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Cuba highlighted Monday that the fact of being founding member of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) proves at the end reason defeats force and principles impose power and money.
Address by Cuba Foreign Minister in Geneva

In his speech at the top-level opening segment of the Seventh HRC Session, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said that after 20 long years of “fighting devils” we end old coercive styles of the group.

The island”s official noted that United States, with several pretexts to legitimate its aggression against Cuba in the former Commission turned “into failed State in this matter, responsible for the most dangerous crimes and violations of human rights.” “That battle has concluded in this way: with the categorical victory of little David,” great in his dignity, against giant Goliat, powerful man with his nuclear weapons and preventive wars,” he noted.

Perez Roque stressed “we will also end one day that criminal blockade imposed to us so we die of hungry and diseases.” “That”s why now and not before,” the island”s foreign minister stated, “we have inked the Human Rights Covenants,” referring to the signing of two texts adopted by Cuba Thursday at the UN main headquarter in New York.

The Cuban diplomatic head reiterated his country” will to cooperate with the HRC works, “with non-discriminatory and universal human rights mechanisms, with the strict respect to our sovereignty.” While five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters are unfairly imprisoned in US jails, that country threatens to bomb over 60 countries and defend asphyxia as a method to extract confessions, the HRC must exist and act, Perez Roque stated.

The Cuban official adopted other reasons to support the UN organization, among them the abuses of outrages committed by Israel against the Palestinian people, the existence of 900 million hungry people and 800 million illiterate persons.

Some 1,000 experts from 50 countries are to attend in this capital Monday the International Meeting of Economists on Globalization and Development Problems, amid a panorama of economic uncertainty and high oil prices.

A source from the organizing committee has confirmed the presence in the event of Bolivia’s President Evo Morales and Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez, Bishop Chancellor at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican.

National Association of Economists of Cuba (ANEC) vice president Esther Aguilera also told Prensa Latina that among figures will be 1999 and 2007 Nobel prizewinners in Economy Robert Mundell and Eric Maskin, respectively.

Also included are representatives from 20 international and regional organizations among them UNCTAD, WTO, IMF, ALADI, SELA and ECLAC.

The US recession’s impact on economies of the Latin American and Caribbean countries, and the international situation due to the explosion of the private debt and the real estate sector are among the lectures of the meeting.

After the official opening of the event today, there will be speeches by Orlando Caputo Leiva, from the Studies Center on Transnationalization, Economy and Society of Chile, and Osvaldo Martinez, director of the World Economy Research Center, among other experts.

The ANEC vice president stated that Fidel Castro was the inspirer of this kind of meeting, and recalled how in the 1998 event she stated the need to debate the most urgent problems of the international economy.

Although it is an economists meeting, political scientists, sociologists, jurists and other professionals, from different magnitudes of globalization and development, are looked at integrality.

This concern in an event whose aim is to analyze dynamism of processes in the framework of international economic relations and happenings these news have had between one and another edition of those forums.

Cuban President Raul Castro welcomed Monday his Mozambican counterpart Armando Emilio Guebuza, officially visiting the island to foster bilateral links.

Moments before, the African statesman and his accompanying delegation paid tribute to the monument erected to Cuban National Hero Jose Marti at the Revolution Square.

Then, both delegations held official talks at the Council of State.

Cuba and Mozambique established diplomatic relations on August 27, 1975, cooperating since then in health, sports, sciences, technology, construction and fishing.

Since his inauguration to the presidency, Guebuza has fostered mutual cooperation, and traditionally supported the UN resolution that demands the end of US-imposed economic, trade and financial blockade, and the island’s candidature to be part of the Human Rights Council.

His agenda here also includes honoring Cuban internationalists fallen in Africa, meeting with local leaders and authorities, and visiting site of historic, scientist and social interest.

Fidel Castro called Cuban doctors and all the other Cuban health professionals and technicians an exceptional powerhouse, and said no other country has anything like it.

In an article published Monday under the title “Christians without Bibles”, Fidel Castro stressed that just like the islandâ?Ts internationalist soldiers, Cuban health workers were trained in combat.

“Their missions overseas abide by strict ethical standards. Their services are offered free of charge, or they are commercialized according to the host countryâ?Ts circumstances. They are not exportable”, he underlined.

However, he pointed out, we do not have enough books. It is not sufficient that our libraries have ample numbers of books to be used for the constant reference requirements. Each one of our health professionals should possess a classical textbook covering their own specialty and if this person carries out or practices two, three or more assignments in the hospital or polyclinic, he or she ought to have at their disposition one classic copy for each of them.

