Tlahui-Politic. No. 7, I/1999


Cabildeo con los navajos
Por Leonor Mulero

Información enviada al Director de Tlahui. Puerto Rico a 27 de Marzo, 1999. periódico del Día. Washinton - El gobierno de Puerto Rico se alió con el liderato de la tribu indígena navajo para luchar a favor de la libre determinación de los puertorriqueños y los indígenas estadounidenses.

Los gobernantes de la nación navajo y el gobierno estadista de la isla establecieron relaciones desde hace un año, dijo ayer el director ejecutivo interino de la oficina de Washington de la tribu navajo, Deswood Tome.

Los estadistas quieren que Puerto Rico se convierta en estado para obtener el trato completamente igual al resto de la nación. Los navajos quieren poner en ley que son una nación dentro de Estados Unidos, con libertad para contraer sus propios acuerdos económicos y con los derechos plenos de la ciudadanía de Estados Unidos.

Tome se reunió ayer aquí con el presidente de la Cámara de Representantes, Edison Misla Aldarondo. Tome dijo a El Nuevo Día que invitó a Misla Aldarondo a la reservación navajo de Arizona y que invitará al gobernador Pedro Rosselló.

El líder indígena señaló que Puerto Rico y las tribus indígenas de Estados Unidos tienen en común la lucha por la libre determinación política. Señaló que los navajos no prefieren fórmula política alguna para Puerto Rico, pero desean que los puertorriqueños tengan la oportunidad de decidir su futuro político.

TOME COMENTO que, igual que los puertorriqueños nacidos en Puerto Rico, los navajos tienen ciudadanía estadounidense por virtud de una ley federal. Pero los navajos, a pesar de vivir en Estados Unidos antes de que llegaran los europeos, obtuvieron la ciudadanía en 1924. Los puertorriqueños la recibieron en 1917.

Tome señaló que el Tratado de 1868 firmado entre los navajos y el gobierno federal para poner fin a las guerras indígenas mantiene a los navajos y a otras tribus bajo cierta autoridad del Departamento del Interior.

Los navajos, cuyos 250 mil miembros forman la tribu más numerosa de este país, quieren liberarse de la injerencia del Departamento del Interior para poder desarrollar su economía y liberarse de la dependencia de los fondos federales. Interesan hacer negocios con sus recursos petroleros, fluviales y agrícolas como lo hacen los estados, sin que medie la aprobación de ese departamento.

Los navajos viven en 26,000 acres cuadrados de reservaciones en Arizona, Utah y Nuevo México. En Estados Unidos hay 575 tribus indígenas reconocidas por el gobierno federal que juntas totalizan dos millones de indígenas.

Tome dijo que los indígenas viven en reservaciones con alta dependencia de los fondos federales. Ciertas tribus se reorganizaron al disolver el Tratado de 1868, en común acuerdo con Estados Unidos, y renunciaron a su derecho a la libre determinación.

Speech By Dr.Carlos Lage Davila, Vice-President Of The State Council Of The Republic Of Cuba, At The 55th Session Of The United Nations Human Rights Commission. Geneve, March 24, 1999. Distinguished Mrs. Chairperson, Distinguished members of the Chair, Distinguished delegates,

We are here today to expose slanders, tell the truth and defend ideas. For 40 years, we Cubans have been under a blockade, we have been attacked and consistently slandered, and more than once, we have been criticized and condemned for the laws and measures we have been forced to adopt in our defense.

Over the last few weeks, a lot has been said about the amendments to our Criminal Code and our Law on the Protection of the National Independence and the Economy of Cuba, both passed by our Parliament on February 16 last, and about a trial whereby, in full compliance with the law, four unpatriotic individuals were sentenced. Amidst the resulting confusion, a rather large number of media reports have mixed up the new sanctions set forth in the amendments to the Criminal Code related to common crimes with the sentences applicable under a different law to those who act in the service of the enemy that wages a war against our nation.

The changes introduced in our Criminal Code are consistent with the characteristics and circumstances of the crime situation in the world today, and include three new crimes; i.e., money laundering, trafficking with persons and the sale of minors. In addition, increased sentences have been established for crimes and other conducts with a most deleterious effect on the citizens peace, societal morale and ethical values, and people's health.

We do administer the death penalty in extremely serious cases to the perpetrators of particularly obnoxious crimes --such as the use of our country for international drug trafficking-- and serious acts of rape and corruption of minors, since under the prevailing global circumstances we deem it indispensable to discourage such repulsive behavior.

We respect those who, in many parts of the world, are opposed to capital punishment and share the hope that the day will come when such sanction will not be required in any society. However, as a country where contempt of court is encouraged from abroad through thousands of illegal broadcasting hours each week, Cuba cannot, for the time being, give up capital punishment, a sanction currently applied in other countries that have not been under similar hostility and siege.

