CUBA AND THE UN: A FIVE-ACT TRAGEDY REALITY IS WORSE THAN FICTION

In the movie Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick's dark comedy about nuclear war, the character played by the late Peter Sellers snaps indignantly at two colleagues engaged in fisticuffs: ``You can't fight in here! This is the war room!''

Apparently, much the same can be said for the agency of the United Nations that is wrapping up its annual session in Geneva: You can't discuss arbitrary arrests, drumhead trials and summary executions here. This is the Commission on Human Rights!

The difference is that Kubrick's film is black humor, whereas the Geneva drama over Cuba properly belongs to the Theater of the Absurd. Not to mention that one is a movie and the other really happened. Not to mention also that Strangelove is a masterpiece of comedy; the pathetic stage show in Geneva is the stuff of tragedy.

The outcome of the annual vote on human rights by the commission last week has rightly been labeled a setback for Cuba. But, at best, it's a weak victory for human-rights advocates. The anemic resolution that the commission approved fails to mention the wave of repression that has destroyed the hopes by moderates here and in Havana that there is room for peaceful dissent in Cuba.

The scene is the annual meeting of the Human Rights Commission. The players prepare once again to verbally spank Fidel Castro by pleading with him, as they do every year, to please, please, allow a representative to enter Cuba to examine the state of human-rights conditions. Castro, in his favorite role as enfant terrible says that he will refuse, as he has for years.

The scene changes to Havana. The enfant terrible goes on a rampage. He arrests 75 dissidents for . . well, for dissenting . . . peacefully. By putting their dissents in writing. By holding meetings to express dissent. By making available books and articles written by great dissenters such as Martin Luther King Jr. and George Orwell.

(As in Julius Caesar, scene of the bloody climax): In Havana, a few desperate men attempt to shake the grip of a despotic government by resorting to despotic means, hijacking a ferry. They hurt no one, and the crime is thwarted, but with the swift dispatch that only dictatorships can muster, three of the men are arrested-tried-convicted-and-executed in a matter of a few days.

The scene shifts back to Geneva, where absurdity still reigns. A few voices are raised in outrage over the events in Havana. The Costa Rican delegation proposes something more than a slap on the wrist -- a resolution that actually takes into account ''recent events,'' which, in the hidden text, refers to the wave of arrests, the kangaroo courts and the rest of the Stalinist arsenal of repression used by Cuba to quell dissent. The other players turn away in embarrassment. ``This is the Human Rights Commission! We can't talk about that here!''

The sad denouement. After much scurrying back and forth backstage, a vote is held. Castro is slapped on the wrist and asked yet again to allow a human-rights monitor to visit Cuba. Repression in Cuba? As far as the Commission on Human Rights is concerned, it never happened.

Perhaps, in the world of diplomacy, the outcome should have been expected. The approval of a resolution condemning a country is considered a serious matter requiring months of serious work by armies of diplomats. It's a matter of finding just the right language to win enough votes. But blaming the fragile machinery of diplomacy for the failure to condemn Cuba in strong terms cannot justify the pathetic result and raises a host of questions:

Has Cuba repressed human rights? Yes. Even before the ''recent events,'' dissidents were harassed, threatened, jailed. Dissident activity increased, but the dissidents knew that their behavior was officially, barely tolerated -- never sanctioned, and certainly never enshrined in law. The reports of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Freedom House -- and this newspaper -- provide volumes of evidence of Cuba's lack of respect for human rights.

Has the government's behavior worsened? Yes. Without warning, some 75 dissidents were arrested in a matter of days beginning last month. Within weeks, they were tried, convicted and began serving their sentences, an average of 19 years per person. The Stalinist show trials were complete with double agents in the guise of dissidents suddenly revealed as agents of the state, providing phony testimony against their hapless and shocked colleagues. As for the executions, those too have been amply documented.

Has Cuba's recent behavior drawn worldwide condemnation? Yes. Governments, entire continental blocs (the European Union, to name one), human-rights organizations and journalists' groups have condemned the mass arrests and executions.

Has Cuba repented? No. On the contrary. Its government has sought to blame the United States for using the dissidents to subvert the Cuban revolution. Even longtime admirers of Fidel Castro such as Portuguese writer José Saramago have at long last said that they are fed up. Aghast at the executions, Saramago wrote: ``This is as far as I go.''

If none of this impresses the U.N. Human Rights Commission, what will? If this wasn't the right time to condemn Cuba, when?

We arrive, therefore, at the final question: If this isn't the right organization to issue a ringing endorsement of human rights in Cuba on behalf of the world community, what is?

