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Are we all equal?...(II)

I know that many people in this hall share these concerns, and I also know that almost all of us are asking ourselves the same question. Can the WTO be spared from the danger of becoming a fiefdom of the United States and its allies, like the IMF and the World Bank are today? Shall we truly succeed in making of WTO the democratic and transparent forum we need, or will the interests of a powerful minority be imposed to the detriment of the silent majority, which is too divided, confused and unsuspecting to understand the dangers of a cold and dogmatic liberalization of world trade? Will it be recalled that the vast majority of Third World countries, dependent on the export of a single agricultural product or a few spices, will be wiped out of world trade and crushed by the fierce competition of a few transnationals? Should we or should we not take these realities into account, and recognize the need to protect the interests of the underdeveloped countries, if only to guarantee their very survival?

How will we poor countries be able to compete if our professionals leave for the wealthy nations in pursuit of better opportunities, if we are not even allowed to keep our athletes and must watch with sorrow as they compete under another country's flag?

How will we poor nations be able to compete economically if the 10 most developed countries control 95% of the patents issued in the last 20 years and intellectual property, far from being liberalized, is ever more closely protected?

Talking to us poor countries about trade through the Internet is almost laughable, when 91% of Internet users live in OECD member countries. Will we ever see a change in the current situation, in which there are over 600 telephone lines for every 1000 people in the United States, Sweden and Switzerland, yet only one telephone per 1000 people in Cambodia, Chad and Afghanistan?

Mr. Chairman, Your Excellencies,

While discussing the dramatic situation facing the vast majority of countries in the world, I feel obliged to talk about my own country. If there ever was an example of what should not be done in terms of relations between powerful and small nations, that is provided by what is happening in Cuba.

Throughout more than 40 years, my people have been subjected to a brutal policy of hostility and all sorts of aggressions imposed by the United States. Senior authorities in that country have openly confessed that this policy is aimed at destroying the political and economic system built by the Cuban people of their own free will, and at restoring the neocolonial power that the United States definitively lost on January 1, 1959, with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

As demonstrated by events, by public declarations made by American spokespeople and by secret documents declassified in the United States, this policy of aggression has been carried out through means that have ranged from political and diplomatic actions, propaganda campaigns, espionage and subversion, and the promotion of defection and illegal emigration, to acts of terrorism, sabotage and biological warfare. It has not been missing the organization and support of armed groups, air and naval raids against our territory, the organization of over 600 plots to assassinate the leader of our Revolution, a military invasion by a mercenary army, the most serious threat of an international nuclear conflict ever known on October of 1962, and finally, a brutal commercial and financial blockade and a ferocious economic war against my country that have now lasted 40 years.

Setting aside the economic aspects of the aggression against Cuba and dealing solely with the physical aggression and violent acts carried out by the U.S. government, a number of Cuban social organizations have filed a civil lawsuit against the U.S. administration demanding reparation and compensation for losses and damages resulting from the 3478 Cuban citizens who have died and a further 2099 survivors who have been left disabled as a consequence of covert plots and the dirty war waged by the United States. The suit demands that the U.S. government, which is responsible for these human losses and injuries, be sentenced to pay a total of 181.1 billion dollars in reparation, as a minimum, symbolic compensation for the loss of something that is clearly irreplaceable and impossible to put a price on: the lives and physical well being of over 5500 Cuban citizens who have been victims of the United States' obsessive policy against Cuba.

At the open and public trial that considered this demand, which was televised nationwide, it was clearly proven that the U.S. government is directly responsible for this continued aggression, and that the undeclared war against Cuba has constituted an official state policy enforced by no fewer than nine successive U.S. administrations throughout the last 40 years.

What will they say to their grandchildren, these leaders, officials and agents of the US government whose consciences are weighed down by the guilt of planning and carrying out this dirty war against Cuba, and the moral burden of responsibility for the death of thousands of Cubans?

Can we possibly accept the continuation into the next century of an international system that allows total impunity for monstrous actions like these, systematically and flagrantly perpetrated by a major power?

The ferocious economic blockade, which reaches out to every possible angle of our country's foreign trade and financial relations, in the minutest detail, deserves special attention.

This blockade, that has lasted over 40 years, began to develop before the triumph of the Revolution. A secret U.S. document, declassified in 1991, reveals that on December 23, 1958, at a National Security Council meeting attended by President Dwight Eisenhower where the situation in Cuba was discussed, then CIA director Allen Dulles categorically stated: "We ought to prevent a Castro victory."

Three days later, on December 26, President Eisenhower instructed the CIA that "he did not wish the specifics of covert operations [against Cuba] to be presented to the National Security Council." Everything had to be kept strictly secret.

The sudden and overwhelming triumph of the revolutionary forces six days later did not give them time to "prevent a Castro victory."