The reforms to the Cuban Criminal Code are based on internationally accepted legal principles and are widely supported by our people who, accustomed to enjoy the safety provided for by the Revolution, has demanded more severe sanctions for the perpetrators of such transgressions.

On the other hand, the Law on the Protection of the National Independence and the Economy of Cuba has been described by those who exercise the monopoly of information as a piece of legislation that runs counter to the freedom of thought and expression. To imagine that this is possible would be tantamount to assume that a people used to championing its ideas can be meek and poor in terms of its human condition. No one is penalized in Cuba for thinking or speaking up. This law is designed to penalize any citizen whose actions supplement the goal of the aggressive power in its economic warfare; i.e., destabilize the country, subvert domestic order and destroy the Revolution. This law defines crimes of collaboration with the enemy, rather than crimes of opinión as some have deliberately misrepresented it.

The United States intense and unscrupulous war has prompted not only Cuba, but also the European Union and countries like Canada, México and Argentina, to pass legislation designed to protect their individual sovereignty and independence in the face of extraterritorial decisions adopted by the US Congress.

Our new law protects not only the Cuban sovereignty and the rights of our country's nationals, but also the citizens of other countries who have been particularly targeted by pressures, retaliation and sanctions exercised as part of the blockade policy. Orchestrated from the United States and for more than a year, a media campaign of malicious stories against the Cuban Revolution has been launched over the arrest of four citizens who were recently prosecuted for incitement to sedition and sentenced from three-and-a- half to five years imprisonment.

Their fate would have been different had any American court prosecuted them. There, for just some of the crimes they committed in Cuba, they would have been considered transgressors of the Cuban Assets Control Regulations of the Treasury Department and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison and forced to pay a $250 000 fine. In fact, any attempt to contact a foreign government or agent, let alone try to subvert or plot against the government, is punished with a fine of up to $5 000 and three years in prison under the Logan Act in force for the last 200 years.

Their trial produced abundant evidence of their consistent collaboration with the enemy through the US Interest Section in Havana, from which they received instructions, funds and means, aimed, among other goals, at obstructing foreign investments by resorting to all sorts of threats, internationalizing the criminal blockade suffered by our country and upsetting domestic order. As any other nation would do, we claim our right to penalize those who act at the service of a power that besets their own homeland.

As a result of the media power, interests at stake, confusing ideas, lack of information and irresponsible behavior, the attacker's lies earn more credibility than the evidence produced by those under attack. We know that, based on comparisons with their home countries or other nations, there are people in the world, even friendly individuals, who have questioned the fairness of this legal proceedings conducted with full guarantees and respect for the human person.

However, when it comes to judging Cuba and its Revolution, it cannot be ignored that ours is not just any country. Cuba is a permanent target of hostility by the most powerful nation on Earth that has not ceased for a moment its threats and aggressions. We are a country blockaded by a superpower that forces us to be on the defensive and on the alert because we are determined not to add one more star to the US flag.

No one has the right to attack a country for forty years, nor try to criminally blockade it into submission, or finance the annexationist dreams and counterrevolutionary activities of isolated groups who are selling out their homeland, and accuse it later for having acted in its own defense.

If the Helms-Burton Act, the blockade and the economic warfare against Cuba that together intend to break domestic order, destabilize our country, and liquidate Cuba's socialist state and independence were not a fact, then the Law on the Protection of the National Independence and the Economy of Cuba would not have been required. Only by recognizing both the unique conditions of our reality and the fact that no nation has ever been compelled to endure a most stubborn aggression by a voracious and powerful neighbor, can the current developments of our country be understood. The war waged by the United States and its annexationist servants against Cuba is, indeed, one and the same. There is no watertight compartment. Psycho- logical warfare, bombing, sedition, propaganda; anything is valid, and everything is used. The faces are many, the purpose only one.

One may wonder, in this Human Rights Commission, who has authorized the United States to seize the right to act, apparently for life, as a prosecutor against Cuba? Who gave the US the right of self- appointment as "chief justice" for human rights worldwide also apparently for life?

Why should we accept that year after year, following a congressional mandate, the US State Department drafts thick reports describing the human rights performance of every nation, except, of course, the United States itself? How could we possibly accept that the US passes its judgement on the world all through 5000 pages?

Must it be consented that a nation, whose unrestrained drug consumption encourages drug production and traffic, may unilaterally issue "poor conduct" certificates to drug producing, selling or transshipment countries?

Why can the United States ignore the international community heedless of the fact that the General Assembly has voted time and again opposing the blockade policy against Cuba?

