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Powell Decries Cuba’s Human Rights Record
Secretary of State Colin Powell, calling Cuba's human rights situation horrible and getting worse, urged the U.N. Human Rights Commission to censure Cuba for suppressing dissent. The commission, winding up its annual meeting in Geneva, is expected to vote on a Cuba resolution this week. Oh yeah, that'll scare them. Powell spoke in unusually harsh terms about Cuba when he was asked Tuesday for an assessment of its rights record at a news conference. ``It has always had a horrible human rights record. And rather than improving as we go into the 21st century, it's getting worse,'' Powell said. He noted that scores of dissidents were arrested and given long prison terms recently ``just for expressing a point of the view that is different from that of Fidel Castro.'' Not to mention those three ferryboat would-be highjackers who were executed after a one day trial. Why, the outrage of the death penalty opponents against Cuba this week was.....Where was that outrage, anyway? Powell said Cuba's behavior ``should be an outrage to everyone. It should be an outrage to every leader in this hemisphere, every leader in this world.'' Cuba insists that the jailed dissidents were subversives because they had been working closely with the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana, which has been advocating a change in government on the island. Fidel has been cracking down pretty hard lately, sounds like he thinks not everyone is happy with him running things. Getting paranoid in his old age? Posted by: Steve 2003-04-15 |
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