We don't believe that the United Nations is obsolete. It has been, is and will continue to be a force for good. Whether it should be reorganized to be more effective is a worthy topic for another discussion. But the Human Rights Commission's behavior in Geneva proves that even forces for good can be thwarted by human beings bent on evil. The fact that its chair this year is Libya and that several countries with a similarly soiled record of human rights sit on the panel makes this commission less than it should be.

Supporters of Cuban dissidents were right to settle for half a loaf, but we have to ask: If the commission can't use diplomacy to fulfill its most basic mandate -- to spotlight aberrant international behavior and use diplomatic means to redress such behavior -- of what use is diplomacy?

When the issue arises again before the commission, as it surely will, it will be good to remember the events of the last few weeks. The issue is not whether human rights are being abused in Cuba. That question has been asked and answered to the satisfaction of everyone who doesn't wear ideological blinders. The question is whether the commission that is supposed to protect and nurture human rights will be ready to fulfill its duties, or whether, in a world that professes disgust for totalitarian governments, it is already hopelessly out of touch.

A strong condemnation of Cuba would be a signal that, for a change, the world is watching the repugnant actions of Fidel Castro and is ready to declare his government an outcast; that the world understands that Castro's dispute isn't with the United States but with his own people; and that it stands ready to say, with Saramago, ``This is as far as we go.''

Sunday April 20, 2003 - Castro dissidents jailed in reprisals - Turns a defiant face to America and the United Nations - Ed Vulliamy in New York The Observer - [Full Text] Cuba turned a defiant face to America and the United Nations yesterday as both prepared to take action against Fidel Castro for his most forceful and unrelenting crackdown on dissidents in years.

Cuba responded to growing concerns over its sudden, brutal swoop on opposition groups with a curt statement that it would not allow UN envoys to investigate human rights abuses and is studying how to withdraw from a European aid pact.

Some of the most notable voices of dissent in Cuba are among those who have been sentenced to jail for up to 30 years, in trials that saw their closest aides testify against them, having worked as infiltrators.

The clampdown, which began hours before the first US bombs struck Baghdad - leading to fears that Castro was grasping the opportunity to act while world attention was focused on Iraq - involved the summary rounding up and hasty one-day trials of more than 80 economists, librarians and journalists, and the execution last week of three men found guilty of hijacking a ferry in a botched attempt to reach Florida.

Information from groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International suggests the imprisoned include Oscar Espinosa Chepe, the eminent former government economist, sentenced to 20 years after his personal assistant denounced him.

Chepe was a fierce opponent of the US embargo against Cuba, and a supporter of the return from the US of the child Elián González to his father on the island during the fracas of three years ago. 'I just try to be objective,' he told a Florida newspaper last year. 'My message is not black and white.'

The only woman arrested is Marta Beatriz Roque, a former economist, condemned to 20 years, having already served three for writing a pamphlet called 'The Homeland Belongs to Us All', urging a boycott of elections.

One of the heavier sentences - 25 years - was imposed on Hector Palacios, an organiser of the Proyecto Varela, a petition calling the government's bluff on its own terms by demanding a referendum on amnesty and reforms under the Cuban constitution. The petition was delivered last spring and was due a response - which never came - in the autumn. Instead, Palacios was arrested for the third time at his small independent library.

'The list reads like a Who's Who of Cuban civil society,' wrote Aryeh Neier, the president of George Soros's Open Society Institute. 'They are the unsung heroes of a movement to liberate the minds of Cuba.'

Notable by his absence from those arrested was the man who has over the past year become the most prominent and popular dissident - apparently one man Castro dare not touch - Osvaldo Paya, organiser of the Proyecto Varela.

Paya gave his first ever international interview to The Observer last March, and remains free. He said, through an intermediary: 'This is the act of a desperate government. For the first time, the people are beginning to raise their voices in opposition. The government knows this. As the people grow braver, the government is growing more afraid.'

Paya is closely watched. An electrician, he was himself a teenage prisoner at a rock-breaking camp for possessing religious literature. He has had his home - in the poor Havana suburb of Cerrero - ransacked, the Catholic images adorning its walls spray-painted and defiled.

Castro's sudden round-up has left diplomats and analysts astonished that he would be ready to forego a moment of increased dialogue with Europe and the rest of Latin America, as well as one of opportunity for a barren economy, in favour of perceived security.

Cubans accuse the US Interests Section [a surrogate embassy] in Havana, and specifically its present occupant, James Chason, of stoking anti-government activity and destabilising the country. 'He is the person principally responsible for what has happened,' said Cuba's foreign minister, Felipe Pérez Roque.

