'Successful defiance'

The Bush administration's crusade against Cuba at the UN is relentless, writes Faiza Rady

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This year's vote, at the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) in Geneva, to "name and shame" countries guilty of human rights violations showed once again that the United States has turned the definition of human rights into a politically charged and conveniently malleable concept. Widely criticised for towing the US line, the 53-nation UN body concluded its yearly six-week session on 22 April by condemning alleged human rights violations in socialist Cuba as well as in politically isolated North Korea, Belarus and Myanmar.

While the UNCHR pounded on the small fry, it skirted around bigger issues. On 21 April, the commission rejected Cuba's draft resolution calling for an independent investigation of allegations of torture and mistreatment of prisoners at the US detention centre in Guantanamo, occupied Cuba. The vote against the resolution, based on a US-EU coalition and much politicking within the commission, proves that the US remains untouchable.

Louise Arbour, UN high commissioner for human rights, blasted the UNCHR's performance for being "demonstrably deficient", saying there was "something fundamentally wrong with a system in which the question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms in any part of the world is answered only by reference to four states."

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan went further, suggesting that the UNCHR should be scrapped altogether and replaced with a new and permanent human rights body. "We have reached a point at which the commission's declining credibility has cast a shadow on the reputation of the UN system as a whole, and where piecemeal reforms will not be enough," Annan told commission delegates.

Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Felipe Perez Roque dismissed the vote against his country as unacceptable and reminded UNCHR delegates of Cuba's human rights record. "I must frankly and clearly say that we do not recognise any legitimacy to that resolution whatsoever. The country presenting it lacks the moral authority [to charge our government with human rights violations]. In Cuba there has never been an extrajudicial execution or a missing person, not even one. Let anyone here come up with the name of a reporter killed in Cuba -- and 20 of them were murdered in Latin America only in 2004. And there is no torture in Cuba. Let anyone come up with the name of a prisoner ordered down on his knees, prey to terror, in front of a dog trained to kill [like in Abu Ghraib, Iraq]," said the Cuban minister.

Unlike the American socially de- contextualised and self-serving concept of human rights, the Cuban definition is based on equality and social justice, Cuban Ambassador to Cairo Angel Dalmau Fernàndez told Al-Ahram Weekly. For the Cubans, the enjoyment of human rights is contingent on a country's economic development and its people's access to health, education, welfare and work. Yet, the globalised neo- liberal economic system denies some 130 southern countries of the right to development. They have no equal access to the rich countries' markets and to new technologies, and they are choked by a debt burden that they have paid off more than once in interest payments alone. And things are not getting better. According to the US National Intelligence Council's forecast, the evolution of this form of globalisation will be "rocky, marked by financial volatility and a widening economic divide".

This is the reason why the poor who constitute the majority in southern countries don't even have the right to life, says Roque. Every year, dire poverty kills 11 million children who have no access to vaccines or oral re-hydration solutions. There are nearly one billion illiterate people in the world, and some 20 million children endure ruthless exploitation on the streets of Latin America. "There cannot be democracy without social justice," explains Roque, "and there is no possible freedom if not based on the enjoyment of education and culture." It is in this context that the US voting record at the UNCHR is appalling, says Fernàndez, describing it as consistently anti-South and anti-poor. Throughout their tenure at the council, the American delegation has gained notoriety for voting against resolutions calling to respect the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. The US has also unfailingly opposed resolutions demanding global access to generic medicines to combat AIDS/ HIV and other life-threatening diseases. Along the same line, they oppose that the right to food be defined as a fundamental human right.

"In Cuba, human rights and social rights are indivisible," says Fernàndez. These include the right to food, the right to free and comprehensive health services provided by one of the most sophisticated health sectors in the world, the right to free education -- including all levels of higher education -- the right to housing and the right to life. All recent UN Human Development Reports attest to the fact that Cuba has achieved the highest social indicators in Latin America, despite some 45 years of US-imposed sanctions and the longest and toughest embargo in modern trade history.

"It took the Cuban people a lot to achieve this," says Roque, "and they are aware of its price. It is a people in power."

It is clear the UNCHR succumbed to US arm-flexing and political manoeuvring when it voted to extend the monitoring of alleged human rights violations for another year, says Fernàndez. The US-sponsored resolution that was passed by 21 votes in favour, 17 opposing and 15 abstentions, was opposed by Egypt. "We thanked Egypt for its support. As a matter of principle, Egypt does not accept this kind of selective pinpointing," Fernàndez told the Weekly.

African countries that depend on US aid through the African Growth and Opportunities Act -- a bill that facilitates entry to American markets through tariff reductions -- are particularly vulnerable to US pressures. According to Cuban sources, every African delegation at the commission was threatened with the denial of preferential treatment should they vote against the resolution. The Cuban foreign minister told the commission that the US went as far as threatening to close its market to one country's cotton exports if it were to vote against the resolution.

It is remarkable that despite the threats and the arm-twisting, no African country voted in favour of the resolution. It was only after heavy-handed pressures that Burkina-Faso, Togo, Mauritania and Gabon abstained from voting, while South Africa, Sudan, Eritrea, Congo Brazzaville, Guinea Conakry, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe all voted against the resolution.

It is no coincidence that the African countries' vote manifests African solidarity with Cuba. Africans have not forgotten that Cuban soldiers fought with Namibian freedom fighters for the liberation of Namibia, and helped beat back the South African invasion of Angola. "Cuba's role in the liberation of Africa is an astonishing achievement that has almost been totally suppressed," comments linguist and political writer Noam Chomsky, "but the contribution that Cuba made to the self- liberation of Africa is fantastic."

Such achievements by a small and besieged socialist nation constitute a dangerous precedent. Hence US attacks on Cuba. The Bush administration understands only too well that the real threat is successful development, says Chomsky; "this might infect others, like Cuba's successful defiance."