Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- April 22, 1998
U.N. human rights panel defies U.S. on Cuba
By Tom Carter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The international diplomatic community refused yesterday to condemn Cuba's human rights record, demonstrating its growing willingness to defy U.S. efforts to isolate President Fidel Castro's Communist regime.
The 53-member U.N. Commission on Human Rights voted at its annual meeting in Geneva against a U.S.-sponsored measure to criticize Cuba's human rights record and investigate human rights abuses in that country.
It was the first time in seven years that the committee failed to condemn Cuba. The vote also ended the mandate for a U.N. "special rapporteur" to chronicle human rights abuses on the island.
The vote reflected a growing divergence between the United States and the rest of the world community on Cuba policy.
At the 34-nation Summit of the Americas in Chile over the weekend, President Clinton was the odd man out as nation after nation in the hemisphere stood up to demand Cuba's inclusion in the next summit.
And Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who has been an outspoken critic of the Helms-Burton law discouraging foreign investment in Cuba, has announced he will visit Havana next week.
In Havana, Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina yesterday said the Geneva vote "serves the entire world, to show that if we unite against the powerful, we can claim our truth, we can claim justice."
But Elizardo Sanchez, who heads the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation and has spent eight years in Cuban jails, told reporters in Havana that political and civil rights abuses were still widespread.
"This decision does not vary at all our concern and deep disagreement with the unfavorable situation that continues to predominate here," he said, noting that Cuba's "neo-Stalinist" system "tends naturally to violate civil and political rights."
Human rights groups say between 400 and 600 political prisoners remain in Cuban jails.
In Washington, the State Department said it was deeply disappointed by the vote.
"Some members of the U.N. Human Rights Commission ... have chosen to turn their backs on the suffering of the Cuban people," said James P. Rubin, State Department spokesman. "The United States will redouble efforts to promote freedom in Cuba."
Conservative anti-Castro members of Congress called the U.N. vote "shameful" and said there could be consequences when the legislative body votes on whether to pay the United Nations about $1 billion in arrears.
"This is a shameful day for the United Nations ... which was founded to protect democracy and human rights," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republican.
"The refusal to condemn Castro's repression is a stab in the back to the thousands of political prisoners who linger in Castro's gulag. ... The U.S. Congress should carefully consider this latest action by the U.N. ... before it pays any arrears to this organization."
The vote and the Chile summit follow Pope John Paul II's historic visit to Cuba in January, where the pontiff admonished Cuba to "open itself up to the world [and] the world to open itself up to Cuba."
In response, there has been a flurry of activity to decrease the diplomatic isolation of the hemisphere's last pariah state.
"This should be the last summit without Cuba," said Prime Minister Owen Arthur of Barbados at the Santiago, Chile, summit.
President Alberto Fujimori of Peru said Cuba's exclusion is "unfair because the country is no threat to anybody."
Canada went a step further, announcing that Mr. Chretien will go to Cuba on Monday and Tuesday to meet Mr. Castro.
"Isolation leads nowhere," Mr. Chretien said yesterday, as he assured Canada's Parliament that he would raise human rights issues with Mr. Castro.
Although opposed to the U.S. embargo, Canada voted with the United States yesterday on the rights issue.
In March, Carl-Johan Groth, a Swedish lawyer who has served as independent U.N. rapporteur since 1992, said in his annual report that Cuba maintains a policy of brutal repression against critics of its Marxist regime. But Mr. Groth placed at least part of the blame for the government repression on the 35-year-old U.S. embargo.
The critical human rights resolution was defeated by a vote of 19 against -- including Cuba, China and Russia -- with 16 members for, including the United States, Britain and France. Eighteen members abstained, including major Latin American countries -- except Argentina, which sided with the United States.
When the result of the vote was announced, delegates erupted into applause.
Human rights advocates said the action sent a mixed message.
"It is not that the commission sees a substantial improvement on human rights in Cuba, but they are questioning the U.S. approach ... that the embargo tends to increase repression on the island, rather than the reverse," said Shawn Malone, associate director of the Caribbean Project at Georgetown University.
But Mr. Malone, who advocates lifting the embargo as a way of improving human rights in Cuba, said yesterday's rejection of U.S. policy may have little to do with Cuba and more to do with resentment toward the world's only superpower.
"Cuba is not an area of serious concern for most countries, but this is a chance to poke a finger in the eye of the United States. That is always a huge motivation," he said.
Sarah DeCosse, the Cuba specialist at Human Rights Watch, which advocates lifting parts of the U.S. embargo, said the vote was "disappointing." A group of Cuban political prisoners who recently were released and given asylum in Canada were "appalled and very disappointed," she said.
Frank Calzon, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, called the vote an "outrage," saying the Clinton administration had dropped the diplomatic ball.
"I am very sorry to say that Cuba is not a very high priority for the Clinton administration," he said yesterday. "What this means is the Clinton administration has to do more work in informing the international community of the true situation in Cuba."
- This story is based in part on wire service reports.
Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
To subscribe to the Washington Times National Weekly Edition, click this icon or call 800-363-9118.