Chason, denounced by Castro as 'a bully with diplomatic immunity', has turned up the heat by allowing dissidents to use the mission's offices, internet access and even hosted a seminar on political ethics at his home.

'These arrests are a message to the US that Cuba will not permit the US to actively and publicly build the opposition in Cuba,' said Geoff Thale of the Washington Office on Latin America.

The UN is now to debate a motion demanding the release of the dissidents, while the Bush administration is considering tightening the noose around the island with punitive new measures to stop the already limited flow of money to Cuba.

The White House is considering harsher measures, despite the fact that it is itself subject to increasing pressure over its own human rights record over the Afghan prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay - a US-controlled corner of Cuba.

The Bush administration is clearly relieved to have the spotlight of accusation shifted. Secretary of State Colin Powell lashed out at Cuba last week, saying Castro's clampdown 'should be an outrage to every leader in this hemisphere, every leader in the world. Cuba has always had a horrible human rights record, and it's getting worse.'

Bush is expected to make an announcement this week that is likely to restrict the number of Americans - mainly Cuban exiles - eligible for travel to Cuba on charter flights from Miami and New York.

He may also impose further limitations on monetary dispatches that Cubans send to their families at home. These funds, worth an estimated $1.2 billion (£765 million) a year, are a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of Cubans.

Bush is also expected to warn Castro that the US will not play host to a wave of raft people and boat refugees of a kind that has accompanied previous periods of repression.

It was to try to make such a dash for Florida that explains why three men - Lorenzo Castillo, Barbaro García and Jorge Martínez - hijacked a ferry on 2 April.

They were executed by firing squad for their crime nine days ago, having been charged with 'very grave acts of terrorism' and their sentence upheld on appeal by Cuba's Supreme Council.

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That's a good thing you did Fidel. A very good thing.

Cuban citizens celebrate in Havana April 16, 2003 on the 42nd anniversary of a rally where Fidel Castro declared that Cuba would be socialist. Communist-run Cuba has imposed lengthy prison terms on 75 dissidents accused of collaborating with arch-enemy the United States, triggering a storm of international protest. Last Friday it executed three men who hijacked a ferry in a bid to reach Florida. REUTERS/Rafael Perez

Fidel Castro - Cuba

U.N. commission just a club for mutual protection***What an outrage! The U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which was meant to be a key safeguard against the atrocities that rocked the world in the 20th century, is rapidly becoming a club of mutual protection of some of the world's most repressive regimes.

It sounds like a joke, but the world's top human rights body is chaired by Libya, a regime that hasn't had a free election in the past 34 years, one that engages in forced disappearances, assassination of political opponents, torture and long-term detention of dissidents after make-believe trials by the Peoples' Courts.

And the commission's 53-member nations include some of the world's worst human rights abusers, including Algeria, Burundi, China, Cuba, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Togo and Vietnam. ***

January 21, 2003 - Libya Wins Vote to Chair UN Rights Body *** LIBYA yesterday was elected to chair the UN's top human rights body despite fierce opposition from the United States which regards Tripoli as a rogue state with a dismal rights record. Libyan Ambassador Najat Al-Hajjaji won support from 33 of the 53-member UN Human Rights Commission, while three countries voted against and 17 abstained in a precedent-setting vote called by the United States.

The vote marked a break from the practice of agreeing to appointments by consensus and underscored US opposition to Tripoli's candidacy, mostly over the 1988 bombing of a PanAm jetliner over Lockerbie. "Libya's government continues to commit serious human rights violations," US Ambassador Kevin Moley told reporters after the meeting, adding that Libya did not deserve "a leadership role in the UN system". In Tripoli, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassuna al-Shawsh hailed the outcome of the vote as a "shining victory" adding that it showed that "Libya has a clean sheet with regard to human rights."

Libya, the sole candidate, was proposed by South Africa on behalf of the African group, whose turn it was to make the nomination under a system of annual rotation among the five main geographical regions. The ambassador from Israel, which is not a commission member, condemned the selection of a country "which has ordered the downing of two passenger airlines and the bombing of a discotheque in Europe". Ambassador Yaakov Levy was referring to the Lockerbie bombing that killed 259 people onboard and 11 on the ground, as well as the 1989 downing of a UTA plane over Niger in which 170 people died, and an attack on a West Berlin disco in 1986. Levy said the selection "marks a new low in the cynical manipulation of UN bodies by parties who preach human rights to others but refrain from practising them at home". The US ambassador also said it was time to "begin rebuilding the UN Commission on Human Rights into a body that fulfills its original mandate to champion democracy, freedom and the human rights of all people". Other than the United States, Canada voted against Libya's candidacy, according to the US ambassador. ***

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