BBC News Online.
Monday, 19 March, 2001, 20:26 GMT.
Cuba issues double trade challenge
Cuban President Fidel Castro says Cuba has developed its own Aids drugs and
will help Brazil and South Africa challenge US patent laws to provide cheaper
treatments for Aids sufferers.
Referring to the multi-pill treatments, the president confirmed that Cuba is
producing "those famous cocktails", and challenged multinational
pharmaceutical companies to protest.
The US in particular has been accused of using patent laws to try to stop
developing nations producing drugs generically, insisting they import
American-made drugs at Western prices.
In a separate development, Castro said that Cuba would ignore US trademark
laws and start producing its own Bacardi-brand rums as a reprisal for "the
theft of our Havana Club brand."
His comments follow the Bacardi corporation's announcement that it would
produce a Havana Club brand rum for sale in the United States.
Loopholes
Last week, the European Parliament called for the creation of loopholes in
patent laws that keep high-priced Aids drugs from sufferers in the developing
countries, particularly South Africa.
It also urged 39 pharmaceutical companies to withdraw their court challenge
to a 1997 South African law that allows the government to licence and
manufacture affordable "generic" versions of expensive brand-name
drugs.
Brazil has also launched production of generic anti-viral drugs in order to
provide government-subsidised treatment to tens of thousands of people infected
with the virus.
"We will fully support Brazil and South Africa, encouraging them to
ignore US patents and produce the drugs to save the millions of lives that can
be saved," said President Castro.
Official Aids treatments can cost between $10,000 and $15,000 per patient
per year, far beyond the reach of a huge majority of sufferers.
By comparison, generic treatments can cost as little as $1 per sufferer per
day.
Cuba's local dissidents speak out
By Daniel Schweimler in Havana. BBC News. Monday, 19 March,
2001, 19:44 GMT
A motion condemning Cuba's human rights record is set to be one of the key
items on the agenda for the United Nations Human Rights Commission's current
meeting in Geneva.
Last year, Cuba lost a similar vote, provoking outrage from President Fidel
Castro who said the United States had bullied, cajoled and bribed other nations
into condemning his country.
When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 many of his opponents fled, mostly
to the United States. And many dissidents have continued to leave the country
since. None are allowed back.
But some dissidents stayed in Cuba, such as Marta Beatriz Roque: "We
need enough space in our society and we are working for this. We need to make a
hole inside the government to live, to think, to talk," she said.
"We need to be here. Me in particular. I don't want to live out of my
country. This is my country and my country needs what we do."
Working for change
Many of these dissidents who have stayed in Cuba have been imprisoned. Marta
Beatriz Roque herself was released last May after three-and-a-half years in
jail.
The dissidents form a number of disparate groups across the island and they
are small in number.
They are rarely mentioned in the state-controlled media and do not have
their own newspapers, magazines or radio stations. They are constantly monitored
by the Cuban security forces.
More than 100 groups, some representing just a handful of people, are trying
to gather 10,000 signatures in order to change the Cuban constitution.
They want greater freedom of speech, association and movement and the chance
to hold elections.
One of those behind the move and possibly the best known of the dissidents
still in Cuba is Elizardo Sanchez. "The majority, like the majorities in
Czechoslovakia or Bulgaria or the Romanians or the Soviet Union want to know
that change is possible in the near future. A light at the end of the tunnel,"
he said.
"Something that tells them they might be able to live happier lives
with greater prosperity."
The 40-year long economic embargo imposed on Cuba by the United States has
hit the island's economy hard.
Many expected the economy to fold in the 1990 after the collapse of the
Soviet Union which propped up the Cuban economy.
Two-tier economy
But President Fidel Castro defied the expectations of many and survived. One
change he allowed was the use of the US dollar alongside the Cuban peso.
Fruit and vegetable markets sell only in Cuban pesos. But those who have
dollars spend their dollars in modern supermarkets.
It has created a two-tier economy in which foreigners and Cubans with access
to dollars can buy more expensive but better quality, imported goods.
But most Cubans can buy only in pesos which gives them access to a much more
limited range of goods.
According to dissident economist Oscar Espinosa, it has created growing
resentment.
"The government knows that when a person is free economically, or at
least a little freer economically, then he has greater political freedom. So
that's why it's trying to close those openings." he said.
"There is a contrast because the foreigners here have all the
opportunities...every day the foreign investments are growing... I'm not for or
against foreign investment or the tourist industry, what I'm against is the
discrimination against Cubans."
Embargo "an abuse"
The Cuban government appears nervous about the UN vote and has attacked the
countries that backed last year's motion, such as the Czech Republic and
Argentina.
While dissidents in Cuba say the state is increasing pressure on them, Cuba
accuses the dissidents of being counter-revolutionaries in the pay of the US.
The Havana Government has always said the greatest abuse of human rights is
that caused by the US embargo which stops books reaching Cuban schools and
medicines reaching the sick.
For Cuba to defeat the motion would provide a massive boost to that
argument. The dissidents in Cuba are meanwhile looking to the UN for support in
their lonely battle, | 