Cuba and the Campaign to end the State Sponsors of Terrorism List

"Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees." ... "The U.S. regime is very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up." - Fidel Castro, University of Tehran, Iran May 10, 2001 quoted in the Agence France Presse

"Our positions, versions, interpretations are alike, very close. We have been good friends, we are and will be, and we will be together forever. Long live Cuba! - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Havana, Cuba, January 12, 2012

There is a campaign underway not only to take Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism but to do away with the list altogether. Ignoring the Castro regime's long history of not only sponsoring and training terrorists, but also engaging in terrorism, the drive has been on for years to remove this dictatorship from the list. However, the end goal is not Cuba but getting rid of the list of state sponsors of terrorism itself. 

Business interests in the United States have a long history of hostility to unilateral sanctions against regimes engaged in behaviors that Americans find reprehensible.  Since 1997 they have joined together in USA Engage to target  policymakers, opinion leaders and shape public opinion in order not only to gut and end sanctions against rogue regimes but to also prevent individual victims from taking human rights abusers to court under the Alien Tort Statute.


 Stripping states and local governments of their moral authority
Corporate America has also been successful through the courts at eliminating long held rights of states and localities to decide whether or not they want to trade with a country engaged in despicable practices.  The anti-apartheid campaign that began at the local and state level with divestment campaigns in the 1970s would not survive legal challenges today. Since 2000 with the Supreme Court decision citing the supremacy clause in Crosby versus National Foreign Trade Council relations or trade with a foreign country are governed by the federal government. State and local governments can no longer place their own sanctions on foreign regimes unless it is in accordance with federal government policy. In 2000 the Supreme Court forced Massachusetts to do business with companies that had done business with the military junta in Burma. According to constitutional scholar Sanford Levinson in the Fordham Law Review the Crosby decision compels state and local governments to cooperate with evil. 

Brief history of the terror sponsor list
Corporate America would like to see the terror sponsor list done away with because it is a unilateral measure that limits their ability to trade with these rogue regimes. USA Engage offers the following historical brief on the list and its concrete impact:

In December 1979, the U.S. Department of State began to designate governments that “have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism,” as state sponsors of terrorism. Designation is formally made by the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Counter-terrorism. Designated states are subject to sanctions, including a ban on U.S. arms sales, controls on dual-use items, a prohibition on economic assistance, a requirement that the U.S. oppose loans by international financial institutions, the denial of tax credits to U.S. citizens for income earned in the designated country, and denial of duty-free treatment of exports to the U.S. Designation also requires a license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control for U.S. citizens engaging in financial transactions in a designated country. The Department of Defense is also prohibited from entering into contracts for more than $100,000 with a company controlled by a designated state.

Campaigning to get rid of the whole list would be a tall order, but the strategy appears to have been to whittle down, one by one, these rogue regimes. The Bush administration removed Iraq from the list in 2004, Libya in 2006 and North Korea in 2008. 

Deja Vu: Democratic government releases terrorist to advance business deal 
In the case of Libya in 2009 the lone convicted terrorist of the Lockerbie bombing, who murdered 270 people in 1988 when he blew up Pan Am Flight 103 was freed officially on humanitarian grounds. Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, 57, a Libyan intelligence officer, who was jailed in 2001 was freed and sent back to Muammar Gaddafi, it was revealed later, in exchange for an arms deal with a UK weapons manufacturer. Thousands welcomed home as a hero the Lockerbie bomber in an event choreographed by the Libyan dictator. At the time time President Barack Obama said the release was a mistake, but five years later he released Gerardo Hernández, a Cuban intelligence officer,  jailed in 1998 for conspiracy to murder four people in 1996  in what was an act of international terrorism. The Cuban spy and terrorist was returned to Raul Castro and the dictatorship organized a hero's welcome in Cuba. Both releases were billed as humanitarian.

State Department fails to report on North Korea's bad acts
Taking North Korea off the list did not improve the regime's behavior. However, it is important to recall what is publicly known about Pyongyang and how it came to be placed on the list. The Reagan Administration designated the DPRK a state terror sponsor after it was implicated in the 1987 bombing of  a South Korean airliner, in which more than 100 people died. Beginning in the 1970s North Korea kidnapped Japanese and other foreign nationals in order to improve their intelligence capabilities. Some suspect that an American who went missing in 2004 was taken by the North Koreans while hiking in China.  North Korea may be responsible for over 500 disappearances world wide including taking victims from China, France, Holland, Malaysia, Thailand, Romania and Singapore. The State Department claims that this is the last act that can be linked to North Korea as terrorism. This ignores press reports that in the 1990s North Korea infiltrated terror squads into the United States with orders to attack nuclear power plants in major cities if war broke out. Other U.S. government agencies have stated that  North Korea helped Syria build a nuclear reactor,  and that North Korea and Iran cooperate closely  in missile development. According to press reports, North Korea has provided support to Hamas  and Hezbollah, and has targeted North Korean refugees living overseas for kidnapping and  assassination. In December of 2014, North Korea engaged in a hacking attack on the Sony company in the United States.


