STATEMENT FROM THE MINISTRY OF
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Cuba calls on the
United States to stop the
torture of prisoners in
Guantánamo
On January
19, 2005, reflecting the
indignation of our people at the
atrocities committed on
prisoners held at the US Naval
Base in Guantánamo, the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs presented the
US governmental authorities in
Havana and Washington with a
diplomatic note denouncing the
flagrant violations of human
rights that the said government
is daily committing on Cuban
territory illegally occupied by
the above-mentioned naval base.
This communication called for an
immediate end to that inhuman
and criminal conduct.
The note
reminds the US government that
the atrocities being committed
on the base and the very fact of
utilizing that illegally
occupied Cuban territory as a
prison, is in violation of
numerous instruments of
international law and
international humanitarian law,
and moreover, violates the Coal
and Naval Stations Agreement
signed in February 1903 by the
government of the United States
and the Cuban government of that
period, in conditions of
inequality and disadvantage for
our country, whose independence
was circumscribed via the Platt
Agreement.
According
to Article II of that agreement,
the US government committed
itself to doing everything
necessary to ensure that those
locations should be exclusively
used as coal or naval stations
and for no other objective.
It is also
important to recall that when
the Cuban authorities were
informed – although not
consulted – of the US government
decision to transfer a group of
prisoners from the war in
Afghanistan to this US military
enclave in Guantánamo, the
government of the Republic of
Cuba informed national and
internal opinion in a statement
dated January 11, 2002, that
"although the transfer of
foreign prisoners of war on the
part of the government of the
United States to one of its
military installations located
on part of our national
territory over which we have
been deprived of the right to
exercise jurisdiction is not in
line with the regulations that
gave rise to that installation,
we shall not create any
obstacles to the development of
the operation." Moreover, the
statement highlighted that our
government had "taken note with
satisfaction of public
statements from the US
authorities in the context of
the prisoners receiving adequate
and humane treatment."
The
dramatic reality of the
prisoners detained on the
Guantánamo Naval Base, reported
by the media to total 550 at the
present time, likewise reveals
the double standards of the US
government in its hackneyed and
manipulative campaigning on
behalf of human rights.
The
arbitrary detention of these
foreign prisoners without the
mediation of a legal trial, as
well as the torture and
degrading treatment to which
they are being subjected,
constitute a gross violation of
human rights and numerous
international treaties and
conventions, in particular, the
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and the Convention on
torture and other cruel, inhuman
or degrading treatment or
punishment.
With this
hypocritical conduct, the
government of the United States
has demonstrated the falsity of
its own public statements and
once again has lied to the
government of the Republic of
Cuba, to its own people and to
the international community by
concealing the horrific acts of
torture, cruelty and humiliating
and denigratory treatment
committed on prisoners detained
on the Guantánamo Naval Base,
only comparable with the torture
inflicted on inmates in the
prison of Abu Ghraib and other
penitential establishments in
occupied Iraqi territory.
The
Ministry of Foreign Affairs adds
its voice to the calls and
demands of the international
community that the government of
the United States instantly end
these flagrant violations of
prisoners that, moreover, are
being committed on illegally
occupied Cuban territory.
Cuba has
the total moral right afforded
by an irreproachable history in
this context and the right
conferred on it to exercise
sovereignty over all parts of
Cuban territory to denounce
these abuses and violations that
the US government is daily
committing on the detainees on
the Guantánamo Naval Base and to
demand the end of these
practices that violate
international law.
Havana,
January 19, 2005 |