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Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
Tue Mar 22, 2016, 09:29 PM Mar 2016

Hypocrisy over Cuba’s human rights record

Hypocrisy over Cuba’s human rights record
Tuesday 22 March 2016 15.25 EDT

Your front-page report on Obama’s visit to Cuba (22 March) ends with the claim that Cuba has “challenges” in the area of democratic and human rights, noting that “police arrested dozens of pro-democracy protesters”. Dozens, and we are not sure if these were peaceful protesters or not. How much more of a challenge do our supposedly democratic countries have, then, when they routinely kettle and arrest hundreds of peaceful protesters?

I still remember the shameful caging in inhuman conditions of more than 1,000 protesters arrested at the Toronto G8/G20 meetings in 2010. The city had been put into lockdown to try and prevent protest, and a massive warehouse was hired and equipped in advance with stacked cages to hold arrested protesters. Police and military outnumbered the protesters by two to one, and used rubber bullets and pepper spray against the demonstration. The hypocrisy of Washington and its ilk defies belief.
Professor Helen Colley
Honorary professorial research fellow, Institute of Education, University of Manchester

• You report that there is “virtually no evidence of American culture” (apart from 1950s cars) in Cuba, advancing as evidence that “there are no fast-food chains, no Starbucks and no Coca-Cola”. If that’s your idea of American culture, Cuba has done supremely well to keep it – and the mafia, who ran the country in US-supported dictator Batista’s time – out of the country since 1959.
Dr Richard Carter
London

• “Cuba’s dismal human rights record … Cuba’s repressive internal policies … the president will meet dissidents today” (Editorial, 22 March). This is an outrageously unfair slant – and without any comparative basis. Cuba’s Central American neighbours enjoy favourable political and economic relations with the US despite their devastating murder rates and gangster economies. Nor is this anything to do with human rights or democratic values, as US relations with Egypt, China and Saudi Arabia make crystal clear.

Cuban education and public health policies put those of the US to shame and even the US Department of State’s Overseas Security Advisory Council grudgingly reports that “violent crime is not common” in Cuba. Nevertheless, the blatantly illegal US trade embargo is still in place – and so is Guantánamo Bay. No – it is not yet “Havana’s turn”.
Kevin Bannon
London

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/22/hypocrisy-over-cubas-human-rights-record

Good Reads:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016148535

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