Prensa Latina is posting below the full text of Fidel Castro´s reflection.

Reflections by Comrade Fidel.

CHRISTIANS WITHOUT BIBLES Our doctors and all the other Cuban health professionals and technicians are an exceptional powerhouse. No other country has anything like it; just like our islandâ?Ts internationalist soldiers, they were trained in combat. Their missions overseas abide by strict ethical standards. Their services are offered free of charge, or they are commercialized according to the host countryâ?Ts circumstances. They are not exportable.

However, we do not have enough books. It is not sufficient that our libraries have ample numbers of books to be used for the constant reference requirements. Each one of our health professionals should possess a classical textbook covering their own specialty and if this person carries out or practices two, three or more assignments in the hospital or polyclinic, he or she ought to have at their disposition one classic copy for each of them.

Graduates of General Comprehensive Medicine receive their degree after nine years of intense theoretical and practical courses at the higher level. More than 50 different specialties are being covered by our health centers. Many of these require a basic degree from General Comprehensive Medicine. Inclinations are detected much earlier than that, for example, in surgery, cardiology, oncology, hematology, imaginology, transplants, sports medicine, and the future specialists are offered the opportunity to be trained in them simultaneously.

What is a doctor without an ideal, up-to-date textbook covering this knowledge going to do? If a surgeon doesnâ?Tt have that additional textbook on surgery, what does he do? What does he do if he is a clinician in a general hospital and he also attends to a large number of elderly patients? Three personal classic textbooks must be at his fingertips: one for the general comprehensive physician, one for the clinician and one for the geriatrician.

Nowadays the specialties interconnect and combine together. Knowledge about nutrition, the nervous, cardiac and skeletal systems; appropriate medication, constantly being changed, requires a large body of information, both for the individual and the collective, to be shared by the specialists who generally make up the medical teams.

In medicine, many problems are urgent, and these emergencies need immediate decisions. My compatriots know what I am talking about, because they know about the centers for assistance and services, where they are located and who attends to them, at the local, regional or national levels, more than anyone can imagine. One has to add to the specialistâ?Ts basic knowledge the intensive use of computers for information and inter-consultations.

Our national legislation has established the right to make use of any book that has been published in the world, for educational purposes, from The Iliad to One Hundred Years of Solitude. This is not the same case as publishing works for commercial purposes, works that are protected by authorsâ?T copyright laws. Some motivation must be offered to those who take pains creating art and science, in other words, enhancements for our spiritual and material lives.

Just a few days ago, someone sent me a non-professional film of the well-known ballet â?oSwan Lakeâ?, a subject on which I am far from being an expert, but which, in my current circumstances, serves as a pleasant distraction so that I am able to almost totally forget about time. For two hours I watched the incredible performance of a woman who is probably today the best dancer in the world in this ballet: Viengsay, the daughter of Cuban parents who are diplomats, and who was given the name in honor of a region of Laos where they had been representing Cuba.

There are performances which cannot be duplicated! A European critic once exclaimed. I agree. I couldnâ?Tt imagine such an astounding degree of elegance and flexibility, without even the slightest flaw. This is the result of an entire school guided by Alicia Alonso, brilliant inspiration for our National Ballet, an artistic company that matches the high quality of the performer.

I knew that, backing up the ballerina, there was also a physiotherapist who, by now retired, worked for 36 years in one of the cityâ?Ts general hospitals and who, after the artistâ?Ts every wearisome rehearsal day, worked with her for one hour a day to ensure her flexibility and strength in every one of the muscles that took part in her movements. â?oThat way I can avoid any risk of strainâ?, Viengsay declared a few years ago.

In a brief note, I urged this dance physiotherapist to write a book about his experiences with this celebrated ballerina.

As they later both told me, they had had the same idea about 5 years ago; but in the midst of a heavy daily work schedule, neither of them was able to take on the task. I think that this time I really convinced him.

This digression perhaps serves to communicate my present thought. Last January, I spoke about Elena Pedraza, the 97 year old Chilean physiotherapist who helped us so much in the development of this specialty that had barely existed in Cuba before the Revolution. After that Reflection of mine, she sent something written by Debra J. Rose, a physiotherapist from California, and published in Spain. From this copy we printed 10,000 for those offering these services in Cuba, including students in their final courses, and 500 were acquired from the publisher for the Cuban physiotherapists who are working in Venezuela.

