A farcical debate on Cuba in European Parliament
The anti-Cuban maneuver is intended to hinder relations between Cuba and the European Union and to undermine the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement which is being implemented in a positive manner, building bridges between our peoples and governments

Internacional news staffjune 8, 2021 09:06:43

Cuba’s international medical brigades are an example of the solidarity and cooperation the world urgently needs. Photo: Juvenal Balán

Today, June 8, the European Parliament has scheduled an artificial debate on what they call the political situation and human rights in Cuba. “If the European Parliament decides to discuss Cuba, the debate would necessarily need to refer to the massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of the entire Cuban population, by the genocidal, immoral and illegal economic, commercial and financial blockade that the United States government has maintained against our country for more than 60 years,” reads a statement from the Cuban diplomatic mission in Brussels.

The text asks if the promoters of this farce would be willing to demand that the U.S. government end this aggressive policy which, through the end of March 2020, caused accumulated damages to the Cuban economy amounting to 144,413,400,000 dollars. “Are they also willing to defend European natural and legal persons affected by the increasing extraterritoriality of the blockade? Will they ask their U.S. counterparts to repeal the Helms-Burton Act? Will they demand the elimination of the 243 measures adopted by former President Donald Trump, which the current U.S. administration maintains in effect?

It is shameful that a group of representatives has promoted the inclusion of this issue as part of the agenda of the European Parliament. European voters and the international community in general would expect objectivity and impartiality from the European legislature, instead of selectivity and double standards when examining issues related to human rights, when every day events occur that touch the universal conscience, about which the European Parliament has maintained and continues to maintain a complicit, immoral silence, reads the embassy’s communiqué, published on the Cuban Foreign Ministry’s website.

This obsession with Cuba has an explanation. It reflects the agenda of the United States government which has been attempting to overthrow the Cuban Revolution for more than 60 years, unable to tolerate the existence of a people that does surrender to their designs and resists the ironclad blockade, criminally tightened in the midst of a global pandemic, the Cuban mission emphasized.

The statement pointed out that this anti-Cuban maneuver is also intended to hinder relations between Cuba, the European Union and member states, to undermine the implementation of the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement, which is being implemented in a positive manner, making clearly evident the political will of the signatories to continue building bridges between our peoples and governments.

Cuba will continue to build an ever freer, more democratic, just, and fraternal society
Statement by Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba, during the presentation of Cuba’s National Report to the Third Cycle of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the Human Rights Council. Geneva, May 16, 2018. (Unofficial version from www.minrex.gob.cu)

 

 

 

 

Author: MINREX | internet@granma.cu
may 16, 2018 11:05:37

Mr. President:
Once again, Cuba attends the Universal Periodic Review to ratify its firm commitment with the guarantees for the exercise of human rights.
The national report that we are presenting is the result of a broad and participatory process of consultations which involved numerous government institutions and civil society organizations, as well as the implementation of the recommendations accepted during the second review -79 per cent of all the recommendations that were formulated.
Mr. President:
From the times of the US military occupation, which severed our independence, under the governments it imposed, 45 per cent of children did not attend schools; 85 per cent of persons lacked running water; farmers lived in abject poverty without ever owning the land they tilled and immigrants were brutally exploited.
In Cuba, workers and farmers had no rights. Extrajudicial execution, enforced disappearances and torture were recurrent. Discrimination based on the color of the skin was brutal; poverty was rampant and women and girls were even more excluded. The dignity of Cubans was tarnished and Cuba’s national culture was trampled upon.
The Cuban Revolution led by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz transformed that reality and continues to strive to improve the quality of life, wellbeing and social justice for all of our people, thus implementing all human rights.

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