Posted on 03/21/2002 2:32:57 AM PST by kattracks
(CNSNews.com) - President George W. Bush condemned Cuba as "an incredibly repressive regime" on Wednesday, and he urged the United Nations Human Rights Commission to condemn the government of Fidel Castro.
Speaking at a news conference with Latin American reporters, the president said he would urge the U.N. Human Rights Commission to vote against Cuba when a human rights resolution comes up during the UN meeting in Geneva.
The United States was dropped from the U.N. Human Rights Commission last year, and therefore it is not entitled to vote or present proposals or resolutions.
"I'm just going to remind the Human Rights Commission to remember that Cuba is an incredibly repressive regime. It's the one non-democratic government in the Western Hemisphere," said the president.
The UN commission meetings began on Tuesday and will continue through April 26.
President Bush said the Cuban people have suffered because of Castro's dictatorship.
"They put people in prison if they don't agree with you. There's no rule of law there. It's the rule of one person. He's been there for a long period of time and, unfortunately, the people of that country are suffering as a result of him," he said.
President Bush made the comments ahead of a trip to Latin America. He leaves on Thursday, stopping first in Monterrey, Mexico, for a United Nations conference. He'll then travel to Lima, Peru, for meetings with regional leaders; and then San Salvador where he is expected to discuss a free trade agenda with Central American leaders.
Last year, the United Nations Human Rights Commission narrowly approved a resolution denouncing human rights violations in Cuba. The resolution, introduced by the Czech Republic, expressed "deep concern about continuing repression of members of the political opposition" in Cuba.
The Castro government angrily reacted by accusing the Czech delegation of "doing America's dirty work."
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque condemned the U.N. Human Rights Commission as a tool of the United States and demanded that it be reformed.
Lashing out at the group, he denounced it for "continuing to be an instrument at the service of the interests of the United States and its allies'' and criticized what he called Washington's "pathological inability'' to accept Cuba as an independent nation.
He demanded to know why the United States pursued allegations against Cuba while it refused to condemn what he called "the flagrant, large-scale human rights violations committed by the Israeli army against the Palestinian people.''
Cuba, by contrast, has a clean human rights record, Perez argued.
"Can anybody mention a single case of torture, murder or disappearance in Cuba?'' he asked. "Does anyone know of a single case of journalists assassinated in Cuba, or of the kidnapping of children, the sale of children or child slavery? Has anyone ever heard of a death squad in Cuba?"
Perez said the U.N. Human Rights Commission had become the last U.S. battlefield against Cuba after 40 years of U.S. blockade and economic war against Havana.
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Words fail me.
Showdown over U.S. Cuba policy nears --President Bush, Otto Reich and Sally Grooms Cowal.
Capitalism's on the sly in Cuba--[Excerpt] By way of explanation for his illicit trade, he holds up his right hand and says, "Look at this." His thumb and two adjacent fingers are missing. Six years ago, Miguel caught his wrist in the bakery mixer, badly mangling it. A month later, his fingers were amputated because he could not afford the three pills needed daily to induce circulation. They cost $1 apiece, and, at the time, he was paid in bread -- six loaves a day. [End Excerpt]
It's too bad Bush can't realize that ALL communist dictatorships are bad.
Because they never support the propaganda.
Who ever said China is O.K.? These are two different countries that need to be dealt with differently.
China issues stern warning over US actions on Taiwan [Full Text] BEIJING (AFP) - China has starkly warned the United States that a "freezing wind" was chilling relations because of Washington's policy towards Taiwan, putting at risk newly-improved bilateral ties.
Washington put good relations "in jeopardy" with a string of actions this month, most notably allowing Taiwan's defence minister to attend a conference in Florida, Chinese media said.
"A freezing wind is blowing in China-U.S. relations," warned an angry and strongly-worded commentary by the official Xinhua news agency late Tuesday.
The statement came shortly after CIA director George Tenet said Beijing considered Washington a threat to its influence in East Asia.
"China is developing an increasingly competitive economy and building a modern military force with the ultimate objective of asserting itself as a great power in east Asia," he said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on the worldwide threats facing the United States.
"It fears we are gaining regional influence at China's expense and it views our encouragement of a Japanese military role in counter-terrorism as support for Japanese rearmament," he added.
China has been particularly enraged by the US decision to allow Taiwan's Defense Minister Tang Yao-ming to participate in an arms summit this month and to meet key US officials while in the United States.
The US ambassador to Beijing has twice been called in for dressings down over the issue while a state-controlled newspaper reported Monday that China was preparing to cancel naval exchanges with the United States in retaliation.
However, the Xinhua commentary used perhaps the strongest language unleashed by China on the United States since relations began improving following Beijing's backing for the US-led war on terrorism.
Ties warmed still further during US President George W. Bush's visit to Beijing last month, the article noted.
"However, since the beginning of March, what the US government has done with regard to bilateral ties is putting them in jeopardy with its erroneous move," it thundered.
