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Four legs of a campaign
By
Lorenzo Quijano
Next
March there will be a new meeting of the UN Human Rights
Commission (HRC) in Geneva,
Switzerland. For approximately 50 days
the HCR will debate on proposals of resolutions
condemning human rights violations in several countries.
Cuba is one of the cases that will surely be discussed;
and the United States has already begun to increase its
usual allegations as a preview of what will come.
This
doesn’t mean that between sessions of the HRC there have
been no attacks on Cuba, or that the U.S. will give new
evidence – which on the other hand it has never
presented, for its case is based on rumors,
misrepresentations, alleged anonymous informants or
similarly unverifiable testimonials.
In this
case it’s about a three legged table: the coincidental
apparition of information in the press, declarations of
the U.S. government and several “peace plans” designed
to solve once and for all the 40 year plus thorn in the
U.S. side. And all of this, of course, in a “peaceful”
manner.
First
leg: The role of the press
Once
again reports published by the press show that in the
case of Cuba, information is disseminated in compliance
with the Administration’s plans; or, they parrot the
arguments supplied by the Administration without any
verification, or ignoring the facts from conflicting
sources. Abetment or unethical behavior?
An
example is a recent editorial on February 22, 2004, in
South Florida’s
Sun-Sentinel (“Talks on Cuba Need Results”), in which
referring to the next HRC meeting it champions the
dissidents that were tried and convicted last year in
Cuba. And the editorial repeats once more the
fabrications of a campaign that was made at the time of
their detention, trial and conviction, presenting them
as “intellectuals” or “journalists” whose only crime was
to dissent.
According to the Sun-Sentinel editorial, “That these
individuals are even in jail is an injustice. No one on
this planet should ever be held in detention for merely
speaking his mind, or harboring thoughts that disagree
with the government's.”
Cuba
is capable, according to the editorial, of jailing
someone for “harboring thoughts” different from the
official point of view. Communist science fiction?
Cuba’s
arguments are not contested; they are not even mentioned,
in spite of evidence produced at the trials and the
information later released by the Cuban press and in
books. They don’t exist. Documentary evidence and
testimony of witnesses presented by the prosecution and
not refuted by the defense (yes, the accused had the
right to appoint counsel and in other cases counsel was
court appointed, like in any other civilized country)
just vanish into journalistic limbo. The fact that
several Cuban undercover agents infiltrated the
dissident organizations and gathered evidence of the
defendants’ collusion with the
U.S.
government is not even considered. What only matters
are allegations of that same government that was caught
with their hands in the same cookie jar as the
dissidents.
In this
manner, a certain press keeps presenting them as
prisoners of conscience and not as what they were found
guilty of: employees of a foreign government conspiring
to overthrow their own government elected by a majority.
In
relation to previous deliberations in Geneva, the
editorial complains of the inefficacy of the HRC, for
“many see the vote, depending on who wins, as the result
of arm-twisting by
U.S.
diplomats or the ability of Cuban officials to
convincingly play the role of imperialist victims.”
Just to
mention two aspects, while Americans in Geneva are
“diplomats” (in spite of the fact that more than once
not all members of the delegation have been diplomats,
and two years ago there was a citizen from another
country as member of the U.S. mission) happily engaged
in arm twisting as part of their task, Cubans are
labeled as “officials” that “convincingly play the role
of imperialist victims.” Impostors, not diplomats,
impersonating victims.
In a
single line of journalistic hocus pocus, 40 years of
armed aggressions, terrorist attacks, economic and
political blockade, deaths, mutilations and billions of
dollars in economic losses simply vanish, as well as the
assassination attempts on Cuban elected officials,
particularly Cuban President Fidel Castro. Possibly,
many of the Sun-Sentinel’s readers ignore that a U.S.
Senate Committee investigated and proved that the CIA
had participated or instigated most of those attempts.
Why write that Cuban “officials” “convincingly play the
role” of victims? Abetment or unethical behavior?
Second
leg: Who me? I didn’t do nuttin’
Two
days before the publication of the Sun-Sentinel
editorial, on Friday, February 20, a declaration by the
U.S. Interests Section in Havana, signed by its chief,
James Cason, claimed that the U.S. government “has no
intention” of launching a military invasion against Cuba
and denounced that the Fidel Castro government “is
fabricating that menace to sow fear in the population.”
