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RIGHTS: Cuba Proudly Presents Its Credentials Abroad

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jan 29 2009 (IPS) - The European Union is considering a proposal from Cuba that could add human rights issues to the political dialogue formally resumed three months ago between Havana and Brussels, diplomatic sources confirmed following an announcement by Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque.

Pérez Roque said Wednesday that on Jan. 15 he had sent the EU a proposal to hold an exchange of experiences of both parties, in light of Cuba’s forthcoming presentation to the Universal Periodic Review mechanism at the United Nations Human Rights Council, based in Geneva.

“Any kind of dialogue (with Cuba) on human rights is welcomed,” the ambassador of the Czech Republic in Havana, Vit Korselt, whose country is exercising the rotating presidency of the EU for a six-month period, told IPS.

He added that the 27-nation bloc is “analysing and seeking” the best way to carry out this process. The Cuban initiative arises because several EU countries have already undergone review by the Council, and others will do so at the same session as Cuba on Feb. 5.

At a press conference to publicise the Cuban government’s report to the Human Rights Council, Pérez Roque mentioned that his country and Spain have already had three meetings about human rights issues as part of their bilateral talks, and in Cuba’s view they have produced positive results.

Dialogue with the 27 EU countries was reestablished, the foreign minister repeated, when the bloc “lifted the sanctions” it had imposed on Cuba in 2003 in retaliation for the arrests and harsh sentences of 75 dissidents. According to Pérez Roque, the definitive ending of those measures made way for a new situation.

The Cuban government and the EU formalised this new climate at a ministerial meeting in Paris on Oct. 18, 2008 between Cuban Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister of France which was then chairing the bloc, and the foreign minister of the Czech Republic, Karel Schwarzenberg.

“Cuba is convinced that respectful dialogue, based on the principles of objectivity, impartiality and non-selectivity, is the only way toward international cooperation in the field of human rights,” the foreign minister said. In his view, the replacement of the former Commission on Human Rights by the present Human Rights Council led to significant improvement in the quality of this cooperation.

The working group that will examine the Cuban report will deliver its conclusions on Feb. 9, and official approval of the outcome will be given at the Council’s session in June. “Cuba can attend this exercise with its head held high, bearing the truth, and with a clear conscience,” Pérez Roque said.

The minister also announced that in the course of next week an invitation will be extended to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Novak, to visit Cuba this year. This follows the visit by the special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, in 2007.

In the next few days, Havana will ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. “Cuba is a country where, over the last 50 years, there has not been a single case of a missing or tortured person, or of extrajudicial killing,” Pérez Roque said.

The Cuban authorities are preparing a report for the Committee against Torture, which must be submitted by the end of the first half of this year, and in 2008 they signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the minister pointed out.

Havana’s report for the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review addresses the characteristics of the judicial and prison systems, as well as civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

It also describes the system for protecting citizens’ rights and Cuban cooperation with U.N. human rights bodies, as well as the obstacles that hinder progress in these areas.

The document argues that the policy “of hostility and blockade” of the island, implemented by successive U.S. administrations, “has been a serious obstacle to the full enjoyment of human rights and the basic freedoms of Cubans, including their rights to life, peace, self-determination and development.”

Dissident sectors – whom Pérez Roque accused of being in the pay of Washington – have complained that the government “did not inform the public about the drawing up of this report,” according to the head of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, Elizardo Sánchez.

In Sánchez’s view, preparing the document “behind closed doors” detracts from its credibility.

The minister affirmed that the report was produced by an “intense, comprehensive and genuinely participative process” to which 200 non-governmental Cuban organisations had contributed.