A UNIQUE DEBATE ON HUMAN RIGHTS By Manuel E. Yepe http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/ A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann. For the first time in the history of US diplomacy, the world's only superpower is being dragged into the discussion of human rights issues in its own country. This occurs in the context of the talks between the US and Cuba derived from the simultaneous announcement –on December 17, 2014, in Havana and Washington– that the two countries had agreed to hold bilateral discussions towards the normalization of their relations. The initiative to discuss human rights issues came from the Cuban side, which so often has been beset by huge US smear campaigns on this issue. Cuba has never had a scenario that guarantees the possibility of presenting its truths in a clean and "depoliticized" debate, outside the framework of the campaign that Washington has waged against Third World countries on this issue since the end of the "Cold War". Although these human rights discussions have been described as on a "technical level", it has been said that the structure of the talks offer space for a preliminary dialogue on Cuba’s topics of concern on the issue of human rights in the United States. In that context, Cuba expressed concern over the discriminatory and racist patterns present in US society, demonstrated by the intensification of police brutality, torture and extrajudicial executions which are generated in the war against terrorism, as well as the persistence of violations of labor and labor union rights in the United States. The legal limbo into which the prisoners incarcerated in the illegal US military base on Cuban territory, in Guantanamo Bay, was also a Cuban concern. The Cuban delegation also called for the indivisibility, universality and interdependence of all human rights. It referred to the rights to food, work, cultural diversity, and –in particular– the sovereign right to decide which economic, political, and social system the peoples prefer to exercise their democratic rights. It was reported that Cuba condemned the manipulation of the issue of human rights by the United States to stigmatize those countries that do not satisfy Washington's narrow conception of democracy. The US only considers a country to be a democracy if it is capitalist. But capitalism is in fact almost the antithesis of democracy or, at least, a system whose basic principles are far more at odds with democracy than those of socialism. In the context of the defense of human rights worldwide, Cuba demonstrated its achievements in the promotion and protection of all human rights, not only of Cubans but also of peoples in many nations with which Cuba has cooperated on health, education and other areas. The contrast between the generosity with which Cuba mobilizes and sends armies of doctors and health personnel to countries that need them –and requests them directly or through international health organizations– and the use by the United States of similar circumstances to send their troops or set up military bases which then tend to become permanent, became apparent. Cuba assessed the ongoing encounter as professional, respectful, and as a demonstration that "it is possible for the two countries to relate in a civilized way". The United States has described it in similar terms. Human rights are neither natural nor unique, nor eternal or divine. They are not abstract. They are concrete rights that each country acknowledges, grants, and regulates in accordance with its history, conceptions, ideology and will, under the principle of self-determination. It will undoubtedly transcend in the talks with its northern neighbor that the Cuban State preserves the right to a decent and dignified life for the people not only through laws, but with a whole set of rules that match and express a social reality and refer to fundamental rights. In the Cuban socialist project, the protection of the fundamental rights of the citizens lies in guaranteeing their social rights to health, education, social security, culture, science, sports and recreation. And next to these, their political rights; the exercise of which is explicit in the role of the citizens in the economic and social transformations of socialism: the most concrete project Humanity has developed so far on its resolute path to a true democracy. April 26, 2015. |
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SINGULAR DEBATE SOBRE DERECHOS HUMANOS Por Manuel E. Yepe http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Por primera vez en la historia de la diplomacia estadounidense, la
superpotencia única mundial se está viendo implicada en la discusión de
temas sobre los derechos humanos en su propio país. Ello ocurre en el
marco de las conversaciones entre Estados Unidos y Cuba derivadas del
anuncio simultáneo el 17];/ de diciembre de 2014, en La Habana y
Washington, de que ambas naciones habían acordado debatir bilateralmente
el camino hacia la normalización de sus relaciones. |