Cuba: Executions meant to deter migration

HAVANA -The Cuban government Friday justified the recent executions of three men who hijacked a ferry as an effort to avert a ''migration crisis'' that, according to the foreign minister, could result in a ''war'' with the United States.

Speaking to reporters, Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque said that ''we were obliged by the circumstances under which the country is living, and with pain'' to carry out the executions, which he labeled a ``last resort.''

The executions, he said, were intended to dissuade other would-be hijackers and nip in the bud an ensuing exodus across the Straits of Florida that would create a confrontation with the U.S. government.

''This is an exceptional step, a painful measure taken as a last resort and founded on the hope of avoiding great loss of life and costs for both countries,'' Pérez Roque said, ``impeding a migratory crisis that would end in a war between both countries.''

The executions followed a wave of detentions and convictions of about 75 Cuban dissidents on charges of subversion. Pérez Roque Friday warned those dissidents who have not been arrested to be careful because there would be no ''impunity'' for anyone who commits treason.

His comments marked the first effort by the government of Fidel Castro to address the executions, which, together with the wave of repression, have drawn an extraordinary round of condemnation from a number of nations and human rights organizations.

Pérez Roque also boasted that the U.N. Human Rights Commission's failure to condemn Cuba for its recent crackdown affirmed the island leadership's belief in the right to defend itself from attempts to subvert its system.

''The unquestionable majority vote is a clear signal from the Human Rights Commission that Cuba has the right to apply its own laws,'' Pérez Roque told a news conference. ``This was a resonant victory for Cuba, and we express our profound satisfaction.''

The top United Nations human rights watchdog on Thursday rejected a proposed amendment criticizing the crackdown on opponents, instead approving 24-20 a milder resolution calling for a U.N. rights monitor to visit the island. There were nine abstentions.

The 53-nation U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which regularly criticizes Cuba on its rights record, voted 31-15 during its meeting in Geneva against condemning the communist island's monthlong drive against dissidents and other opponents.

The rejected amendment expressed ''deep concern about the recent detention, summary prosecution and harsh sentencing of numerous members of the political opposition'' and called for them to be released.

Although Pérez Roque acknowledged that the final measure was not a condemnation of Cuba, he said his country would not comply with it.

The milder resolution urged the Caribbean nation to accept a visit by U.N. human rights investigator, French jurist Christine Chanet. Cuba has previously refused to allow Chanet to visit, claiming such a visit could infringe on its sovereignty.

Meanwhile, the Cuban government said Friday it will survive if the American government suspends the family remittances that Cuban Americans send their relatives here and grounds the direct flights linking the United States and Cuba.

''More than four decades of revolution have shown that our country is capable of confronting any threat and overcoming all kinds of sinister plans,'' the nation's leadership said in an editorial in the Communist Party daily Granma.

''Any difficulties caused by the prohibition of remittances and flights to Cuba, affecting an incalculable number of people in Cuba as well as the United States,'' will be difficulties for the U.S. government, not the Cuban leadership, the editorial said.

Cuba was responding to recent news reports that the administration of President Bush was reviewing possible punitive measures -- including suspension of the remittances and flights -- to punish the island nation for its recent crackdown on the opposition.

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January 21, 2003 - Libya Wins Vote to Chair UN Rights Body [Full Text] 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.

THE third country was not immediately known. Diplomatic sources had hinted ahead of Monday's meeting that Libya was likely to survive the vote, indicating that the European Union states were likely to abstain. Seven EU states are currently members of the Commission. The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) had also opposed Libya's candidacy and lobbied South Africa, Senegal and Nigeria to select a country that "respects the Commission and its rapporteurs," said HRW spokeswoman Loubna Freih. She added that the procedure could hardly be called an election since there had been just one candidate. HRW and the Paris-based Federation of International Human Rights Groups (FIDH) have questioned the credibility of the way the Commission's members and leading positions are appointed.

Established in 1946, the world's highest human rights body meets annually for six weeks here to shed light on abuses worldwide. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio Vieira de Mello cut short a visit to Africa, his first field mission since taking over the job last September, to return to Geneva for the meeting. In his opening speech, the UN official told members that the session offered "a unique opportunity for the Commission to demonstrate that it can manage with wisdom, speed and restraint its procedural business". Washington has itself only just returned to the UN Commission's fold after losing its seat in 2001, in a move widely regarded at the time as punishment to the United States for its perceived unilateralism in foreign policy.

