Friday, June 15, 2007

Overwhelming Support for Cuba in the Human Rights Council

Overwhelming support for Cuba in the Human Rights Council

Rapporteur’s report described as a sham
BY FAUSTO TRIANA

GENEVA, Switzerland, June 12. — Twenty-five countries gave their full support to Cuba and asked for a definitive end to mandate by country in the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC).

“We will soon toast with our Cuban friends, when these politicized and selective mandates end, and to celebrate we will sing the Guantanamera,” said the Palestinian delegation, provoking laughter in the usually somber auditorium.

Palestine was actually the 19th delegation to express admiration for Cuba, as did Sri Lanka, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Vietnam, Ecuador, Iran, Bolivia, China and South Africa.

It was an unusual series of speeches expressing support for a country at the Palais des Nations in this Swiss city, responding to the report presented by Christine Chanet, the so-called “special representative for Cuba” on the former Human Rights Commission.

Russia, India, Indonesia, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Algeria, Syria, Sudan, Malaysia, Libya, Angola, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Belarus, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, joined in the chorus discrediting Chanet’s report.

Juan Antonio Fernández, Cuba’s ambassador to these international agencies in Geneva, described Chanet’s report as a sham, and said it deserved no credit whatsoever. In speaking to the majority sentiment in the HRC, Fernández asserted that “this grotesque spectacle” would soon be put to an end, and specified: “along with it will go the hypocrisy, the double standards and the complicity that sunk the ousted Commission into discredit.” (PL)

Translated by Granma International

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