The first U.S. assault on the national economy would take place on the very day of January 1, 1959, when those who had looted the Public Treasury fled for the United States, together with the perpetrators of the most heinous massacres and abuses against the Cuban people.

Five weeks after the triumph of the Revolution, in a report issued February 6, economist Felipe Pazos, a professional man well known and respected in U.S. government circles, who had been appointed by the Revolutionary government to take over the management of the Cuban National Bank, announced that the former regime had embezzled or seized 424 million US dollars from the gold and dollar reserves that backed the Cuban peso. The New York Times later corroborated the report's claim regarding the theft of the funds that constituted the country's only reserves.

The spoils of this colossal theft ended up in U.S. banks. Not a dime was returned to Cuba.

The National Bank immediately requested a modest quantity of funds to confront this highly critical situation. That request was turned down.

The Agrarian Reform Law passed on May 17, 1959 was aimed at providing food for the vast majority of our undernourished people and direct or indirect employment for a large percentage of the population unemployed at the time. It had been enacted when the word socialism had still not been spoken in Cuba; however, it provoked an extreme reaction in the United States, whose companies owned much of the best and most fertile land in Cuba. Cuba's willingness, stipulated in the law itself, to provide the owners with deferred compensation paid out in reasonable and workable installments, was met with the U.S. government's demand for prompt, effective and full cash compensation. There was nothing in the public coffers with which to fulfill this demand.

A month later, at a meeting called by the State Department to study options for action against Cuba, it was put forth that "it behooved the US Government to take a very firm position forthwith against the law and its implementation," and that "the best way to achieve the necessary result was by economic pressure." One of the strategies proposed was to deprive Cuba of its quota privilege in the U.S. sugar market, based on the belief, according to a declassified document, that "the sugar industry would promptly suffer an abrupt decline, causing widespread further unemployment. The large numbers of people thus forced out of work would begin to go hungry." At that same meeting, U.S. State Secretary Herter explicitly qualified these proposals as "measures of economic warfare."

On April 6, 1960, L.D. Mallory, a State Department senior official, stated that "the only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship." He went on to stress that "every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba," and proposed "a line of action which makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."

Three months later, on July 6, 1960, the United States adopted one of the measures proposed earlier: the removal of the Cuban sugar quota. Never again would the United States buy a single pound of sugar from Cuba. A market that was established over the course of more than 100 years between the United States and Cuba, with Cuba guaranteeing the supply of this essential food product to the United States and its allies in the first half of the century, during the two World Wars from which the United States emerged as the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world, was wiped out in a second, dealing a savage blow to the country's major source of employment and revenue and depriving it of essential funds for acquiring the food, medicine, fuel and raw materials needed to ensure the survival of our people.

From that time onward, successive economic measures against the Cuban people continued to accumulate until taking shape as a full and comprehensive blockade, which went as far as to prevent Cuba from importing even an aspirin produced in the United States, or exporting to that country a single flower cultivated in Cuba.

This full-fledged blockade, shamelessly and euphemistically referred to in official terms with the apparently innocuous word "embargo", has been progressively intensified throughout the last 40 years.

Then, at the most critical and difficult time in our history, when the USSR and the socialist bloc collapsed and the country was deprived of the fundamental markets and sources of supplies it could count on to withstand the ferocious economic warfare waged against an island located only 90 miles from the U.S. coasts, they decided to act more ruthlessly still against Cuba, and the blockade was intensified to the maximum, in a case of truly vulgar and repugnant opportunism.

The 1992 Torricelli Act, among other restrictive measures that considerably affected the maritime transport of food and other commodities between Cuba and the rest of the World, prohibited U.S. subsidiaries based in third countries from trading with Cuba. The legislation put an end to commercial operations that, in terms of food and medicines, amounted to over 700 million US dollars worth of imports from those countries.

This genocidal policy reached even more infamous heights with the Helms-Burton Act, which codified all previous administrative restrictions, expanded and tightened the blockade, and established it in perpetuity.

Subsequent to the passage of the Helms-Burton Act, and with the aim of tightening even further the blockade against the Cuban people, numerous amendments introduced into bills that needed to be passed with such urgent speed, and were at the same time so lengthy that many U.S. lawmakers did not even have time to read them, were adopted by show of hands in the U.S. Congress. The Cuban-American terrorist mob, closely linked to the extreme right wing, has achieved its goal of changing the blockade from an executive order into a rigorous and inflexible legislation. Thus, the genocide was institutionalized.

