Cuba in the UN Circus

Cuba in the UN Circus / Luis Cino Alvarez
Posted on November 14, 2013

HAVANA, Cuba, November 2013, www.cubanet.org.- Do you remember when in
the past decade Gadaffi's Libya chaired the Human Rights Commission of
the UN?

Because of such scandalous contradictions, the 2006 announcement that a
new body would be created to replace the ineffective and too politicized
Commission seemed encouraging.

Seven years later it is extremely frustrating to see that nothing has
changed, or it's gotten worse. China, Russia, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and
Vietnam have just been elected in a vote that was direct, secret and by
regional blocs, to membership on the Human Rights Council.

Can we expect something positive from a Council with such illustrious
members?

With the history of the governments of these countries in terms of human
rights, their election seems like a bad joke. It's like designating a
gang of constitutional perverts and rapists to ensure the virginity of
the pupils of a girls' school.

With no disrespect to the present miscreants, too bad they don't also
have the Iranian ayatollahs and the regimes of Syria and North Korea!

Cuba will take a seat on the UN Human Rights Council despite its
intensifying repression against the Ladies in White, the beatings and
arrests of opponents (there were 909 in October alone), the harassment
of independent journalists, and the repudiation rallies and other
outrages of the paramilitary Rapid Response Brigades in pure fascist-style.

The vote in Geneva, which will be interpreted by the Cuban regime as
another triumph of its thug diplomacy, will encourage its arrogance and
pride. We Cubans will confirm the worsening repression firsthand. They
are prepared to let opposition prisoners on hunger strike die!

For those who look for all the saints to help them, now that the
dictatorship is taking a nose-dive, the honest and decent thing would be
for the world to exert even a little power in favor of those who are
fighting for democratic change in Cuba. Just that. But instead of saying
no to suffocate the regime, or even a pinch to force them to cede
spaces, they give them a complicit wink and inflate the scarecrow, to
prolong the agony of its victims.

It happens that in the world today decency does not exactly reign.

Today the Council, like the Human Rights Commission before it, remains a
patronage club of cronies and accomplices who cheerfully and shamelessly
reciprocate favors. The Cuban people can expect little from such a circus.

Luis Cino Alvarez, luicino2012@gmail.com

Cubanet, 14 November 2013

Source: "Cuba in the UN Circus / Luis Cino Alvarez | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/cuba-in-the-un-circus-luis-cino-alvarez/