Draft to U.N. Does Not Condemn Cuba As Castro Jails Scores of Dissidents (Kick the UN to Havana)

GENEVA - A resolution presented Wednesday to the top U.N. human rights body does not include a condemnation of Cuba's record, a rare move that immediately drew protests from rights campaigners.

The activist groups charged that just last week Cuba arrested scores of dissidents, accusing them of conspiring with American diplomats in Cuba to encourage opposition to the communist government.

The annual meeting of the 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission has censured the communist island for its lack of democracy and free speech every year over the past decade except 1998.

But in wording that will likely draw U.S. protest as well, the draft measure produced by Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Peru and Uruguay simply asks Cuba to accept a visit by a U.N. monitor appointed earlier this year by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Censure by the U.N. body brings no penalties but draws international attention to a country's rights record.

A spokesman for the U.S. mission to U.N. European offices in Geneva said only that the United States supported the efforts of the sponsoring nations to address the human rights situation in Cuba.

In Cuba, at least 75 people, including independent journalists, been arrested since the crackdown was launched last week, according to the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation.

The arrests were made "while the international community has been preoccupied with Iraq," Rory Mungoven, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch, said.

The European Union on Wednesday condemned the crackdown against political dissidents in Cuba and called for their immediate release.

In Havana, the wives of several arrested anti-government activists visited their husbands Wednesday and said they appeared to be in good health.

Cuba insists its rights record is good. It says it respects human rights by guaranteeing its people broad social services such as free health care and education, and that rich nations that fail to protect the poor are in no position to preach.

"The United States needs a resolution against Cuba like a fish needs water," Perez Roque, the foreign minister, told reporters in Geneva last week.

Washington is running out of ways to justify its 40-year-old embargo against Cuba, which most other nations oppose, he said.

February 2, 2003 - South Africa Helps Libya Gain U.N. Human Rights Seat*** Libya's election to the chairmanship of the United Nations Human Rights Commission this week raised eyebrows across the world. The oppressive nature of Libya's government and disregard for human rights are well known and thoroughly documented. The European countries, including France, Germany and Great Britain, which abstained during the vote and thus assured Libya's victory, are partly to blame for Libya's election. Incapacitated by colonial guilt, political correctness, and hypersensitivity to criticism emanating from the developing countries, the Europeans have continuously ignored human rights abuses by some of the world's most unsavory regimes. In fact, they made the situation in the developing world worse by subsidizing African dictators through foreign aid.

But it was the South African government that actively promoted Libya's candidacy. Yes, South Africa, the nation whose leaders today fought so hard to end apartheid, now endorses Libya as a "human rights" monitor. South African diplomats nominated Libya for the chairmanship and then mustered the necessary votes from among the African and Arab blocs. When the United States broke with the tradition of electing the chair of the commission by acclamation and forced a vote on the issue, the South African ambassador to the UNHRC called the American action "regrettable."***

Yankee Doodle Castro***Havana recently topped Bangkok as "child-sex capital of the world." Consider the human tragedy, the desperation of poor people driven to such things in such numbers, and after 43 years of "liberation" and "national dignity." 18,000 riddled by firing squads. Half a million incarcerated. 50,000 drowned or ripped apart by sharks in the Florida Straits. Thousands more slaughtered in Africa for Moscow. Two million exiled. And we wind up with a nation that in 1959 had a higher living standard than Belgium or Italy, had a lower infant mortality rate than France, had net immigration, as child prostitution capital of the world. Friends, are you beginning to understand why we get a trifle "emotional" or "unreasonable" when we hear some imbecile professor or boneheaded politician yapping about "the good things" Castro has done for Cuba?***

Film director Roman Polanski, left, and Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez speak together in this Dec.13, 2002 file photo during the closing ceremony of the XXIV Cuban International film Festival in Havana, Cuba. Polanski, who's been a fugitive for the past quarter century after pleading guilty to having sex with an underage girl, won the best-director Oscar Sunday, March 23, 3003 for 'The Pianist.'' (AP Photo/File)

Fidel Castro - Cuba

Director Stone shows human side of Cuba's Castro - "…even our prostitutes are university educated"*** "I say it is one of the achievements of the revolution that even our prostitutes are university educated," Castro says. Stone's next project will be about Alexander the Great starring Colin Farrell. But he is set to court controversy again with another project, "Persona Non Grata," a film about Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, set to air in June in America.

After Castro, Stone said he could imagine interviewing another U.S. enemy, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "I would try to get on with him in the same way ... Who knows who he is. The American media makes him into a monster."***

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