[News] Defend Cuba against disinformation campaign
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Mar 24 13:05:43 EDT 2010
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
peoplesprinciples 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 mediaa common delinquent who by no
means was a political prisonercoincides 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 Peoples 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 childrens 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 Peoples 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
countrys lack of rights and democracy. At the
same time, it shamelessly lies about our
governments 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
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20100324/c03ff3d9/attachment.htm>
More information about the News
mailing list