The American Association for World Health (AAWH), following a 1997 study of the consequences of the blockade in this field, concluded that it "appears to violate the most basic international charters and conventions governing human rights, including the United Nations charter, the charter of the Organization of American States, and the articles of the Geneva Convention governing the treatment of civilians during wartime. [...] The Geneva Conventions, to which 165 countries are parties, including the United States, require the free passage of all medical supplies and foodstuffs intended for civilians in time of war. The United States and Cuba are not at war. In fact, their governments even maintain diplomatic representations in Havana and Washington. Nevertheless, the AAWH has determined that the embargo's restrictions signify the deliberate blockading of the Cuban population's access to food and medicine — in times of peace."

In the same report, the AAWH expresses its belief that "the US embargo of Cuba has dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens. [...] It is our conclusion that the US embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering —and even deaths— in Cuba."

Throughout seven consecutive years, the United Nations General Assembly has consistently adopted a resolution on the necessity of ending the economic blockade imposed by the United States of America on Cuba. The world's condemnation of this genocidal policy has visibly grown from year to year.

Between 1992 and 1998, this Cuban resolution has received 59, 88, 101, 117, 137, 143 and 157 votes in favor. The United States has only managed to obtain 3, 4, 2, 3, 3, 3 and 2 votes, including its own.

Given the absolute contempt demonstrated by the United States with regard to these UN General Assembly resolutions, the people of Cuba have decided —independently of the battle that goes on in this Assembly— to resort to the legal procedures to which they have a right in order to demand the sanctions corresponding to those responsible for these acts of genocide.

Cuba's initiative is based on solid and irrefutable legal foundations.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948, and was signed by the government of the United States of America on December 11, 1948 and by the Republic of Cuba on December 28, 1949. It entered into force on January 12, 1951 and has since been signed and ratified by 124 states. Article II of this Convention reads as follows: "In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

It immediately goes on to include among these acts, in sub-paragraph (c), "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."

Article III stipulates that the following acts, among others, shall be punishable:

"(a) Genocide;"

"(d) Attempt to commit genocide;

"(e) Complicity in genocide."

It precisely states in Article IV:

"Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals."

The Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War was signed on August 12, 1949, and ratified by the governments of the United States and Cuba. It entered into force on October 21, 1950 and a total of 188 states are currently parties to this Convention. In Article 23, it establishes: "Each High Contracting Party shall allow the free passage of all consignments of medical and hospital stores and objects necessary for religious worship intended only for civilians of another High Contracting Party, even if the latter is its adversary. It shall likewise permit the free passage of all consignments of essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases."

Additional Protocol I of this Convention specifically, precisely and categorically stipulates, <>in Article 54, the "protection of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population."

"1. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.

"2. It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve our civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive."

Article VI of the 1948 Convention states, without room for the slightest doubt, that "persons charged with genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed."

In sub-paragraph (e) of that same article III, it is stipulated with the same precision that accomplices to genocide shall also be punished.

As a consequence, the National Assembly of People's Power of the Republic of Cuba declared this past September 13:

1. That the economic blockade imposed by the government of the United States on Cuba constitutes an international crime of genocide, in accordance with the definition stipulated in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948.

2. That, on the basis of the arguments put forward and the foregoing declaration, it proclaims Cuba's right to demand that such acts be punished.

3. That as a result of the grave, systematic and ongoing genocide carried out over the course of 40 years against the people of Cuba, and in accordance with international standards, principles, agreements and laws, the Cuban courts have the right to try and punish the guilty parties, whether they be present or absent.

4. That acts of genocide and other war crimes are not subject to any statute of limitations.

5. That the guilty parties can be punished even with a life imprisonment sentence.

6. That criminal responsibility does not exempt the aggressor state from providing material compensation for the human and economic damage it may have caused.

7. That it calls on the international community for support in this struggle to defend the most elemental principles of justice, the right to life, peace, and the freedom of all peoples.

Here in this hall today, as members of the Cuban delegation to the 54th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, there are three young Cubans representing our country's university students, intermediate-level students, and children and adolescents. They are here on behalf of the social organizations that went before the corresponding courts to file the claim against the U.S. government, demanding reparation and compensation for the damages and injuries suffered by thousands of people. Those same organizations also assumed the legal initiative of proposing the aforementioned proclamation to the National Assembly of People's Power.

Here with us as well are three outstanding personalities in Cuban medicine, deputies in the National Assembly, who testified before that body on the dramatic harm that has resulted from the blockade on medicines imposed against our country. There are also three Christian deputies, whose profound ethical, religious and human convictions led them to support the proclamation made in our National Assembly to demand the trial and punishment of the guilty parties.

They are prepared to respond, here in the United States, to any questions posed to them, or to meet with the press, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, lawmakers or even a U.S. Congress committee. We are prepared not only to make these denunciations, but also to engage in debate and demonstrate the facts that support our assertions.

Thank you very much

Reply by Peter Burleigh, U.S. permanent alternate representative to the UN

Hassan Pérez’ counter-reply at the 5th UN General Assembly