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The Regime Doesn't Respect Human Rights
Posted on Fri, Mar. 14, 2003 in
The Miami Herald.
The European Union got it right last year when it rebuffed suggestions that
Cuba be invited to participate in an EU aid pact with poor African, Caribbean
and Pacific nations. The pact, know as the Cotonou agreement, sets conditions
regarding human rights and democracy. Cuba's totalitarian dictatorship didn't
respect those conditions then, nor does it now.
In January Cuba formally applied to participate in the agreement, though
initially it had rejected as discriminatory suggestions that it is a
human-rights violator. ''My country cannot accept that other states tell it
which political system to choose,'' Cuban Ambassador Rene Mujijie said a year
ago. "We have no need to copy others.''
But now the EU has said that it plans to ask its 15 member nations to
approve Cuba's request this summer.
EU Development Commissioner Poul Nielson, who is in Havana this week to open
an office, has an opportunity to witness Cuba's police-state apparatus. Island
dissidents, with whom he plans to meet, will tell him about the latest vicious
crackdown on those pushing for democratic changes, including human-rights
activists, ordinary Cubans and others.
On Tuesday, prominent Cuban dissidents petitioned the EU against admitting
Cuba into the Cotonou agreement now -- precisely because of the lack democratic
change. Even today, Cuba is unwilling to allow a legal political opposition, or
to change its ''permanent rejection'' of internationally accepted human-rights
standards. The declaration was signed by Martha Beatriz Roque, Elizardo Sánchez
and Vladimiro Roca, among others, and dropped off at the new EU office in
Havana.
If that isn't persuasive enough, Mr. Nielson could visit 6-year-old Israel
Perú Morejón. Cuba refuses to give him an exit visa so that he can
join his mother and German stepfather in Hannover, Germany. Why? Because
Israel's father, a Cuban diplomat, deserted in Austria in 2000. The regime
punishes deserters by holding their children hostage. It has no respect for the
sanctity of parental rights.
EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten last May correctly asserted
that Cuba needs to improve its ''bad human-rights record'' if it wants to
improve relations with Europe and receive more aid. The only difference today is
that the Cuban regime is more desperate for hard currency, more ferocious in its
repression and more determined to keep its monopoly of power. To invite it into
the Cotonou agreement under such circumstances would be a mockery of EU's
correct and principled position on human-rights and democracy.
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