From this text, we selected basic exercises that have general applications for the over-50 population, since it is necessary to educate our people in health related activities in general. It is impossible to have one physiotherapist for each of the millions of people that need to perform these exercises.

The European and U.S. hierarchy would love to buy up Cuban doctors, just as they do with graduates from African and Latin American countries, and from other places in the Third World, thus depriving these regions of the professionals that they have educated with such great sacrifice! In one single African village â?”as we have already said and we shall repeat as many times as necessaryâ?” a Cuban internationalist doctor can at the same time train several excellent doctors at his side, in the biggest laboratory in the world, the community, to struggle against the particular diseases affecting each specific region in Africa. The books accompanying this doctor would be used as a common source of knowledge.

A health professional without a specialized textbook at his fingertips is like a Christian without a Bible.

As I am writing these lines on a Sunday afternoon, I repeat the idea of working on my Memoirs, if time would allow it. If someone pays for them, I would direct those funds to the publishing of textbooks, in Cuba, for our health professionals. Meanwhile, there are already more than 100 thousand previously guaranteed books that will be distributed in the coming months, not as thick, heavy, imported volumes, but divided up into smaller books, organized by chapters.

Tomorrow, the Meeting on Globalization and Development Problems begins. On the first day, the key-note speaker would have been our dear friend the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa. He wonâ?Tt be able to attend. We are hearing the loud clarion call of war in the southern part of our continent as the result of the genocidal plans of the Yankee Empire.

Fidel Castro denounced that Imperialism has just committed a monstrous crime in Ecuador, when deadly bombs were dropped in the early morning hours on a group of men and women who, almost without exception, were asleep.

“Any concrete accusations against that group of human beings do not justify that action”, Fidel Castro stressed in an article entitled “Rafael Correa”, released here today.

“They were Yankee bombs, guided by Yankee satellites,” he outlined.

“Absolutely no one has the right to kill in cold blood. If we accept that imperial method of warfare and barbarism, Yankee bombs directed by satellites could fall on any group of Latin American men and women, in the territory of any country, war or no war”, he warned.

After remarking that “we are not enemies of Colombia”, Fidel Castro warned, though, that “if we keep quiet we shall become accomplices.”

“Correa has in his hands the few survivors and the rest of the bodies. The two which are missing prove that Ecuadorian territory was occupied by troops that crossed the border. Now he can cry out like Emile Zola: J’accuse!,” he concluded.

Prensa Latina is posting below the full text of Fidel Castro´s reflection.

REFLECTION BY COMRADE FIDEL

RAFAEL CORREA

I remember when he visited us, months before the electoral campaign when he was thinking of running as a candidate for the Presidency of Ecuador. He had been the Minister of the Economy in the government of Alfredo Palacio, a surgeon with professional prestige who had also visited us as Vice President, before becoming the President in an unexpected situation that took place in Ecuador. He had been receptive to a program of ophthalmologic operations that we offered him as a form of cooperation. There were good relations between our two governments.

A while earlier Correa had resigned from the Ministry of the Economy. He was unhappy with what he called administrative corruption instigated by Oxy, a foreign company that explored and invested important sums of money, but was holding on to four out of every five barrels of oil that it extracted. He didn’t talk about nationalization, but about taxing them heavily; these taxes would be assigned in advance to specific social investments. He had already approved the measures and a judge had declared them to be valid.

Since the word “nationalize” had not been mentioned, I thought he felt apprehensive about the concept. It didn’t surprise me because he had graduated as an economist with much acclaim from a well-known U.S. university. I didn’t bother getting into much depth; I bombarded him with questions from the arsenal accumulated in the struggle against the Latin American foreign debt in 1985 and of Cuba’s own experience.

There are high-risk investments that use sophisticated technology and that no small nation like Cuba or Ecuador could take on.

Since this was already in 2006 and we were determined to promote the energy revolution, –ours was the first country on the planet to proclaim this as a vital issue for humankind– I had dealt with the subject particularly emphatically. But I halted, as I understood one of his reasons.

I related to him the conversation I had had a while ago with the president of REPSOL, a Spanish company. This company, associated with other international companies, would undertake an expensive operation to drill the ocean floor, more than 2000 meters down, using sophisticated technology, in Cuba’s jurisdictional waters. I asked the head of the Spanish company: How much is an exploratory well worth? I ask you this because we would like to participate, even if it is for one percent of the total cost and we would like to know what you want to do with our oil.

