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Geneva, March 20(RHC)--
Cuban Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina today addressed the 54th session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. In saluting the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Cuban Foreign Minister said the occasion should urge the international community to discuss the very essence of that Declaration. He said that it is important to remember that the process for the adoption of the Declaration began at the San Francisco Conference when a group of Latin American countries, Cuba among them, suggested an International Bill of Rights which included an International Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Nations and of Individuals.
Robaina stressed that this integral concept of the exercise of human rights was disregarded by those who would rather have a simple, abstract declaration of the rights of the individual, with no reference whatsoever to the environment for the exercise of those rights. "These people," said the Cuban Foreign Minister, "are the same -- and not by chance, who nowadays, from their thrones in the North, are trying to use the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the holy book of their ideological fundamentalism and as the foundation of their intolerance towards those who think differently."
Since the interrelation of the duties and rights of the human being in social life were ignored, he said, "minimal principles like the respect of human dignity and the need for human solidarity were consigned to oblivion." Robaina stated that this is the only rationale for the fact that some countries still allow the legal existence of organizations that encourage hatred and racial discrimination in the name of `freedom of expression.'
Cuban Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina also pointed out that those who voted for and even proclaimed themselves promoters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, were defending, at the same time, the survival of their colonial empires. It was necessary, he said, to wait until 1960 to adopt Resolution 1514 on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples.
The Cuban Foreign Minister pointed to the inclusion of the Declaration on the Right to Development in the International Bill of Human Rights, which occurred five years ago in Vienna. A tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration, said Robaina, would be a follow up on this initiative, since little has been done to effectively implement it. Robaina said it was impossible to postpone the need to achieve economic, social and cultural rights -- indivisibly related to civil and political rights -- for individuals and entire peoples doomed to the marginalization of underdevelopment in the Southern part of this planet.
The most dangerous fundamentalism today, said the Cuban Foreign Minister, stems from the attempts of the countries of the North to impose their own pattern of political, economic and social development on the countries of the South. "Those," he said, "who boast about their own pluralism are not willing to allow the slightest plurality when it does not fall within the very narrow ideological boundaries in which it is accepted today.
Robaina pointed to the definition of western democracy recently made by a talented Third World writer: "civil servants who do not serve, politicians who speak but say nothing, voters who vote but do not elect, media which disinforms, schools that teach how to ignore, judges who sentence victims, military which is at war with their own citizens, police officers who do not fight crimes because they are too busy committing them, socialized poverty and privatized profits, money that happens to be freer than people, and people who serve things."
Cuban Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina said millions of beggars, unemployed, abused and exploited women and children, aborigines and national minorities are crying out for their trampled rights. He said they barely manage to survive to the South of those opulent societies, "self-portrayed as models of democracy and human rights."
"What would happen," asked Robaina, "if with all due right the people of the South attempted to certify the most blameworthy for the trafficking of drugs -- the buyers and consumers? What would happen if we chose to threaten and attack those who pose a real threat to the security of the planet with their mammoth military and nuclear power? What if we were to blockade, until they settle their own unpayable debts, those who are to blame for the misery our peoples have endured for centuries as the result of colonial and neocolonial plunder and exploitation, and who even today look down on us?"
In another part of his speech at the 54th session of the UN Human Rights Commission, Cuban Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina said Cuba was proud of its democracy, "based on the direct participation of the Cuban people, without political mediators and privileged elites, free of financial contributions from power groups, and with no multi-million dollar campaign expenditures."
The Cuban Foreign Minister listed all the social and economic achievements of this blockaded country, noting that these achievements and Cuba's magnificent potential "do not come from multi-party elections, but rather from a nation that knew and still knows how to choose what is best for its present and future." Robaina wrapped up his speech in Geneva by saying that this is a human right Cuba is not willing to ever give up.