Cuban Parliament Speaker: US Should Be Criticized.

Deutsche Presse via Bloomberg no url | 4/29/3

[NativeNewYorker]

Havana (dpa) - The speaker of the Cuban National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, on Tuesday questioned those who have criticized Cuba's recent clampdown on dissidents and its execution of three hijackers but fail to do the same about Washington's policy of ``extra-legal executions''.

In a front-page article entitled ``No problem'' in the official Communist party daily Granma, Alarcon referred to a remark made by U.S. President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address on January 28.

In that speech, Bush spoke about the hunt for terrorists across the world, and Alarcon included a quote from the speech in his article: ``All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way - they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.''

Alarcon wrote: ``Those who are in a tizzy over the necessary measures Cuba was forced to take and rushed to criticize it have still not said a single word to repudiate the strange statement made by Bush three months ago. Or is it that they are still applauding?''.

Earlier this month, Cuban courts sentenced 75 dissidents to a total jail time of 1,454 years. The longest sentence was 28 years. Then, on April 11 after a trial that lasted less than a week, three men who tried to hijack a passenger boat from Havana bay to the United States were executed by firing squad.

``Cuba did not violate any judiciary principle nor any international norm,'' Alarcon wrote. ``It did nothing to affect the peace of the world or anyone's legitimate interests.''

But Bush's words in the January speech were reminiscent of Adolph Hitler, he said. ``Nothing similar can be recalled since the times of Hitler,'' Alarcon wrote, adding, ``It had been a while since the world had heard such an official recognition of a policy of extrajudiciary executions, the physical elimination of people by no other procedure than pulling a trigger.''

He said Cuba was pushed to do what it did because of U.S.-led aggression against the Caribbean nation. Washington has kept an economic embargo against Cuba since the early 1960s.

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell decried events in Cuba. ``We're reviewing all of our policies and our approach toward Cuba in light of what I think is a deteriorating human rights situation,'' Powell told reporters, adding that Cuba is an ``aberration'' in the Western Hemisphere.

[daviddennis]

The death penalty for hijacking might not be unreasonable if serious violence was done by the hijackers.

I have actually been on a Cuban harbor commuter boat. Its maximum speed is something like 5 knots, and I doubt that it would last more than ten minutes in the open ocean.

If that kind of boat was being hijacked to the US, it was effectively a death sentence for the crew, passengers and hijackers.

But the massive penalties for people accused of simply making statements opposing the regime are obscene.

D

[NativeNewYorker]

Desperate people.

[cookcounty]

"Cuban Parliament Speaker: US Should Be Criticized."

Oh my stars! Criticism could begin as early as next week!!!!