Castro Justifies Death Penalty in Cuba
HAVANA TIMES — Cuban President Raul Castro today justified the use of the death penalty on the island while speaking in Santiago de Chile with fellow members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), reported DPA news.
Speaking off the cuff, he defended actions against drug trafficking as a “battle of blood and fire.” Castro added: “Our laws allow the death penalty. This action has been suspended, but it’s on the books, because one time we suspended it and all this did was to stimulate acts of aggression and sabotage against my country.”
Today the Cuban president is assuming the rotating presidency of CELAC, an organization that was born in December 2011 and brings together all the countries of the Americas – with the exception of the United States and Canada.
Speaking at the plenary session, Castro also honored the “extraordinary leadership” of Hugo Chavez, who is in Havana recovering from his latest cancer operation on December 11. Despite his absence, the Venezuelan president has garnered much attention in Santiago de Chile.
“From here we reiterate to Chavez our affection, respect and admiration for him, as well as his valiant people, who are fighting for greater political stability, security and happiness,” said Castro.
The Cuban president criticized the attack being waged against Chavez and his government in a “sustained campaign by the empire,” referring to the United States. He added that the Venezuelan people and pro-Chavez leaders “are setting an example of loyalty, conviction and confidence.”
Concerning CELAC, the 81-year-old Cuban leader made a closed defense as a diverse but common space that will allow the region to advance “independently” and in control of its natural resources.
He recalled, however, that poverty remains a problem in the region. “We cannot forget that 170 million people in Latin American and the Caribbean live in poverty,” therefore he called on CELAC to develop a concept of cooperation for combatting this.
Likewise, Castro blamed the developed countries for the international crisis and for the advance of climate change. “The international economic order is unfair and exclusionary, trapped in a global crisis which, for now, no solution is in sight. Climatic change is inexorably progressing in the absence of the political will of the governments of developed countries,” he said.
Chocking to discover, that the country I admire, are in the same ‘club’ as USA; the death penalty club. Even it’s 14 years ago the last execution was done, it’s a shame for this nation. Come on Cuba, show You’re a better place to live in, than USA!
I love my country but murder is never justified
Elpidio, by lumping me in with Griffin as “you people,” you make a serious error. Didn’t you even understand anything I said?
What a pathetic excuse: the Americans made the Cuban Coast Guard ram the ferry boat! they had to leave the women & children to srown to set an example to the people of what happens to thise who try to escape the island prison.
By the way, I’m Canadian, not American. I have been to Cuba and talked with Cubans who hate the Castro regime. They want freedom and independence for Cuba, not to be ruled by America and not to live as slaves under the Castro regime.
Mr. Griffin you are using the same argument the USA is using in the whole world to masacre people, the same argument used by the USA Government to twist the truth around the world against Cuba.
You do not want to recogniza what the USA Government did and do in the world, that it is your problem.
The situation of the tug boat as you mentioned, is the result of the situations created by the USA Government with the law, by which any Cuban who arrive to the USA territory stay there without any problem, even if it killo somebody to do so, something that happened many time, as the case in Santa Maria del Mar, several years ago, because of that criminal and genocide law, that do not apply to any other country in the world, was and it is use to promote the ilegal travel of some cubans that want to live the big lie of this world, the American Dream, a place where 50 millions of people do not have health care, and the count keep growing, etc.
You want to keep believing your lies, good for you, but do not come with that bullshit to the Cubans, that had suffered and still suffer the most criminal and genocide blockade remembered in the human history, you as an American citizen should be ashame of it.
The tired argument that you make,
“the USA government are the real criminals, therefore the Cuban government is not”
…really isn’t a very convincing one. In fact, both the USA and the Cuban government have committed crimes, as have many other countries. The fact that the US government, or as in the case of My Lai, soldiers of the US military, committed war crimes, does not mean that the Cuban government did not commit any crimes. You present a logical fallacy. Certainly Lt. Calley and several others should have been found guilty (and executed for it, if like Gen. Castro, you support the death penalty.) Likewise for Mr. Posada Carriles, who ought to stand trial for his crimes.
Perhaps the real point of your argument is to distract the conversation away from Cuba, to the bad ol’ USA.
So let’s return to the subject of Cuba (this is Havana Times, after all) and the crimes of it’s government and it’s soldiers. Should not the perpetrators of these crimes face justice?
The Tug Boat Massacre: http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y04/jul04/14e4.htm
Cuban Atrocities in Angola: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/editorialsletters/story.html?id=4e74a47f-8171-4001-a746-fe5ba6bf09c3
Is the firing squad a tool of the so-called transformationary process?
You people are incredible, and I said this because you do not know and do not want to know what the Government of the USA and his terrorist as Posada Carriles did to Cuba during the last 50 years.
You people should respect, because the President of the United State as Bush, Cheney Rumsfeld, Obama and other are real criminal, or you do not remember Iraq, you do not remember Afghanistan and the masacres of the USA soldiers of innocent people as they did in Viet Nam – My Lai by Mr. Casey, 500 people murdered to make them appears as viet cong fighters, the masacres in Libya of innocent people just to take the oil of that country and using the same terroris people the Government of the USA said they are fighting against them. Please, when you open your dirty mouse against Cuba, first open it against the different government of the USA that caused genocide in different part of the world, and still the count keep growing.
In Cuba the government did not kill people, the Government did not and do not masacred people, did not and do not torture or dissapear people, but all those who killed cubans with bombs brought from the USA, with weapons gave to the terrorists by the CIA, those who prepared 700 plan of assasination of Fidel Castro under order of the American Government, those paid their crimes according with the Cuban Law, and if you do not agree, come to Cuba, and explain your points of view to the families of the victims, try to convice them about your point of view, and then you can talk, if you still want and can.
What a monstrous slander of the leaders of the Cuban transformationary process!
Well, I’m sure we all can understand Raul’s rage against traitors and saboteurs. I certainly can, and do. This rage however does not justify the death penalty.
The worldwide struggle against the death penalty is part of the struggle for a just, sustainable and socialist world. To stand with the supporters of the death penalty is to stand with the worst, retrograde elements of the US, and of the world. Raul should “go to the mountain” on this question.
There was a rat in the US several years ago who tied up a whole family, slaughtered most of them with a hammer, kidnapped and raped two of the children, murdered one and continued to rape the other until he was finally caught. If anyone deserved to be executed, it was him.
But there are thousands of others, in the US alone, who also, by the same criteria, “deserve” execution.
But, if a society bases its justice system on retribution however, the justice system degrades all of society. What is ironic, society believes it is addressing or solving social problems by punishing offenders, but is not.
Also, in the US, many, many people have been wrongly executed for crimes they did not commit, while those who committed the crimes have escaped justice. The only was to reduce or eliminate such injustices is to eliminate the death penalty.
The PCC should reconsider its resolve for keeping the death penalty, and discard this wrong-headed, non-socialistic anachronism.
“Our laws allow the death penalty. This action has been suspended, but it’s on the books, because one time we suspended it and all this did was to stimulate acts of aggression and sabotage against my country.”
“my country”…??? He really does think he owns Cuba.
It is ironic he should so forcefully defend the penalty, for is it not fitting that the worst murderers in Cuban history should face that end?