However, the Xinhua commentary used perhaps the strongest language unleashed by China on the United States since relations began improving following Beijing's backing for the US-led war on terrorism.
Ties warmed still further during US President George W. Bush's visit to Beijing last month, the article noted.
"However, since the beginning of March, what the US government has done with regard to bilateral ties is putting them in jeopardy with its erroneous move," it thundered.
"The US government must correct this serious mistake and put up no new barriers to the development of China-US relations."
The commentary condemned a recently-leaked US review of its nuclear arms policy listing China as a potential target and Taiwan as the likely flashpoint.
"These perfidious acts by the US side... interfere in China's internal affairs and represent a provocation to the Chinese people."
Tenet had also spotlighted China as a proliferator of missile technology, selling know how to Pakistan, Iran and several other countries.
"We are closely watching Beijing's compliance with its bilateral commitment in 1996 not to assist unsafeguarded nuclear facilities, and its pledge in 1997 not to provide any new nuclear cooperation to Iran," he said.
Analysts have warned that while relations appear to have improved in recent months, Beijing and Washington remain at odds over a series of issues, notably Taiwan, and that the strain was bound to show sooner or later.
In tone, the commentary seemd a direct throwback to the bleak days around the start of Bush's presidency, and last year's crisis after the collision between a US surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet.
"Some people in the United States fancy themselves smart by making use of Taiwan to contain China," the article fumed. "But they are actually coming to a dead end and will end up finding themselves stupid without gaining the benefits they had desired."
China exerts influence in Latin America--[Excerpt] China-Cuban trade already stands at some $500 million annually. Just prior to Jiang's arrival on the island, Havana and Beijing signed an accord in the "electronics, infomatics and telecommunications sector," according to Cuban sources.
Although no mention was made of any military use of China's high-tech aid to Cuba, some observers are uneasy about Beijing's increasingly sophisticated technological assistance to Havana.
Beijing is in possession of advanced technology from U.S., western European and Russian sources -- and some sources claim that China is already operating a spy base in Cuba similar to the Russian surveillance facility at Lourdes.[Excerpt]
Derbyshire: SORRY STATE (Communist, Nationalist, and Dangerous)-- This psychopathological aspect of Chinese nationalism was on display in the Hainan affair. Chinese e-mail forums buzzed with demands for the captured U.S. servicemen to be beaten, or sentenced to life imprisonment. Years of relentless propaganda about historical grievances, real and imagined, and the need to restore ancient glories, have created a febrile atmosphere of hyperpatriotic agitation to which it is hard to think of any Western parallel other than the banal and obvious ones of early-20th century fascism.
………The Chinese people respond eagerly to these ultra-nationalist appeals: That is precisely why the leadership makes them. Resentment of the U.S., and a determination to enforce Chinese hegemony in Asia, are well-nigh universal among modern mainland Chinese. These emotions trump any desire for constitutional government, however much people dislike the current regime for its corruption and incompetence. Find a mainlander, preferably one under the age of thirty, and ask him which of the following he would prefer: for the Communists to stay in power indefinitely, unreformed, but in full control of the "three T's" (Tibet, Turkestan, Taiwan); or a democratic, constitutional government without the three T's. His answer will depress you. You can even try this unhappy little experiment with dissidents: same answer.[End Excerpt]
Those who are not familiar with Castro's slave labor trade might "be shocked to learn that these musicians (The Buena Vista Social Club) are not reaping any of the fruits of their labor and talent...50% goes to its producer, Ry Cooder; 45 % to the Cuban government; 5% to non-Cuban technical staff, and zero % for the Cuban performers!" (Cuba in revolution, page 213.) All they get is the joy to travel out of Cuba, (while their families remain as hostages in Cuba) food and some clothes to make them presentable to the public.
The scam works in this way, to invest in Cuba the foreign entrepreneurs must give to Fidel Castro majority control in the ownership of the company and they are not allowed to hire directly any Cuban worker, they must do it through Castro. The salary is from $400 to $500 dollars monthly and is paid to a Castro's agent, then, Castro pays the Cuban worker 400 to 500 Cuban worthless pesos that in the official exchange is 25 Cuban pesos per dollar. In other words, the Cuban worker receives the equivalent of $16 to $20 dollars a month in Cuban currency, Castro keeps for himself over 95% of the salary received by each Cuban employed by a foreign company!
In fact according to U.S. laws, what Mr. Cooder is doing is being involved in a bribe of 45% to Castro in order to be able to exploit those poor Cubans. That is against U.S. laws that forbid bribing foreign functionaries in order to close business deals and also against international labor laws that prohibit the garnish of workers' salaries by companies or government entities.