Correa, for his part, had told me that for every one hundred dollars taken out by the companies, only twenty remained in the country; it didn’t even get into the budget, he said; it was left in a separate fund for just about anything other than improving the living conditions of the people.

I abolished the fund, he told me, and directed 40 percent towards education and health, technological and highway development, and the rest towards buying back the debt if the price was favorable, and if not, investing it in something more useful. Before, every year we had to buy a portion of that debt which was becoming more expensive.

In the case of Ecuador –he added– oil policies verged on treason against the country. Why do they do it? I asked him. Is it because they are afraid of the Yankees or due to unbearable pressure? He answered: If they have a Minister of the Economy who tells them privatization would improve efficiency, you can just imagine. I didn’t do that.

I encourage him to go on and he calmly explains. The foreign company Oxy is one that has broken its contract and according to Ecuadorian law it requires an expiration date. It means that the oil field operated by this company must go over to the State, but because of Yankee pressure the government does not dare to occupy it; a situation is created which is not contemplated by the legislation.

The law just states that an expiration date must be set, and nothing more. The judge at the court of first instance at that moment was the president of PETROECUADOR and he made it happen. I was a member of PETROECUADOR and they called an emergency meeting to expel him from his position. I didn’t attend and they couldn’t fire him. The judge declared the expiration date.

What did the Yankees want? I asked him. They wanted a fine, he quickly replied. Listening to him I realized that I had underestimated him.

I was in a hurry because of a great number of commitments. I invited him to sit in on a meeting with a large group of highly qualified Cuban professionals who were leaving for Bolivia to be part of the Medical Brigade; it had staff for more than 30 hospitals including 19 surgical positions that could do more than 130 thousand ophthalmologic operations per year; all in the manner of free cooperation. Ecuador possesses three similar centers with six ophthalmologic positions.

Dinner with the Ecuadorian economist took place into the morning hours of February 9, 2006. There were scarcely any view points that I didn’t cover. I even spoke to him about the very harmful mercury that modern industry scatters throughout the planet’s oceans. Consumerism was of course a subject that I emphasized; the high cost of the kilowatt/hour in the thermoelectric plants; the differences between socialist and communist forms of distribution, the role of money, the trillions spent on advertising which people had no choice but to pay for in the prices of goods, and the studies made by university social brigades who discovered, among the 500 thousand families in the capital, the number of elderly folk lived alone. I explained the stage of university courses for all that we were involved in.

We became friends even though he perhaps received the impression that I was self-sufficient. If that happened, it was truly not my intention.

Since that time I have observed his every step: the electoral process, focusing on the concrete problems of Ecuadorians and the people’s victory over the oligarchy.

In the history of our peoples there are many things that bring us together. Sucre was always a highly admired figure, along with The Liberator Bolivar; as Marti said, what he hasn’t done in America remains to be done, and as Neruda exclaimed, Bolivar awakens every hundred years.

Imperialism has just committed a monstrous crime in Ecuador. Deadly bombs were dropped in the early morning hours on a group of men and women who, almost without exception, were asleep. That has been deduced by all the official reports right from the beginning. Any concrete accusations against that group of human beings do not justify that action. They were Yankee bombs, guided by Yankee satellites.

Absolutely no one has the right to kill in cold blood. If we accept that imperial method of warfare and barbarism, Yankee bombs directed by satellites could fall on any group of Latin American men and women, in the territory of any country, war or no war. The fact that this happened on undisputed Ecuadorian territory is an aggravating circumstance.

We are not an enemy of Colombia. Previous reflections and exchanges demonstrate how much of an effort we have made, both the current President of the Council of State of Cuba and I, to abide by a declared policy of principles and peace, proclaimed years ago in our relations with the rest of the Latin American states.

Today, with everything at risk, we have not been transformed into belligerent people. We are determined supporters of that unity among peoples which Marti named Our America.

If we keep quiet we shall become accomplices. Today they would like to have our friend, the economist and President of Ecuador Rafael Correa, seated in the dock; this is something we couldn’t even conceive that morning of February 9, 2006. At that time it seemed that my imagination was capable of embracing all kinds of dreams and risks, but never anything like what has occurred in the early morning of Saturday March 1, 2008.

Correa has in his hands the few survivors and the rest of the bodies. The two which are missing prove that Ecuadorian territory was occupied by troops that crossed the border. Now he can cry out like Emile Zola: J’accuse!