U.N. Rights Body Keeps Pressure on Cuba

Reuters
April 14, 2005
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-rights-cuba.html
GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations top human rights body on Thursday kept the pressure on Cuba over its alleged abuses by backing a U.S. call to renew the mandate of a special investigator for the country.
But Havana called the decision ``hypocrisy'' and immediately hit back with a resolution of its own charging the United States with violating prisoners' rights at Guantanamo Bay naval base, where suspects in Washington's war on terrorism are held.
Cuba, whose motion will not be voted on until next week, made a similar attempt to confront Washington over conditions at the naval base on its territory last year, but subsequently withdrew the bid for lack of support.
It was the six successive year in which the 53-state Commission on Human Rights had approved a motion critical of the Marxist government of President Fidel Castro.
``The Cuban government has failed to take the steps that would guarantee its own people the most basic human rights,'' U.S. delegation member Lino Piedra told the commission.
``Instead they have persisted in imposing a totalitarian state that deprives the people of the right of expressing dissent without incurring a decades-long prison sentence,'' he said.
In a bid to ensure the widest possible support, Washington put forward a brief four-paragraph text that merely called on the U.N.'s special envoy for Cuba, French magistrate Christine Chanet, to continue her attempts to visit the Caribbean island.
It was rewarded with a four-vote majority, compared with just one in 2004, with 21 states backing it, 17 voting against and 15 abstaining.
``Cuba does not accept this resolution and will not cooperate with its spurious mandate,'' Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said at a news conference in Havana.
The United States has ``no moral authority'' to criticize Cuba's human rights record in view of abuses committed by U.S troops on prisoners in Iraq and at Guantanamo, he said. 
JAILED DISSIDENTS
The commission called on Cuba to cooperate with Chanet, who in her latest report urged the Communist state to free all political dissidents, grant freedom of expression and lift restrictions on travel.
Havana has yet to allow the French official, first appointed in 2003, to visit the Caribbean island where Castro has governed since 1959. Last week, Castro said he ``couldn't care a less'' about the outcome of the U.N. vote on Cuba.
The European Union, which has been seeking to improve ties with Havana after a two-year rift over the jailing of dissidents, co-sponsored the U.S. resolution.
``The European Union's servile attitude toward the United States is pathetic,'' Perez Roque said, adding that a recent rapprochement between the Brussels and Havana was at risk.
Cuba says the U.S. government has insisted on singling out Cuba on its human rights record as a pretext to justify a policy of ``aggression'' through a four-decade-old trade embargo.
Among the Latin Americans, whose aligning with Washington provokes Havana's wrath, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras joined the United States. Only Cuba voted ``no'' and the other seven, including Brazil and Argentina, abstained.
Perez Roque said Mexico voted for the resolution in exchange for U.S. backing for its candidate for secretary general of the Organization of American States, Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez.
Cuba accused Washington of putting pressure on impoverished African nations to abstain, threatening to shut off imports of cotton from one country if it voted against the resolution.