Everyone involved in business with Castro is accepting him as a partner in the slave labor trade. [End]
English scholar Hugh Thomas espcialized in Cuban history, affirmed in The Spectator in 7,12,1986 referring to the Castro’s regime: “The comparison must be made with the Nazi concentration camps. Although there are as yet no gas chambers in Cuba, there has have been experiments of a criminal biological type designed to see how far an individual can survive starvation, beatings, solitary confinement, and many various kinds of ill treatment. Valladares’s account of working in a stone quarry is not dissimilar to, and no more humanae than, the many accounts of extant of ‘life’ in Manthausen. Nor should one forget that the brutalities in nazi Germany lasted at most 12 years and the gross cruelties in the Auschwitz camp continue for four years.”
Armando Valladares, is a Cuban poet and writer, who was released in 1982 form Cuba’s political dungeons, after twenty-two years’ imprisonment, of a thirty years sentence, thanks to a worldwide campaign and the direct intervention of the French President, Francois Mitterrand. His book "Against All Hope" is a must read for every freedom loving person and has been translated to many languages, just now came out a new edition. Valladares expressed in very heartfelt word what the Western Christian’s naiveté and about Third World Marxist Revolutions and the use of double standards in judging regimes meant to those who suffer: “During those years, with the purpose of forcing us to abandon our religious believes and to demoralize us, the Cuban Communist indoctrinators repeatedly used the statements made by some representatives of American Christian churches. Every time a pamphlet was published in support of Castro’s dictatorship, a translation would reach us, and that was worse for the Christian political prisoners than the beatings or the hunger. Incomprehensible to us, while we waited for the embrace of solidarity from our brothers in Christ, those who were embraced were our tormentors.” (Humberto Belli, “Breaking Faith” page 247.)
President Ronald Reagan appointed Valladares as Ambassador in charge of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission and under his leadership Cuba was condemned for the first times for their brutal violations of human rights.
Don't these people feel ashamed that this is the kind of regime they want to prop up with American taxpayers hard-earned money.
Primarily, Montes de Oca was worried about his son, twelve years old. The boy had been badly beaten a number of times at school, by older boys who are sons of "patriotic" military personnel. This occurred with the apparent blessing of the authorities. Police were dogging the son to and from school. Montes de Oca's highest hope was that the boy would be allowed to leave the country to receive medical care: He suffers from a hernia affecting his testicles, and also from a twisted spine. Both conditions require surgery. The boy is denied treatment, however, because he is the son of an oppositionist.
Montes de Oca has endured persecution that can hardly be imagined. "Why do you persist?" I asked him. "Why do you take these risks? How can you be so brave?" He answered, "There are many brave people in Cuba, both men and women. We have always been faithful: a faithful community, a faithful people. We take our strength from the Bible. We believe in love, justice, and peace. We take God's truth to the darkest and loneliest places of human existence, like the prisons." And what he did he want from Americans, I asked, beyond specific help for his son? "I would like them to remember their principles: their sense of unity, justice, and liberty, maintained over so many years." Last, he wished to say, "Human rights cannot exist without God."
Three days later, on May 8, he was indeed rearrested. In the afternoon, he spoke with supporters in the United States, wanting to provide as much information as possible, and then he went to the home of a fellow oppositionist. In the night, state security broke in and hauled both men off. No one has heard from Montes de Oca again; his family, at this writing, has been denied any information about him, and they fear the worst. [End Excerpt]
Valladares has a ready answer to this business of "good things," given with patience and weariness: Say these things have been accomplished (which is laughable, but leave that aside). Could they not have been accomplished without torturing people? Without imprisoning them? Without denying them all rights? Is material well-being incompatible with human freedom? Besides which, few people go out of their way to stress the material achievements of other dictators; autobahns and so forth. The likes of Jose Serrano do not pause to acknowledge Chile's economic explosion. And then there is the matter of Castro's sheer longevity as dictator. Says Valladares, "I was talking to an American, A Democrat, the other day. I said to him, 'How would you like it if Richard Nixon got to be president for over forty years?' The man almost shrieked in horror."
American celebrities who trot to Cuba almost never see the country in which Cubans have to live; they see a Potemkin Cuba, set up for visitors and off-limits to Cubans. Outright leftists from America have always journeyed to Havana, to use and be used: Robert Redford and Ed Asner, Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee (two congresswomen from California). Other pilgrims, however, are less malicious than they are trendy and naïve: Leonardo DiCaprio, Woody Harrelson, an assortment of pop musicians. A few years ago, the fashion models Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss had an audience with Castro. Campbell hailed the dictator as "a source of inspiration to the world." Castro complimented the ladies on their "spirituality." Jack Nicholson, too, had a high time in Cuba. He drank choice rum, smoke choice cigars, and buddied for three hours with Castro, afterward pronouncing Cuba "a paradise."
Such behavior may seem merely ridiculous, but it is not without its effect on dissidents. Valladares confirms the obvious: that it demoralizes them terribly. "It demoralizes not only the resistance inside Cuba, but all of us who have struggled for many years while we wait for the solidarity of those who believe in democracy." He may wait for that solidarity a long time. The likes of Naomi Campbell and Jack Nicholson, sadly, have far more influence on Americans than Armando Valladares ever could. [End Excerpt]
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