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Cuban dissident slams Non-Aligned over human rights
By Michael Langan
AFP
HAVANA
Petroleumworld.com 09 13 06
A leading Cuban dissident Tuesday slammed the Non-Aligned Movement, in the second day of a summit here, for not making human rights a real priority, and failing to defend personal and political freedoms.
"It is regrettable that the human rights issue is not a real and genuine priority in the Non-Aligned Movement," Elizardo Sanchez, who leads the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said in a statement.
Cuba, which is hosting the NAM summit of more than 100 developing countries in Havana, is the only one-party communist ruled nation in the Americas.
The summit is officially led by an ailing Fidel Castro, 80, who was to meet with officials including UN chief Kofi Annan, Cuban officials say. But it was not known if Fidel, a NAM stalwart for decades, would take part in any public summit activity.
In a draft of the summit's final document, NAM members call for promoting "all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all."
Members do not, however, define their concept of human rights. Their political systems run the gamut from one party-communist rule as in Cuba, to royal rule, to theocracy, to western-style democracies.
The NAM draft document calls democracy a "universal value," but stresses that for NAM members "there is no single model of democracy, that it does not belong to any country or region" and demands respect for sovereignty and self-determination.
For Cuba's top diplomat Felipe Perez Roque, "the diversity that characterizes our movement, far from becoming an obstacle preventing us from reaching harmonization, must be the driving force for us to act united in light of the principles and purposes that we have jointly defined."
But Sanchez regretted that "most of the member governments of the NAM and especially its most active and 'historic' leaders persist in juxtaposing rights of the human person, and try to justify for example grave violations of civil and political rights with the supposed or real 'achievements' in the area of social rights."
"It is worth mentioning the cases ... of Cuba and North Korea, where there are schools for all children, and no one is excluded from basic health care, but any moderately informed person knows the governments violate all civil, political and economic rights of their citizens," he added, in a pointed critique following Fidel Castro's temporary handover of power to his brother Raul Castro that was announced July 31.
Sanchez said that his group had been denied legal recognition, and its "members had been exposed, like other members of independent Cuban associations, to every manner of persecution, jailings, and many forms of harassment and police monitoring." Cuba has more than 300 political prisoners, according to his group.
Another Cuban dissident group, Arco Progresista, on Monday issued a statement urging Cuba's government to make progress on human rights and political pluralism, at a sensitive time for Cuba's communist leadership.
Though Fidel Castro this week was included on an agenda of public events released by summit organizers, Cuban authorities later clarified that it was not yet known if he might be able to take part in them. The lower-profile Raul Castro, 75, would make his international-stage debut if he presides over top-level public summit proceedings.
The summit got under way in Havana Monday with veiled attacks on the United States and Israel, and a defense of Iran's controversial nuclear program.
The six-day gathering brings together leaders from about 50 developing nations, and high-level representatives from dozens more, including some of the most outspoken foes of the United States, such as Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Syria. Its President President Bashar al-Assad was expected in Havana late Tuesday.
Among other leaders expected at the summit is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has defied UN demands that he halt uranium enrichment, the process used to make nuclear reactor fuel but also atomic bomb material.
AFP 12 1530 GMT 09 06
Copyright ©2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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