Cuban Foreign Minister demands that U.S. government “cease its campaign of discredit and interference”
President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez defined as disgraceful, immoral and false the recent accusations made by the U.S. State Department against Cuba, in an open attempt to manipulate the human rights issue, while Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla tweeted his condemnation of the report issued March 30, which contains totally unfounded, “misleading, politicized allegations,” which he also described as “opportunistic, arbitrary and unilateral.”
The Minister also demanded in his message that the U.S government “cease its campaign of discredit and interference.”
A press release published on the Cubaminrex website additionally reported that the Foreign Ministry’s director general for the United States, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, summoned U.S. chargé d’affaires in Havana, Timothy Zúñiga-Brown, to inform him of Cuba’s rejection of his government´s statements, pointing out that they represent an opportunistic attempt to manipulate the highly sensitive issue of human rights to justify hostile U.S. policies toward countries that are not subordinate to its interests, “and defend the sovereign right of their peoples to self-determination.”
“With respect to Cuba, the report repeats slanders that political groups in the United States, with extreme positions against Cuba, have disseminated for years as pretexts for the promotion of hostile actions and the imposition of coercive economic measures meant to damage the standard of living of the Cuban population and punish them for their support of the political, economic and social system which the country has freely and sovereignly chosen,” the press release continues.
According to Cubaminrex, Fernandez de Cossio noted, “Flagrant, systematic violations of human rights in the United States by the government of that country are well known and documented. These include racism, xenophobia, police brutality, torture of prisoners, prolonged imprisonment, the use of secret prisons, anti-Semitism, McCarthyism and other forms of religious and ideological intolerance. Added to this are extrajudicial killings in various parts of the world and arbitrary and prolonged detentions of innocent people.”
The Cuban diplomat reiterated to the U.S. embassy’s chargé d’affaires that Cuba’s prestige in the field of human rights contrasts sharply with the U.S. reality, “given the results achieved in the promotion and protection of these (rights); its tradition of adherence to United Nations mechanisms that are applied on a universal and non-discriminatory basis; and the country’s solidarity offered other developing nations to protect the rights of their peoples,” and cited as an example the recent election of Cuba as a member of the Human Rights Council for the period 2021-2023, adding that our country is a party to 44 of the UN’s 61 international human rights instruments.
(Taken from Granma)