The
declaration was apparently an answer to President
Castro’s accusations in recent weeks that U.S. State
Department officials had voiced “direct threats to Cuba”
that would include invasion plans and even his own
assassination, and warned that the island is prepared to
meet “preposterous and adventurous little plans” to
overthrow the government.
Cason
said that the alleged invasion to the island has been
“fabricated” by Cuban authorities “to sow fear in the
population, use the resource of fear to maintain its
ample military, security and intelligence structures.”
Let’s
break down the declaration:
Up to
the present date, in more than 40 years of hostility and
aggression on the part of the U.S., Cuba has denounced
and demonstrated in countless opportunities plans of
aggression. And more than once it has been proved right.
It was precisely the climate of imminent aggression that
provoked the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba during
the October 1962 Crisis. Robert McNamara himself, who
was Secretary of Defense of the Kennedy Administration
at the time, said some 30 years later in a conference on
the subject in Havana, that if he had been Cuban in 1962
he would also have believed in the possibility of a U.S.
invasion. Declassified documents revealed years later
proved two points:
1) The
United States promised not to invade Cuba in exchange of
the withdrawal of the missiles, which demonstrates there
was a possibility of an invasion; and
2)
Several top military officials pressured President
Kennedy to order an attack on Cuba in order to kill two
birds with several stones: the missiles and Fidel
Castro.
Cuba
has lived in a state of siege since shortly after the
triumph of the revolution in 1959, but its relation with
the United States are a long history of possible and
actual threats, from the U.S. intervention in 1898 in
the war that Cubans were winning against Spain and that
frustrated its semi-independence until 1902, besides two
other military interventions a few years later.
The
United States added insult to injury with the
humiliating imposition of an addendum to the Cuban
Constitution (the Platt Amendment) that allowed U.S.
troops to intervene in the country whenever it was
deemed appropriate, thus reducing Cuba to the state of a
protectorate. That amendment also gave birth to the
Guantanamo U.S. Naval Base, maintained today against the
will of the people and the government of Cuba.
The
United States has a short historical memory. Not only
Cuba, but practically all of Latin America has been a
victim of countless military interventions. After all,
the hemisphere is the U.S.’s backyard. But recently the
whole planet has become an American hunting ground.
No
wonder Cuba feels threatened, since the present
Administration has proven its expertise in making up
excuses in order to invade other countries. Remember
the repeated accusations that Cuba was creating weapons
of mass destruction and delivering them to other rogue
states... Recently there has been a new allegation:
Cuba
and Venezuela
are destabilizing democratic governments in the
hemisphere. Evidence? None.
If
later on, as in the case of Iraq, the weapons of mass
destruction evaporate, the event has been consummated
and the lie can be filed away in a document that could
be unearthed years from now.
According to Mr. Cason, “Last year the Cuban Minister of
Foreign Relations suggested that we were slowing down
the process of issuing travel documents to Cubans who
were to immigrate to the United States with the
objective of creating a massive migratory crisis that
would serve as a pretext for a war.” Cason added that
“of course, it was totally false.”
Nevertheless, the slowing down of the process, besides
the preferential treatment to Cubans who arrive
illegally to the U.S. (based on the Cuban Adjustment Act),
induces illegal migration and creates a dangerous
situation that could provoke a massive migration. After
Cuba’s protest and warning to the United States, the U.S.
government answered that in the case of a massive exodus
it would be considered a hostile act on the part of the
Cuban government. And what does a country do if another
state commits a hostile act against it? The fact that
it wasn’t Cuba who was promoting the massive migration
doesn’t matter at all.
Another
fact: according to the declaration of the U.S. Interests
Section in Havana,
Cuba fabricates threats “to justify
extreme measures in a futile attempt to crush the
burgeoning independent civil society in Cuba.”
Again,
there is a reference to an alleged organized opposition,
the “independent civil society,” or dissidents, that the
Cuban government wants to crush. A good argument for
Geneva if it weren’t for the fact that the supposed
organized opposition is practically nonexistent, and is
only concerned with the limelight abroad, waiting for a
possible overthrow of the revolution in Cuba.
