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The
article by Vaclav Havel, Arpad Goncz and Lech Walesa
(18/09/03) on Cuba and the recent sentencing of 75
mercenaries is astonishing in its ignorance and arrogance.
Are we really to believe that if when they were presidents
in their respective countries of the Czech Republic,
Hungary and Poland, and the most senior diplomat of
a major foreign nation had openly organised and funded
groups of citizens to overthrow their governments,
that they would have stood back and done nothing.
Those they refer to as "dissidents" were
proven to be working to destabilise and overthrow
the Cuban government by illegal means. The trials
had absolutely nothing to do with human rights but
everything to do with the protection of Cuba's national
sovereignty against external interference. These mercenaries
were not imprisoned on the basis of "mock trials",
but as a result of clear evidence being produced through
internationally accepted legal channels. This evidence
proved that they were working with the chief US diplomat
in Cuba, James Cason, with the clear aim of destroying
the Cuban Revolution.
The
crime these mercenaries committed was not to criticise
a so-called dictatorial regime, but to conspire with
a foreign government to overthrow a democratically
elected and populist state. To suggest otherwise is
an utter distortion of fact and a perversion of the
term human rights. Such is 'democracy' in the eyes
of Havel, Goncz and Walesa.
Cuba
has suffered intensely at the hands of the US for
over 40 years. As a small country, which has managed
against all the odds to pursue an alternative socialist
path of development, Cuba should be fully supported
by all those who oppose the increasing and aggressive
US imperialist domination of the world.
The
author is the Belfast Co-ordinator of Cuba Support
Group - Ireland
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