Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-04-22-Speech-4-249"
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"en.20040422.9.4-249"2
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"Mr President, I am going to vote against the so-called compromise resolution, which my Socialist Group has not signed, because I believe it is unfair, biased and does not take account of the aggression and threat suffered by Cuba from the United Sates for almost 50 years.
There are several dozen countries in the world in which the situation in terms of human rights and freedom is objectively worse than in Cuba, but we do not talk about those countries with the same concern. Instead, the European Union maintains relations with almost all of them and, incidentally, just today we have voted without any fuss to renew a cooperation agreement with one of these countries.
What we do not have in the world is several dozen countries on which the United States is obsessively fixated as it is with Cuba. In this area, both our agenda and the scandalous double standards of our positions are set by the United States, with the naïve or deliberate complicity of some of our fellow Members.
In principle, I am in favour of the 70 or so prisoners in Cuba being released. I am aware, however, that people who have been shown to have collaborated with an aggressive power would be imprisoned in our countries as well. I would also contradict those who distort the truth, both in relation to the trials undergone by those prisoners and the conditions in which they are carrying out their sentences.
Nobody would be surprised, Mr President, least of all the Cubans, if following its ‘bringing democracy to Iraq’ venture, the Bush administration were to embark on a similar ‘bringing democracy to Cuba’ operation. For this venture as for the previous one, the White House would find supporters amongst us, but I will certainly not be one of them, and nor will I be one of those who end up regretting not having resisted before.
I would also point out that within Cuban territory there are cases of human rights violations, violations of the rule of law, illegal imprisonment and inhuman conditions, not for the 70, but for more than 600 men who have not been sentenced nor subject to any judicial procedure. But that is happening in the part of the island occupied by the United States: in the base at Guantánamo. I am shocked that those Members who collect signatures so that the rights of prisoners in Cuban jails are respected and in order to visit those jails, do not include the situation of the prisoners in Guantánamo and a visit to the jail there.
On the subject of the human rights of Cuban citizens, I would point out that in the United States there are five Cuban prisoners who have been handed down horrendous sentences, in trials which are dubious in terms of legal security, all as a result of actions in defence of their people from attacks from terrorist groups based in Miami. The US Administration is denying them and their families their legitimate rights as defined in the most fundamental rules of international humanitarian law. In this regard, we have called for the mobilisation of the Council and the Commission, today we reiterate our support and we call on Parliament to support the five people who the Cubans see as their heroes, and their families, several of whom have not been able to visit, not for months, not for years, Mr President."@en1
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