Absent in 2002, and after intense lobbying, the US managed to win re-election for 2003. The UN Commission will hold its annual meeting from March 17 to April 25, during which it will examine reports on human rights in several countries. [End]

Earlier this month, while Iraq was dominating the news, Fidel Castro quietly imprisoned nearly 100 of Cuba's dissidents, independent journalists, human rights activists and intellectuals. Oscar Elias Biscet, for instance, a doctor and one of Cuba's best-known activists, was sentenced to 25 years in jail. Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello, a 56-year-old economist who leads an umbrella organization of 300 human rights groups, was sentenced to 20 years; as was independent journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who has written about the Cuban economy for U.S. Web sites. Cuban authorities accuse the defendants of collaborating in a U.S.-led scheme to undermine the country's government. The charges are baseless. But convictions were rammed through in farcical "trials" nevertheless.

Back at home, the Canadian government issued a statement decrying the "severity" of the recent crackdown. But Jean Chrétien made clear he still wants good relations. "I know there is a problem of human rights in that country ... sometimes it's better, sometimes it's bad ... and we're protesting. But it's better to be engaged because that's putting pressure," the Prime Minister told a news conference last week. "I believe it's better to be engaged and talking than to ignore the problem ... I know that if you don't do anything it could be much worse."

Engagement with Cuba has been the official line in Ottawa for decades. Pierre Elliott Trudeau was famously chummy with the Cuban dictator, and left-wing Canadian politicos have been sucking up to Havana ever since -- mostly as a means to demonstrate Canada's moral superiority to the United States.

Indeed, Canada indirectly helps prop up Cuba's government in a number of ways. From 1994 to 1999, the federal Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) provided $34-million in development assistance to Cuba. Last November, CIDA pledged $750,000 over six years toward a University of New Brunswick project to help Cuba create a biomedical engineering education program. Last October, CIDA made a three-year, $2.9-million commitment to a training program for Cuban workers run by the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.

Moreover, in the 2000-2001 fiscal year, Canadian taxpayers paid about $30-million to cover Canadian exports to Cuba that el jefe máximo could not or would not pay for. Canada has also granted Cuba what amounts to a $14-million line of credit to help pay for Canadian agricultural imports.

As noted above, Mr. Chrétien justifies propping up Mr. Castro's dictatorship under the theory that "it's better to be engaged because that's putting pressure." But in this regard, we'd like to direct the Prime Minister's attention to a brilliant piece of historical analysis published by Cuba expert Ann Louise Bardach in last Sunday's New York Times. As Ms. Bardach shows, it is exactly at those junctures when Cuba was most "engaged" with the West that Mr. Castro -- fearing glasnost might undermine his authoritarian rule -- took deliberate steps to cement his rogue status.

In the 1970s, when the United States was signalling a willingness to end its Cuban embargo, Mr. Castro sent troops to Angola. In 1980, when Jimmy Carter opened a de facto embassy in Havana, Mr. Castro flooded Florida with refugees.

In 1996, when Bill Clinton's administration was set to sign migration and drug interdiction accords with Havana, Cuba shot down two planes operated by a U.S.-based exile group. Mr. Castro's latest move fits in perfectly with this pattern. In recent years, pressure to permit agricultural exports and travel to Cuba has grown stronger in Washington. Leading elements of the politically powerful Cuban exile community in south Florida are leaning toward engagement with Mr. Castro's regime as well. Thus came the recent crackdown in Havana, which has destroyed any hope of détente.

We admit the decision whether to engage a dictatorship through diplomacy and commerce is complex. In some cases -- China, for instance -- engagement has gone hand in hand with at least some measure of political reform. And even in the case of North Korea, the world's most totalitarian nation, the United States had until recently provided power and food as a bribe to prevent nuclear weapons development. But in the case of Cuba, the historical record cited above suggests that Canada's decades-old policy of engagement is not only morally objectionable, it is also counterproductive in practical terms.

Mr. Castro's latest outrage provides Ottawa with a good opportunity to review its policy toward Cuba. Where this hemisphere's last true dictatorship is concerned, Mr. Chrétien's mantra -- "if you don't do anything it could be much worse" -- seems not merely incorrect, but the exact opposite of the truth.

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