[NYTr] Venezuela, Cuban 5 Speak Out at UNHRC

Fri Apr 2 13:04:28 EST 2004

Prensa Latina, Havana - 2 April 2004
http://www.plenglish.com

Newsbriefs from the UN Human Rights Commission Meeting:

Venezuela and Cuban Five Take the Floor in Geneva

Geneva, Apr 2 (Prensa Latina) Venezuela denounced the private media that
"incites hate, social, racial and cultural discrimination", in a media
war victimizing the government and its supporters, to the 60th UN Human
Rights Commission session in Geneva.

During theme 11 discussion of freedom of expression, under the topic
civil and political rights, Venezuela protested this violation of human
rights and the Constitution by media that ignores its obligation to
offer "true, timely and impartial" information.

Unusual interest was also awakened when, in the name of the
Federation of Cuban Women and other NGOs, a mother of one of the five
Cubans unjustly imprisoned in the US read a document to the assembly,
again on the theme of freedom of expression.

Magali Llort, mother of Fernando Gonzalez, one of the Cuban Five
serving long prison sentences, read the denunciation of "the denial of
our human rights as individuals."

The text, asserted, "We five Cuban patriots, whose only crime was
protecting our people from terrorism, are now completing our sixth year
in US prisons in a vindictive and unjustifiable imprisonment," and was
signed by Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero and Rene
Gonzalez.
mh/ccs/lac/ft

Message of Cuban Five to the UN Human Rights Commission

Geneva, Apr 2 (Prensa Latina) Five Cubans arbitrarily serving tough jail
sentences in the US as political prisoners denounced at the 60th Session
of the UN Human Rights Commission how the United States authorities have
violated their rights.

Their denunciation came on message Magali Llort, mother of Fernando
Gonzalez -one of the Cuba Five-, read to the UN Human Rights watchdog
Thursday.

In their message, the Cuban Five, tried and sentenced to between 15
and double life imprisonment for trying to quell terrorist activities
masterminded in Miami against Cuba, express that "those looking back at
us from the future will feel little sympathy to the abuses that Cuba has
been subjected to, of which our case is only a chapter".

Following is the message read by Magaly Llort.

"Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman:

"Ladies and gentlemen:

"I am the mother of Fernando Gonz lez Llort, one of the five Cubans
currently imprisoned in United States jails and today I bring their
message to this Commission.

"Five Cuban patriots, for the only crime of protecting our people
from terrorism, are currently serving, in US prisons, the sixth year of
a vindictive and unjustifiable imprisonment. To our irrational
sentences, derived from a dark legal process in which we were
meticulously denied every right as defendants, has been added a
barbarian conduct that has targeted our dearest relatives thus trying to
break our spirit and taking ruthless retaliation, in our persons,
against everything we stand for.

"The denial of our human rights as individuals is used in this case
as the consecration of a more massive and criminal violation of rights:
that which is committed against a people that, for not kneeling down, is
denied the most elemental right to determine their own destiny and the
way to organize their institutions and life.

"Our case is only the consecration of the right of the most powerful
to exercise violence, promote terrorism, decide who can defend
themselves and who cannot, and to conspire with unpatriotic persons and
mercenaries to bring death to the country where they were born. The
prosecutors' contempt for their own laws, their systematic disrespect
towards judges, their abuse of power, their threats to witnesses and
their excellence of hypocrisy and cynicism reflect the way in which they
want to, shamelessly, force upon humanity the right of the strongest as
the only and supreme human right.

"With the same impunity that they impose, on sheer force, resolutions
against Cuba in this Commission, they imposed in our case a legal
verdict that amply honors the hypocritical concept of the US Government
regarding human rights or the fight against terror.

"Today on us and our families is discharged all the obsessive hatred
that has been discharged on the Cuban people over the last 45 years. For
every passing hour without seeing our children, there are thousands of
Cubans that have been killed, victims of terrorism, without having seen
their loved ones grow up.

"For every caress that our children lack, there are thousand of Cuban
children that were condemned not to receive a caress form their parents.
Our wives and mothers can be considered lucky as compared with the
thousand of widows and mothers who have lost their husbands or children,
victims of terrorism financed, organized and executed against Cuba from
the United States.

"For trying to prevent this suffering, we are being punished and so
are our mothers, our wives and our children. This is the version of
human rights that is opening the 21st Century when we were supposed to
have learned something from a great many empires that sank in their own
barbarity, arrogance and hypocrisy.

"If the empire we now suffer from fails to take down with it the
entire human species and civilization is able to survive today's
imbalance between excess technology and lack of wisdom, those looking
back at us from the future will feel little sympathy to the abuses that
Cuba has been subjected to, of which our case is only a chapter.

"Those who are to write that history should not spare their respects
either to the heroic and supportive people that has always been able to
resist all forms of aggression, whose only shield has been the strength
of its morale, the inheritance of its history and the humanist legacy
filled with love and firmness, passed down from their best sons and
daughters. We are recipients of this all, and we are not going to give
up a bit of our principles, irrespective of what the empire does or
fails to do in connection with our rights."

Thank you very much,

Gerardo Hern ndez, Ram=A2n Laba=A4ino, Fernando Gonz lez, Antonio
Guerrero and Ren, Gonz lez
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