graib prisons, and desecrate and offend the most sacred feelings of the Muslims of the entire world?

What lessons of human rights promotion and protection can give us those who abandoned thousands of their compatriots to their fate when Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana?

Mr. President:

Cuba considers unacceptable that a country or a group of countries arrogate the right to interpret the text of the resolution their own way, especially if it is to satisfy the interests and craves of the US government, which, as we have stated, is a systematic and massive human rights violator.

We would like to see if the European Union, the Group made up by Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and other countries that have expressed their whimsical interpretation of the text, will oppose to the presence of the US, who is a systematic and massive human rights violator, in the Council.

Let us expose once and for all so many lies. The US attacks our country for political reasons, precisely because we defend, protect and promote all human rights of the Cuban women and men.

The defamation of the Cuban Revolution is due to the forced seek to justify the obtuse policy of blockade against our country, and not because human rights are violated in Cuba.

There is a true participative democracy in Cuba for its people, and a serious commitment to the improvement of its indicators of social and economic development.

It is the Cuban people the one that cooperates with its brothers and sisters from all over the world and the one that freely builds its present and future. There will not be backing down on this way, despite the opposition and aggressiveness of the largest power in history.

Thank you very much.