[News] Defend Cuba against disinformation campaign

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Friends,

A new international disinformation campaign is 
being undertaken against Cuba.  The case of 
Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a Cuban prisoner who died 
on February 23rd after going on a hunger strike, 
is being manipulated by the global corporate 
media to mobilize anti-Cuban sentiments around 
the world.  For helpful background on the case 
you can go to Monthly Review zine:
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/lamrani040310.html>http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/lamrani040310.html 
.

It is very important for progressive people in 
the U.S. to learn about this case, understand how 
it is being orchestrated as part of the 
continuing destabilization efforts against Cuba 
and show support for Cuba at this critical moment.

The Mexican chapter of the Network in Defense of 
Humanity initiated a website to counter the 
campaign and gather signatures to support Cuba. 
At  <http://www.porcuba.org/>www.porcuba.org  you 
can sign on to the declaration in defense of Cuba 
by going to the tab "para adherirse."

Below is the declaration and statements from the 
Cuban National Assembly and from UNEAC, the Union 
of Cuban Writers and Artists about the case and the anti-Cuba campaign.

(On March 11th the European Parliament approved a 
resolution condemning Cuba for its treatment of 
Orlando Zapata as a political prisoner.)

En Defensa de Cuba

In Defense of Cuba

In response to the European Parliament Resolution 
of March 11 regarding Cuba, we intellectuals, 
academics, social activists, critical thinkers 
and artists of the Network in Defense of Humanity declare:

1. That we share the sensibility shown by the 
European parliamentarians about political 
prisoners. Like them, we call for the immediate 
and unconditional freedom of all political 
prisoners, in all the countries of the world, 
including those of the European Union.

2. We deeply regret, as they do, the death of the 
common prisoner, Orlando Zapata, but we are 
opposed to his death, the first “
 in almost 40 
years” according to the Parliament, being 
distorted for other political ends that are 
contrary to those in defense of human rights.

3. That urging “
 the European institutions to 
give unconditional support and encouragement for 
the initiation of a peaceful political transition 
toward a plural democracy in Cuba” is not only an 
act of interference, but it also presumes a sole 
model of democracy which certainly shows itself 
to be more and more insufficient and 
questionable. We reject that proposal because of 
our commitment to the principles of 
non-intervention and self-determination of the 
peoples—principles defended by the UN as well.

4. The search for and deepening of democracy 
presumes, among other things, to transcend the 
formal and invent new forms that are 
authentically representative, and that are not 
necessarily restricted to multiple parties. As is 
well known, often the decisions over the great 
problems of the world are made unilaterally by 
small interest groups with great power, over and above the regime of parties.

5. That to try to justify the interference into 
the internal political affairs of the Cuban 
people by manipulating the case of Orlando Zapata 
through the media—a common delinquent who by no 
means was a political prisoner—coincides with the 
counter-insurgency policies that are being 
applied in Latin America to hold back or distort 
the emancipatory processes of transformation that 
are in motion. This is in addition to the 
criminal blockade that the Cuban people have been 
subjected to, for the simple fact of not 
accepting impositions and for defending the right 
to decide its destiny with dignity and independence.

6. That we share the concern shown by the 
parliamentarians about respect for human rights 
in Cuba, but we extend that concern to the whole 
world. In the same way that you are concerned 
about the case of the delinquent who died (in 40 
years there has been no previous occurrence), we 
invite you to demand the end of the occupation of 
Gaza and the aggression against the Palestinian 
people, which has caused not one, but thousands 
of deaths; an end to the intervention in Iraq and 
Afghanistan that has sown death and terror in 
towns and cities; of the bombardments of those 
places with the argument that it is defending 
democracy; an end to the double occupancy of 
Haiti; the closing of the prison in Guantánamo 
and the return of that territory to Cuba, to whom 
it belongs; and the return of the Malvinas 
Islands to Argentina. And certainly, we call for 
an end to the blockade, which violates the human 
rights of the Cuban people and which puts in doubt the moral
authority of those who demand humane treatment 
for a delinquent when it is denied for an entire people.

7. The economic and media assault that Cuba is 
being subjected to, even before the death of the 
prisoner Orlando Zapata, constitutes an act 
against the human and political rights of a 
people that decided to forge a different path.

We demand respect for the internal processes of 
the Cuban people in deciding and exercising its 
democracy, and adherence to the universal 
principles of no intervention, in accordance with the United Nations.

Network in Defense of Humanity.


Statement from the National Assembly of People’s Power

IN the wake of a media campaign mounted by 
powerful corporations, fundamentally in Europe, 
which have ferociously attacked Cuba , and after 
a dirty debate, the European Parliament has just 
passed a resolution of condemnation against our 
country that manipulates sentiments, brandishes lies and conceals realities.

