CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CUBA

TO FRIENDLY PARTIES AND ORGANIZATIONS

9 March 1999

This campaign even tries to deny to the sovereign Parliament of the independent Republic of Cuba the right to discuss and pass laws aimed at strengthening our means of national defense, which exist in the immense majority of the other states, including, of course, the USA.

Likewise, in this anti-Cuban scheme, a very small group of citizens born in Cuba is presented as a group of innocent and "peaceful dissidents", who are allegedly imprisoned and tried just for the mere fact of dissenting from the official policy and expressing opinions different to those of the Cuban authorities.

There is nothing more remote from the historical and present truth.

Something that has characterized and characterizes the Cuban Revolution is the full respect to man’s rights and dignity for which this Revolution was made and for which we have struggled so hard and courageously during so many years. And this is well known by all those who have learned about it from different political and ideological perspectives, but with objectivity and honesty.

An excellent evidence of our respect for human rights - and this is acknowledged worldwide - are the achievements made by the Revolution in different spheres such as education, health, social security, race and gender equality, and childhood protection.

The independent and sovereign Revolutionary Cuba , which was only possible thanks to the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, was the consecration of the political right to freedom of the Cuban people, previously submitted to invasions, interventions, humiliations and a total control by the US imperialism since the very beginning of its birth as a Republic in 1902.

Throughout these years of struggle, in our country there has been no record of cases of torture, extra judicial executions or missing persons, as it has - unfortunately and commonly - been the case in different countries of Latin America and in other parts of the world which are victims of dictatorships always supported by United States, as it is proven by the official documents of the US Administrations when they are declassified.

Furthermore, to place the victim and the victimizer on equal terms is an unforgivable historical injustice, because the country that they are trying to revile today is, in fact, the same country submitted to the longest economic, commercial and financial blockade ever recorded in history, and whose people and their most legitimate human rights have been systematically and cruelly affected by military aggressions and all types of attacks launched by the USA against us.

Revolutionary Cuba has not violated, does not violate and will not violate any legitimate human right of the Cuban people. On the contrary, in order to defend the most sacred political, civil and human rights of the Cuban people, our Parliament has just discussed and passed a Law which is only aimed at providing the minimum and indispensable legal instruments to try those that are in alliance with and at the service of the interests of a foreign power whose only aim - for more than two centuries - has been to seize and colonize our Homeland.

The four Cuban-born citizens who have been tried by a legally-established court are not prisoners of conscience and much less the " peaceful dissidents " that some people try to present to the world.

As the attorney proved in her allegation, these people have worked at the service of and in coordination with a foreign power which has been a historical enemy of the Cuban nation and from which they have received important financial and technical resources. Moreover, they have repeatedly called for sedition and subversion, and have openly betrayed the Homeland where they were born by publicly demanding the tightening of the cruel blockade imposed on Cuba 40 years ago and by asking foreign companies - which are interested in keeping normal economic relations with our country - to comply with the extraterritorial Helms-Burton Law.

In any country of the world and, first and foremost, in the USA, all these crimes are very serious since they imply a betrayal to the Homeland and, in this respect, there are many legislation in force that sanction such actions very strongly.

It is because of these crimes, and not for "peacefully dissenting ", that they have been tried and sentenced.

This internationally-orchestrated dirty campaign also links these facts to the trial of the Salvadoran mercenary Ernesto Raul Cruz Leon, who confessed his involvement in several terrorist acts that took place in our capital and that caused the death of the Italian youth Fabio di Celmo.

As it was proven in the inquiry and admitted by himself, this mercenary worked for money at the service of the Cuban-American Foundation, the counterrevolutionary organization based in Miami and closely linked to notorious terrorists such as Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, who were responsible for the explosion of a Cuban Airlines aircraft near Barbados in which 73 innocent people died.

As in any other country of the world, terrorism is persecuted here with all the force of the law.

However, all of them are united by an umbilical cord that the political forces of the world must fully assess and understand: all of them are instruments of the US policy against Cuba.

At present, we are only asking you to consider the facts with objectivity, honesty and aplomb, and to avoid being manipulated by the obviously ill-intentioned and distorted information spread by the same people that have harassed and attacked us for so many years, as they have done to many other nations.

We can see how even some friends and progressive personalities are harassed by a voracious and insatiable press that, in its desire to comply with the hegemonic ideas expressed by the gigantic media of the empire, seeks to snatch statements from them in order to fuel and give credibility to this new anti-Cuban campaign.

As it has been factually proven earlier in the face of so many similar situations that have taken place throughout the 40 years of existence of the Cuban Revolution, we are confident that reason and truth will prevail over the multimillion power of the media which they systematically use to misinform the world public opinion. Likewise, we are confident that both, the common men and women who nurture the wisdom of the peoples and those who assume politics with seriousness and responsibility, will know how to judge on what side justice is, thus avoiding being manipulated as part of the choir of this new anti-Cuban crusade launched by the US imperialism.

Cuba and the Cuban people are legitimately entitled to defend themselves. Their right to continue to be a free, independent and sovereign nation is exactly the same as that of any other nation. Therefore, their right to prosecute the traitors at the service of a foreign power and the terrorists that it sends to murder our children is exactly the same as that of any other country.