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Yahoo! News,
October 7, 2002.
Cuba, S.Africa abandon racism talks
By Bert Wilkinson, Associated Press Writer Sat Oct 5, 1:16
Am Et.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (AP) - Saying they'll have no part in discrimination,
delegations from Russia, Cuba, South Africa, Colombia and France's overseas
territories on Friday abandoned an anti-racism conference that voted to exclude
whites.
The walkout, on the fourth day of the six-day African and African
Descendants World Conference Against Racism, came after a day of negotiations
failed.
Some 200 delegates voted Wednesday for whites and Asians to leave the
deliberations, saying slavery was too painful a subject to discuss in front of
non-Africans.
"Cuba will never support any action aimed at segregating a group of
people. Furthermore, Cuba believes that such a decision is intolerant and
contrary to the purposes of this conference," Maria Morales, the
spokeswoman for Cuba's delegation, told the conference reading from a prepared
statement.
The South Africans said that the conference had gone adrift and that they
could not endorse the decision to exclude non-blacks. It was unclear how many
delegates left the conference late Friday.
But most of the 250 delegates at the meeting hosted by the Barbados
government whistled and cheered their approval as chairwoman Jewel Crawford of
the United States stood by the vote.
"The motion of exclusion was the will of the majority because there are
sometimes when we feel that we just want to have a meeting of our own,"
Crawford said. "
Also Friday, delegates heard an impassioned plea from Mauritanian Bakary
Tandia for the conference to denounce slavery in the African countries of
Mauritania and Sudan.
He said such conferences lay too much emphasis on demands for reparations
from former white colonizers and "hardly focus on what is happening on the
continent, where slavery is alive in some places."
Human rights groups say slavery is continuing in both those African nations.
In Mauritania, though the practice has been outlawed, estimates of the number of
people currently in bondage — most of them blacks — range up to
100,000.
Human rights groups have accused the Sudanese government of abducting
civilians and forcing them into slavery. There are also claims that the rebel
Sudan People's Liberation Army is involved in abducting people.
Conference organizers said they planned a resolution of condemnation before
Sunday's end to the meeting, billed as a follow-up to last year's U.N.
anti-racism conference in South Africa.
Cuba tobacco industry hurt by Lili
Fri Oct 4, 3:07 PM ET
HAVANA, 4 (AP) - Hurricane Lili battered Cuba's tobacco industry when it
roared across the western part of the island this week, destroying many of the
curing houses used to dry tobacco for the country's world-famous cigars.
The hurricane, which crossed the island on Tuesday, "has been a
catastrophe for most of the tobacco industry," the Communist Party daily
Granma said Friday.
Lili's heavy rains and high winds flattened about 1,800 of the old curing
houses in the tobacco-growing community of San Juan y Martinez in the western
province of Pinar del Rio, leaving only 102 standing, the newspaper said.
There are about 14,500 curing houses in the region, and more than 10,000 of
those were damaged or destroyed, the newspaper said. Some are made from
weathered wooden planks, while others are made of zinc sheeting.
The precise extent of the damage has to be determined.
Tobacco leaves must be dried several months in curing houses before they are
ready to be fashioned into cigars. Unless the leaves are cured correctly, they
are useless for cigar-making.
Cuba's tobacco crop annually averages nearly 40.5 tons and produces more
than 100 million cigars for export. | 
