A rchive Date
[ 10-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Cuba ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/04/07/59956-ap.html
Cuba defends crackdown, saying it's needed to protect national sovereignty
Wed, April 9, 2003
HAVANA (CP) - Communist Cuba vigorously defended its prosecution of 75 dissidents on state security charges, saying Wednesday the summary trials and heavy sentences were justified by the need to protect itself from foreign efforts to change its system.
"We have been patient, we have been tolerant," Foreign Ministry Felipe Perez Roque told reporters during a 3½-hour defence of the recent crackdown on the opposition. "But we have been obligated to apply our laws."
Perez Roque also denied widespread speculation that the crackdown was timed to coincide with world's preoccupation with the war on Iraq, or was somehow related to a recent string of hijackings.
"This decision was taken before the war on Iraq and before (last week's) hijackings of the plane and the ferry," Perez Roque said. As for American officials' recent criticisms of the crackdown, with its current military action in Iraq, "the United States is the least qualified to judge what is going in Cuba," he added.
The Cuban government has accused the independent journalists, pro-democracy activists, opposition party leaders and other dissidents arrested last month of receiving American government funds and collaborating with U.S. diplomats to undermine the socialist state.
The foreign minister's carefully prepared presentation Wednesday was the government's first substantial response to the fast trials and sentences of six to 28 years that have alarmed governments and human rights groups around the world.
Canada was among the first countries to protest.
Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham voiced Ottawa's "extreme concern" in a letter to Perez Roque on Monday. And on Wednesday, Prime Minister Jean Chretien added his voice.
"We have a problem and the minister of foreign affairs dealt with it," Chretien said. "I know there is a problem with human rights in that country - sometimes it's better, sometimes it's bad. We're protesting, but (it's) better to be engaged because that's putting pressure."
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello, questioned the fairness of the proceedings,.
"Cuba must ensure that the accused benefit from due process, including the right to an adequate defence," Vieira de Mello said during the current annual meeting of the commission in Geneva.
Perez Roque presented letters and detailed lists of payments among numerous documents he said proved the defendants were linked to and receiving money from the U.S. government. Many of the payments the foreign minister mentioned appeared to come from Miami- or Washington-based groups that receive funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development, known as USAID, to support the opposition and prepare for a transition in Cuba.
The foreign minister also said that the legal proceedings strictly followed Cuban law, with all defendants represented by lawyers. They all heard the charges against them, had a chance to respond and in each case both evidence and witnesses were presented in open court, he added.
All of those sentenced have the right to appeal under Cuban law, he added.
As for complaints that the proceedings were closed to international reporters and foreign diplomats, Perez Roque said there was not enough room in the courts to accommodate the journalists.
"And who has said that a foreign diplomat has the right to the trial of someone on trial who is not a citizen of their country?" Perez Roque asked. "If they need information on the trials, they can come to the Foreign Ministry."
During the presentation, authorities showed various video clips, including several of state security agents who had posed as dissidents but revealed their true identities during last week's trials.
Independent journalist Nestor Baguer, who revealed last week he was really a government spy known as Octavio told a government interviewer in one tape that his colleagues in the dissident press received money from groups in the United States linked to the government.
"They are not journalists," Baguer said of Cuba's independent press. "They are information terrorists."
A good part of the foreign minister's presentation was dedicated to U.S. Interests Section chief James Cason, who Cuban authorities accuse of violating diplomatic protocol with his open support of groups opposed to President Fidel Castro's government.
"Our patience ran out with Mr. Cason," Perez Roque said.
Castro was enraged by Cason's meeting with dissidents at one of their homes in late February and his subsequent declaration that "the Cuban government is afraid: afraid of freedom of conscience, afraid of freedom of expression, afraid of human rights."
"Actually, Cuba is so afraid that it will calmly take all the time needed to decide on its course of action regarding this bizarre official," Castro said a few weeks later. At the time, Castro also warned that his government could shut down the American mission in Havana - something he has done numerous times in the past.
Cason this week once again denied the accusations that the U.S. Interests Section had local dissidents on its payroll, saying the mission operates no differently than American embassies in other countries.
 World Fact Book (CIA]
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