Third
leg: The “Peace Plans”
On
the same day that the declaration of the U.S. Interests
Section in Havana was given to the press, on Friday,
February 20 – pure coincidence, of course – a press
dispatch reported that an anti Castro exile organization
in the United States had announced a “diplomatic
offensive” against the Cuban government and had
presented a project of “Social and Economical
Reconstruction” for post Castro Cuba, “based on
democracy and a market economy.”
According to the declaration, the Cuban National
Congress in exile, created in May, 2003, would celebrate
on that day in
Miami
its first international plenary meeting, launching “a
world diplomatic offensive” to impose a “blockade” on
Havana.
The
offensive strives for a “coalition of countries friendly
to a free Cuba” with the objective of imposing a
“political, economic, diplomatic and sports blockade” on
Havana.
As if
the U.S. blockade on Cuba weren’t enough, now this group
of well intentioned patriots, bent on implanting in Cuba
“democracy and a market economy,” is asking for more
blockades.
At the
same time, other leaders of the Florida exile community,
and also by pure coincidence, presented another project
of “social and economic reconstruction, drafted by
Antonio Jorge, professor of Economics at Florida
International
University, and backed by Cuban American U.S.
Representatives Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart, Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen and Bob Menéndez, as well as several anti
Castro exile organizations.
The
group favors “the creation of a solidary, sovereign,
free and participating Cuban society” based on a
multiparty democracy and a just and equitable market
economy,” Jorge explained.
According to The Miami Herald, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen
said on Friday that “there can’t be fundamental changes
in Cuba (…) under the Constitution adopted by Fidel
Castro.”
Another
coincidence: both plans focus on the creation of a new
society in Cuba based on a market economy. (Quite an
oxymoron, I say, “a just and equitable market economy.”)
Both refer to democracy, but neither say which type, as
if only one were possible: the democracy of those that
have no access to education or to health care, the
democracy of those that are discriminated for dozens of
reasons, the democracy of rigged elections, and the
democracy of “special interests” above the interest of
all.
But
there is more.
The
Cuban Patriotic Forum (CPF), an alliance that groups
several organizations of Cuban émigrés in Miami,
released a declaration in which they warn of “powerful
interests from different leanings that are attempting to
pressure the United States and other countries from the
Americas and Europe to negotiate a (political)
transition” with the Cuban government.
The
CPF said in its declaration that it struggles “for the
total change of the present system in Cuba, and not to
obtain cosmetic changes in it.”
According to El Nuevo Herald, Alberto Hernández,
director of the Council for the Freedom of Cuba, said
that the Forum’s strategy is “to oust the Cuban
Communist regime from power any way possible.”
“For Cuba to be free all Communism must be eliminated,”
Hernández said.
The
declaration is signed by several leaders, among them are
Armando Pérez Roura, known for his defense of violent
actions; Orlando Bosch, tried and sentenced for acts of
terrorism on U.S. soil and accused of being the
mastermind of the 1976 bombing of a Cuban commercial
plane in which 73 people died; and Sylvia G. Iriondo.
Together with other émigrés, in December 2001 these
peace loving characters and advocates of peaceful
transit published in The Miami Herald a
Declaration of Principles:
“We
recognize and support the right of the Cuban people
inside the island and in exile to avail themselves to
all means and methods at their disposal in the
struggle for the freedom of Cuba.”
The
coordination of all these official declarations, press
reports and Cuba-saving plans have occurred just as the
meetings of the HRC in Geneva are beginning to make
headlines. In other words, it is time to prepare the
case against
Cuba.
Add this to President Bush’s promises –which are
beginning to sound true – of cracking down on
Cuba, a fact
considered indispensable to insure an electoral victory
in Florida.
Fourth
leg: The one that’s missing
A table
must have four legs, or you run the risk that the other
three can’t stand the weight. In this case, they seem
to forget that any plan to eliminate the Cuban
government must take the people into account. Perhaps
they haven’t forgotten; maybe they believe their own
lies, like the one that Cubans eagerly await the arrival
of the saviors from the U.S. As was the case during Bay
of Pigs. Remember?
Lorenzo Quijano occasionally writes for Progreso Weekly. |
