UN Commission on Human Rights Slips Up with Cuba
By Francisco Acevedo
HAVANA TIMES – It’s obvious that nothing can really surprise you in this world anymore, but this week, the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) tested the most skeptical by approving Cuba’s presence in its ranks.
This clearly was the result of a vote, but democracy here is offended with the strings the Cuban Government pulled to get these votes.
In a secret vote on Tuesday, Cuba won 146 votes and, alongside Brazil and the Dominican Republic, to take the three spots at the UNCHR destined for South America and the Caribbean, leaving Peru out. China won a spot for the Asia-Pacific, and Russia was also left out, for Eastern Europe in this case.
Russia had hoped to return to the organization after the General Assembly voted in April 2022 to suspend its membership, and Moscow responded by announcing that it was leaving the Council entirely. Clearly, Vladimir Putin had a change of heart in recent months.
I don’t know why voters are so quick to forget that there are almost 1,000 prisoners of conscience in Cuba’s jails, and that’s just the number of those locked up after the social uprising in July 2021.
For starters, the 193 Member States of the United Nations should automatically be rejecting Cuba, Russia and China from having a seat on the Council, as they are countries with a long track record of human rights violations. Of course, no country has a clean slate, but Cuban, Chinese and Russian citizens are among the worst treated on the planet.
Different organizations and groups working for freedom and democracy in the world advocating for the Cuban Government to be excluded from the UNCHR meant very little, and it’s important we make a distinction between the Cuban Government and people.
Just this Thursday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) recalled that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) announced in 2022 that state agents were “systematically repressing” peaceful protestors and Cuban dissidents, and that the Government was committing “mass, serious and systematic human rights violations.”
The reasons given for their rejection aren’t new: prisoners of conscience, the lack of freedom of press, femicides, the persecution of artists and a lack of freedom of association.
HRW added that UN human rights experts have spoken about patterns of arbitrary detention in Cuba, and other human rights organizations have documented hundreds of cases of prisoners of conscience – including protestors, critics, journalists, independent artists, and opposition leaders – arrested in recent years for exercising their basic human rights.
Furthermore, once in prison, complaints of abuse and torture have also spread, as well as protocol that violates the most basic of human rights.
The community of activists “Cuba dice NO a la dictadura” (Cuba says NO to the dictatorship) promoted on their Twitter account: “Perpetrators can’t be enforcers of international law when they are they ones that need to be taken to trial for crimes against humanity.”
Meanwhile, the Latin American department at Civil Rights Defenders, an organization that works to defend civil and political rights, shared a statement written alongside 10 Cuban and international organizations asking for Cuba not to be reelected.
None of this is compatible with Cuba being featured on the United States Secretary of Defense’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Beyond tolerance for people with a criminal record and underhanded support for Hamas after it bombed Israel, or for Russia after it invaded Ukraine, our dear Miguel Diaz-Canel’s government has never hid the hand it’s stretched out to its few allies, regardless of the violence of their actions.
Of course, all of this was celebrated on the island: “Cuba’s reelection to the Human Rights Council is the international community’s acknowledgement of the Revolution’s humanist work. We’ll continue on our path to building a fairer society for everyone,” said foreign minister Bruno Rodriguex Parrilla.
The reality is that with this new reelection, the Cuban regime reaches 18 straight years as a member of this organization, founded on March 15, 2006 by the United Nations General Assembly, via Resolution 60/251, despite constant reports of human rights violations on the island.
This very same Resolution urges countries to vote for members “taking candidate’s contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights into account,” while also demanding Council members “apply the strictest laws to promote and protect human rights” in their country and abroad, and to “fully cooperate with the Council.”
Even though these elections aren’t even competitive in some cases because the candidates list sometimes only gives the same number of options as the number of empty seats, it is still a joke, because human rights violators are getting a spot, even without competition, and that shouldn’t stop the Human Rights Council from putting a spotlight on these governments’ abuse, nor stop other Member States of the UN to prevent them from being nominated.
If it was surprising in the past, none of this makes any sense after everything that happened on July 11, 2021, and it buries Cuban civil society’s efforts to shine a light on the violations of Cuban people’s rights, as well as allowing the Government to continue to evade taking responsibility for its actions.