The pretext utilized was the death of a prisoner, 
initially sentenced for a common crime and 
subsequently manipulated by U.S. interests and 
mercenaries at its service, who, of his own free 
will, refused to eat, despite warnings from and 
intervention by Cuban medical specialists.
This lamentable event cannot be utilized to 
condemn Cuba by adducing that a death could have 
been avoided. If there is one field in which our 
country does not have to defend itself in words, 
given that the reality is irrefutable, it is in 
that of the fight for the lives of human beings, 
whether born in Cuba or in other countries. Just 
one example is the presence of Cuban doctors in 
Haiti for more than 11 years prior to the 
earthquake in January of this year, a fact silenced by the hegemonic press.

Behind that condemnation lies profound cynicism. 
How many children’s lives have been lost in poor 
nations because of the decision by rich countries 
represented in the European Parliament not to 
meet their commitments to development aid? All of 
them knew it was a mass death sentence, but they 
opted to preserve the levels of waste and the 
continuation of consumerism to suicide in the long term.

We Cubans are also offended by that attempt to 
teach us a lesson at a time when immigrants and 
the unemployed are being repressed in Europe , 
but while here, in neighborhood meetings, people 
are proposing their candidates for municipal 
elections, freely and without intermediaries.

Those countries which participated in or allowed 
the clandestine air transport of detainees, the 
establishment of illegal prisons, and the 
practice of torture, lack the ethical authority 
to pass moral judgments on a people under attack and brutally blockaded.

Such a discriminatory and selective condemnation 
can only be explained by the failure of a policy 
incapable of bringing a heroic people to their 
knees. Neither the Helms Burton Act, nor the 
European common position, which emerged in the 
same year in the same circumstances and with the 
same purpose, both of them damaging to our 
national sovereignty and dignity, have the most 
minimal future, because we Cubans reject 
imposition, intolerance and pressure as a norm within international relations.

National Assembly of People’s Power of the Republic of Cuba

Statement by the Secretariat of UNEAC ( Union of Cuban Writers and Artists)

While the Book Fair was taking place from one end 
of our country to the other and hundreds of Cuban 
doctors were saving lives in Haiti , a new 
campaign against Cuba was being cooked up. A 
common criminal with a proven history of 
violence, who had become a “political prisoner,” 
announced that he was undertaking a hunger strike 
for the installation of a telephone, stove and 
television in his cell. Incited by unscrupulous 
individuals and despite everything that was done 
to prolong his life, Orlando Zapata Tamayo died 
and has now been converted into a regrettable 
symbol of the anti-Cuba machinery. On March 11, 
the European Parliament passed a resolution 
“energetically condemning the avoidable and cruel 
death of the dissident political prisoner Orlando 
Zapata Tamayo,” and in an offensive act of 
intervention in our internal affairs, “urged 
European institutions to unconditionally support 
and unreservedly encourage the start of a 
peaceful process ofpolitical transition toward a 
multi-party democracy in Cuba .”

A petition titled “Orlando Zapata Tamayo: I 
accuse the Cuban government,” is currently 
circulating to collect signatures against Cuba . 
The petition claims that this inmate was 
“unjustly imprisoned and brutally tortured,” and 
that he died “denouncing these crimes and his 
country’s lack of rights and democracy.” At the 
same time, it shamelessly lies about our 
government’s alleged practice of “physically 
eliminating its critics and peaceful opponents.” 
On March 15, a Spanish newspaper displayed the 
face of Zapata Tamayo, when this man had died and 
was in his coffin, and announced that certain 
intellectuals had adhered to the petition, adding 
their signatures to those of old and new 
professionals in the internal and external counterrevolution.

We Cuban writers and artists are fully aware of 
how the corporate media and hegemonic interests 
link up with international reactionary forces on 
any pretext whatsoever to damage our image. We 
are aware of the merciless and ghoulish 
distortion of our realities and the daily 
fabrication of lies about Cuba . We also know the 
price that is paid by those people who have tried 
to express themselves within culture with their own nuances.

Never in the history of the Revolution has a 
prisoner been tortured. Not one single person has 
disappeared. There has not been one single 
extrajudicial execution. We have founded our own 
form of democracy, imperfect, yes, but far more 
participatory and legitimate than the one they 
want to impose on us. Those who have orchestrated 
this campaign do not have the moral authority to 
teach us lessons in human rights.

It is essential to halt this latest aggression 
against a blockaded and pitilessly harassed 
country. To that end, we appeal to the conscience 
of all intellectuals and artists who do not 
harbor spurious interests with respect to the 
future of a Revolution that has been, is, and 
will be a model of humanism and solidarity.

Secretariat of UNEAC ( Union of Cuban Writers and Artists)
National Leadership, Hermanos Saíz Association
16-03-2010




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