Why is the United States allowed to pass 61 unilateral sanctions against a number of countries that account for 42% of the world's population, without even being admonished for it? Why is the United States opposed to any Security Council expansion to include countries like India, Nigeria, South Africa, Indonesia, Brazil, México and others with the same prerogatives as the incumbent members?

The United States sets itself above everything and everyone to require accountability for human rights violations, while its records in that área leave much to be desired. In the US, the wealthiest and most powerful nation ever:

a. Nearly one million people live on the streets, under bridges or in emergency shelters, while just one of its nationals amasses $80 billions.

b. 43 million people, including 11 million children, have no health insurance. c. Millions of low-income people, ill persons, elderly and single mothers have recently been excluded from welfare coverage.

In the wealthiest and most powerful nation ever:

a. 20% of the total population are functional illiterates.

b. 17 million women have been raped or sexually abused, and over half the female population has been victim of violence.

c. The 45 million poor people in the United States are mostly Hispanic, Blacks and children. Black children have twice as many chances to die in their first year of life as their white counterparts.

d. The black population has been used for government-sanctioned experiments that have caused premeditated health damage.

The wealthiest and most powerful nation ever that attacks Cuba and asks you to condemn it:

a. Is the leading drug consumer on Earth;

b. Is characterized by police brutality against Blacks, Hispanics and immigrants;

c. Has the largest penal population in the world, and its prisons accord inmates inhuman and degrading treatment;

d. Enforces the death penalty quite easily, albeit hardly ever -- or exceptionally -- against a purely Aryan blood white national. The fact is that the electric chairs, gas chambers and lethal injections are constantly and amazingly used against Blacks,Hispanics and Third World immigrants.

The wealthiest and most powerful nation ever:

a. Keeps in maximum-security institutions over 100 political prisoners, including 15 Puerto Rican men and women who have fought for the independence of their country. This figure does not include the hundreds of thousands of people who have been punished with excessive harshness just for being Blacks, American indians, mestizos or Hispanics whose lives under discrimination and dire poverty have led them to commit real or imaginary misdemeanors;

b. Silently allows the spread of neo-fascist and xenophobic groups that advocate discrimination and increase their violent actions;

c. Has created the deadliest weapons of extermination and has failed to stop that hideous machinery;

d. Among the industrialized countries, is the lowest contributor to development aid, and among the UN members, the biggest debtor to this organization.

The nation that intends to judge the world dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, invaded Cuba through the Bay of Pigs, and waged a war in Vietnam that killed almost four million sons and daughters of that courageous people. It is the country that invaded the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama and Somalia; it is the country that waged a dirty war in Central America, supported the most genocidal dictatorships in our region and in CIA schools trained their most bloodthirsty leaders in methods of torture. The nation that intends to judge the world has unilaterally decided to make war and launched missiles in any direction then perhaps only later clarify any wrongdoings.

The blockade and the economic war constitute a true genocide. Universal consciousness cannot tolerate the attempt to annihilate a people from hunger and disease. Our homeland has endured it for 40 years. Has such a monstrous crime ever been subjected to analysis in this Commission?

It is very likely that in a few hours NATO, under the United States aegis, will undertake brutal air strikes against Serbia whose people was the one to fight most heroically in Europe against the nazis hordes during World War II. The use, and abuse, of force cannot be the solution to the world problems. Who will defend the human rights of the innocent people who die under the missiles and bombs that would be falling on a small country in the cultured and civilized Europe?

If the world were to become a court, the United States would not be able to leave the dock for some centuries. The US government that portrays itself as a champion of human rights is aware of the existence of terrorist organizations based in its territory acting against Cuba; it keeps ties with them and benefit from their money. I will now elaborate on this assertion.

Recently, two court cases in Havana heard irrefutable witness and documentary evidence that executives of the well-known Cuban American National Foundation and its paid assassin Luis Posada Carriles have been involved in terrorist activities and other actions against Cuba, and are connected with US institutions and authorities. It must be recalled that Luis Posada Carriles, currently based in El Salvador, and Orlando Bosch, based in Florida, neither of whom have served their sentence, masterminded a sabotage against a Cubana airliner in midair that killed 73 people in October 1976.

Two Salvadoran nationals hired by notorious counterrevolutionaries of Cuban origin, with proven ties with both the CIA and the Cuban American National Foundation were indicted for planting several explosive devices in hotels in Havana, one of which killed a young Italian tourist and injured other Cubans and foreigners. The purpose was to damage Cuba's growing tourist development. They also planned to set off bombs at sacred historical sites of our homeland, including the mausoleum where the remains of Ernesto Guevara have been laid to rest. The CIA killed Che Guevara, but it could not kill his ideas. He was buried together with his fallen comrades in unidentified grounds. Humanity rescued most of them from their neglected and scattered graves. Now, they intended to blast their remains.

