It was with great surprise that I saw in the news this morning that Cuba, a 64 year old dictatorship, has . announced its candidacy to join the UN Human Rights Council for the period 2024 to 2026. The election will take place in October. Really? And what countries exactly will vote for Cuba? Will Trinidad & Tobago vote for this brutal, dictatorial regime which currently has more than 1,000 political prisoners and routinely murders (literally) anybody stupid enough to oppose it? If T&T supports this what will that say about the current T&T regime?
Cuba is, along with Nicaragua, the two places in the region where religious freedoms are brutally curtailed. And don't forget that at the beginning of this awful regime it promised a workers paradise! The only paradise in Cuba is enjoyed by those at the top. Everybody else can literally go to hell as far as the regime is concerned. Certainly, this "workers' paradise" is anything but, and is a place where nobody in their right mind would want to live. PRISONERS DEFENDERS, a human rights organization based in Spain has catalogued practices by this terrible regime of prison torture, deprivation of medical attention, forced labour, solitary confinement, intentional disorientation as well as many other actions that any right thinking person would consider to be crimes.
But then, this is Cuba, so I guess that makes it all right! Cuba gets rid of anyone who is an independent activist either by locking them up and throwing away the key or by murdering them. Ask Oswaldo Paya or Harold Cepero. Oh! You can't ask them because they are dead - murdered by the Cuban regime. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) is my authority for saying this. Those two guys were killed in a car crash which the IACHR says was caused by Cuban State agents because they were highly critical of the brutal dictatorship.
I could go on. I could talk about the issue of modern day slavery in Cuba which sends its doctors overseas only to seize 80% of their salaries and prevent them from leaving wherever they are sent to by threatening to kill the families of the doctors.
And the United Nations is seriously going to allow Cuba to put forward its candidacy to join the Human Rights Council? What is the definition of hypocrisy again?
And why is this not news in T&T? What is our Government's position on this? When are we going to stand up and be counted against brutal dictatorships?
What a fantastic definition of the Cuban regime Robbin. I have family living in Havana and they tell me awful things about the current situation and how the struggle to get a portion of meat, chicken and the most basic item imaginable is. Thanks for denounce this shameful hypocrisy.
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