Raul Castro: Cuba will never yield to any country or group of countries
Cuban President Raul Castro has attacked international criticism over
hunger-striking dissidents, saying Cuba will "never cede to blackmail".
Mr Castro said the US and Europe were using Western media to wage "a
ferocious campaign" to discredit Cuba.
Cuba has been under growing pressure to release political prisoners and
improve its human rights since a dissident died in February after a long
hunger strike.
Another dissident has been refusing to eat or drink for more than a month.
In a speech to the annual congress of the Young Communist League,
President Castro said his government had the right to resist efforts to
destabilise it.
"We will never yield to the blackmail of any country or group of
countries, no matter how powerful they may be, no matter what happens,"
he said.
"We have the right to defend ourselves."
'Self-destructive'
The human rights situation in Cuba has been the focus of renewed
international attention since the death in jail of Orlando Zapata Tamayo
in February, the first such death of a dissident in nearly 40 years.
The 42-year-old was arrested in March 2003 in a crackdown against
opposition activists.
Mr Zapata, who was declared a "prisoner of conscience" by Amnesty
International, had refused food for nearly three months in protest at
jail conditions.
Another dissident, Guillermo Farinas, began his hunger strike shortly
after Mr Zapata died. He is now in hospital, being fed intravenously.
"We are doing what we can to save his life," Mr Castro said without
referring to Mr Farinas by name.
"But if he does not change his own self-destructive stance, he will be
responsible, along with those who back him, for an outcome which we too
do not wish to happen," said President Castro, who officially took over
from his brother Fidel in 2008.
The Havana government denies that there any political prisoners, saying
they are "mercenaries" paid by the US to try to undermine the Cuban system.
No comments:
Post a Comment