The Center for a Free Cuba published a letter signed by more than 600 human rights activists, diplomats, and public figures this week calling for the United Nations to remove the communist regime of Cuba from the Human Rights Council for its decades-long record of atrocities against its people.
The Human Rights Council has a mandate from the U.N. to address human rights abuses around the world but has long been heavily populated by authoritarian regimes, whose leaders have used their leverage to render the body incapable of fulfilling its mission.
“The Castro regime does not deserve to be on the Council undermining international human rights standards. It deserves to be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court for its own human rights violations committed while presently on the Council,” the Center for a Free Cuba’s letter to U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet and other world leaders, published on Monday, reads in part. The violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters on July 11, 2021, which has resulted in the mass incarceration of child political prisoners, features prominently as evidence of the regime’s ineligibility to be on the Council.
“On July 11, 2021 tens of thousands of Cubans across the island in over 50 cities and towns took part in large non-violent demonstrations chanting ‘freedom,’ ‘yes, we can,’ ‘we are not afraid,'” the letter noted. “President Miguel Díaz-Canel appeared on national Cuban television on July 11, 2021 declaring: ‘They [protesters] would have to pass over our dead bodies if they want to confront the revolution, and we are willing to resort to anything..”
Díaz-Canel went on to ask communist citizens to physically attack anyone they suspected of disagreeing with the regime: “We are calling on all the revolutionaries of the country, all the communists, to take to the streets and go to the places where these provocations are going to take place … the order of combat is given, revolutionaries take to the streets.”
In the following days, the Castro regime, for which Díaz-Canel acts as a figurehead, launched a wave of violent home raids on suspected protesters, shooting parents in front of their children in their homes and dragging people out into unknown state security prisons. It remains unclear at press time how many arrests and disappearances occurred in the aftermath of July 11.
The Center for a Free Cuba published the letter as an open petition for anyone to sign and debuted it at a press conference with the sister of a July 11 political prisoner.
Katiuska Mustelier Sosa’s brother, Enrique Mustelier Sosa, faced up to eight years in prison and was ultimately sentenced to four for peacefully calling for an end to communism on July 11. His sister says he faced a brutal beating and abruptly disappeared into police custody that day in his native Guantánamo.
“I am currently denouncing the Cuban dictatorship for keeping my brother imprisoned. A tremendous injustice that they committed against him because he was imprisoned as a result of the peaceful protests on July 11 and was sentenced to 4 years and 8 months in prison,” Sosa said of her brother during a press conference on Monday to announce the U.N. initiative alongside the Center for a Free Cuba. “And I am denouncing this violation of human rights in Cuba not only with what they have done to my brother but with all those brave Cubans who dared to go to the streets to denounce the regime and who are suffering in prison today. We are denouncing to the world that there are political prisoners in Cuba, that Cuba violates human rights, that in Cuba there is no freedom of expression or freedom of association.”
Cuba is far from the most egregious human rights violator on the Council – that dubious distinction likely goes to China, currently home to over 1,000 concentration camps and committing genocide against multiple ethnic and religious groups within its borders – but it is one of its most disruptive members. Cuban “diplomat” mobs have interrupted human rights events at multiple venues, including the United Nations, the Summit of the Americas, and regular Organization of American States (OAS) sessions with boisterous shouting to prevent former political prisoners and human rights activists from speaking. On one occasion in 2015, Cuban regime officials physically assaulted pro-democracy activists outside the Summit of the Americas in Panama.
In addition to Cuba and China, violent rogue regimes such as Venezuela, Eritrea, Sudan, Qatar, and Pakistan are on the Human Rights Council. At least 17 members of the Human Rights Council have dubious human rights records littered with evidence of violence against pro-democracy dissidents, silencing of journalists, slavery, genocide, state-sanctioned mob attacks, and use of child soldiers.
Russia became the second country to ever be expelled from the Council for human rights abuses this year in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Libya under Muammar Qaddafi was the first; the country is currently on the Council despite its abominable record on slavery.
Upon its expulsion this month, Russia claimed through its diplomats that the Council would lose “trust” without its presence.
“If the resolution is adopted, the Westerners will be able to freely impose on the rest of the countries the concepts and their vision of human rights that please them and their Western accomplices,” Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Office and other International Organizations in Geneva Gennady Gatilov said. “The suspension of Russia’s rights as a member of the Human Rights Council will discredit the principle of the Council’s universality, harm its effectiveness, and completely undermine trust not only in the Human Rights Council, but in the entire UN human rights system.”
Former President Donald Trump exited the Human Rights Council in 2018 in protest of the abundance of human rights abusers given a platform at the venue. Successor Joe Biden restored America’s seat on the Council upon his election.
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