We are aware that these trials and their resulting denunciations were scarcely covered by the media and had insufficient international repercussion.

This is why it must be reiterated here that the Cuban American National Foundation, a "non profit, philanthropic and educational" US registered organization, is in fact a terrorist Mafia whose large fortune of highly dubious origin has been amassed through fraud, misappropriation, perquisites and government support. This organization has covered the cost of expensive political campaigns to help elect United States Mayors, Congressmen, and even Senators and Presidents.

This organization, which has contributed funds to both the Republican and Democratic Parties, lobbies, promotes and causes the passage of genocidal laws against Cuba. It brings together and supports the worst CIA-trained terrorists, organizes and bears the cost of plans to assassinate Cuban leaders and hatches and commits crimes against workers and tourists. This organization has never refrained from supporting whatever project of aggression and military intervention could be devised against Cuba. This is its "biography."

The terrorist groups acting from the US to overthrow the Cuban Revolution find shelter in that country's growing hostility against ours. From 1992 to date, the US has passed more than 21 statutory provisions, including the Helms-Burton and Torricelli Acts. Warning letters have been sent and US entry visas have been denied to scare off foreign businessmen with investments in Cuba. Those trading with Cuba have been black-listed and licenses for flight connections with Cuba and exhibitions of medical equipment and medicine in Cuba have been withheld. Criminal lawsuits have been filed, threats have been made, and fines have been enforced against US firms and individuals for their relations with Cuba, and even medical donations have been turned down.

Can a country sit idle by while its neighbor passes legislation time and again, and enforces measures time and again to colonize it anew? Incredibly enough and in spite of the above, reference has been made to an easing of the policy towards Cuba. The purpose is to stem a growing rejection against the blockade by the public opinión, both inside and outside the US. Also, demobilize the increasingly strong movement of solidarity with our country, nullify the patriotic content of our resistance and deceive those who may want, or find it in their interest, to be deceived.

That is the real objective of the measures announced by President William Clinton on 5 January last that purposefully or not, many press agencies, governments and personalities have welcomed and described as a gesture to moderate the blockade. As the US President has no executive power on this issue because he relinquished it, the White House spokesman was categorical when he made it clear that these measures did not represent changes in the policy towards Cuba and even the Secretary of State herself quickly moved to ratify it.

It would be fitting to recall that months before, in March 1998, the US Administration had announced a new series of measures, also of a delusive and deceptive nature. The alleged easing of restrictions is but a plan to finance and support their agents in the island and to try to subvert domestic order in our country. They have not sold us a single aspirin nor has the Western Union Company been able to open a bureau in Havana as expected to organize the sending of family remittances. Neither can these remittances be sent out without restrictions nor have the trips of citizens of Cuban origin been facilitated and, furthermore, even the phone calls between both countries are being hampered.

In the face of such a criminal, failed and ridiculous policy, with the old war over and enjoying absolute hegemony, many in the world wonder why the United States does not put an end, once and for all, to such an obstinate policy and turns this sordid page of history.

The true reason is the corruption of the US political system, the same they want to impose upon us as a model as well as the prevalence of shady politicking interests over, and above, basic ethical principles that the policy of a country which pretends to set itself up as a paradigm should not renounce under any circumstances.

Simple equations suffice: Congressmen to be re-elected or congressional hopefuls are compelled to raise substantial resources to finance their electoral campaigns. As an average, the cost of a Senate race in the United States is no less than three million dollars. Who contribute them? All sorts of enterprises and organizations. Some of the same kind as the Cuban-American National Foundation, that later on, in the best style of the "Mafia godfathers", will claim a vote in favor of a Bill or an amendment, the signing of another, the condemnation of the inconceivable, tolerance towards organizing and training for terrorist action and the fabrication of "shows" at international agencies. A give and take, like a child's game. That is the usual procedure, except honorable and well known exceptions that, given their prestige, overcome such adverse circumstances, or those who have enough personal resources to finance their campaigns.

Otherwise, what could one think of an article published in El Nuevo Herald's issue of 5 March last, under the heading "The Foundation meets with Clinton", reporting on a fund raiser "for the political campaign of Democratic Senator Robert Torricelli in New Jersey"? How could one understand this audience given by the President of the United States to members of the Board of the Cuban-American National Foundation, when the US officials and institutions know best who they are and what they do? What could the Cuban people think of a President who befriends such people?"

Abogan por la liberación de presos políticos "Advocating for the freedom of the political prisoners"

Martes, 9 de marzo de 1999.
Tuesday, March 9, 1999.

From: National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Prisoners prpowpp@aol.com
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