How the Castro regime made the list of terror sponsors
On March 1, 1982 the Cuban dictatorship was placed on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. This was less than three months after the US State Department confirmed that the Castro regime was using a narcotics ring to funnel both arms and cash to the Colombian M19 terrorist group then battling to overthrow Colombia’s democratic government. Despite the Castro regime's denials, it has a long and well documented history of sponsoring and taking part in terrorism, including utilizing the tactic in the struggle against dictator Fulgencio Batista. On New Year’s Eve in 1956 members of Castro's 26th of July movement set off bombs in the Tropicana, blowing off the arm of a seventeen-year-old girl. From bombings, killings, and arson in 1957 to a botched hijacking to smuggle weapons to Cuban guerrillas that led to 14 dead and the night of the 100 bombs in 1958 . The organizer of the bombing campaign Sergio González López nicknamed “El Curita” and the terrorist action itself are remembered fondly by the dictatorship that named a park in his honor along with a plaque. Regime apologists now deny that anyone was wounded or killed but the memories of those who lived through this say otherwise. González López was captured, tortured, and killed by agents of the Batista dictatorship on March 18, 1958. A pro-Cuban dictatorship website recalls some of El Curita's actions:

“He actively participated in the actions of the burning of Standard Oil; the bombing of Bejucal Railway Station cable, the cable from the Bus Station, the explosion of Vento, in the action of the Tunnel and the explosion of 120 coordinated bombings in Havana, which in a telephone phone call on this occasion to the chief of police, he told him “Coward, prepare your ear tonight ... we are going to explode 100 bombs under your own noses.”

The dictatorship has practiced, trained, and published manuals with chapters on how to engage in terrorism and never renounced it, and on more than one occasion targeted the United States.  Not only does the Castro regime continue to harbor terrorists wanted in the United States but in 2010 celebrated the life of a terrorist who attacked the U.S. capitol in 1983 in its official media.
 
Why is the Castro regime smuggling tons of weapons and ammunition?
There are plenty of reasons why the actions of the dictatorship in Cuba earn it a spot on the list of terror sponsors, but two disturbing incidents within the past 20 months should give The White House pause. The two claims made by the Obama administration for lifting the terror sponsor designation on the Castro regime are that it "has not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding 6-month period," and secondly that the dictatorship "has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future."

The regime in Cuba has been smuggling tons of weapons and ammunition around the world for decades, and twice within the past 20 months they've been caught red handed, including within the past six months. Dictionary.com defines smuggling as: "to import or export (goods) secretly, in violation of the law, especially without payment of legal duty."  The only reasons I can think of to smuggle weapons shipments are that where they wind up not be traced back to the entity doing the smuggling as the weapons shipment seized in Colombia in February 2015 or the weapons shipment would be in violation of international sanctions, as was the case in July 2013 with North Korea.

In the case of the ship stopped in Colombia in February 2015, the claim was that the cargo was "grain products" in reality it was "around 100 tonnes of powder, 2.6 million detonators, 99 projectiles and around 3,000 cannon shell."

 In the  the shipment of smuggled weapons sent by Cuba to North Korea, hidden under bags of sugar, what was found, in part, was the following: "A total of 25 standard shipping containers (16 forty-foot and 9 twenty-foot) and 6 trailers were found, for a total of about 240 tons of arms and related materiel." The Cubans provided the North Koreans with surface to air missile systems, two MiG 21 jet fighters, and 15 MiG-21 engines, eight 73 mm rocket propelled projectiles (PG-9/PG-15 anti-tank and OG-9/OG-15 fragmentation projectiles) to be fired with recoil-less rifles, as well as a single PG-7VR round, a high explosive antitank tandem charge to penetrate explosive reactive armor, were also in the shipment. 

The dictatorship not only gave assurances that it would not support international terrorism in the future but also claimed that it had never supported terrorism in the past, which is a lie they have often repeated. In 1976 in an Address to the Ministry of the Interior (MININT), Fidel Castro boasted:  "If we decide to carry out terrorism, it is a sure thing we would be efficient. But the mere fact that the Cuban revolution has never implemented terrorism does not mean that we renounce it. We would like to issue this warning." 

Sanctions and Leverage
The Spanish government had asked the United States, in its talks with the Castro regime, to press for  the extradition of ETA terrorists given safe haven in Cuba.  This raises an important question: If Spain has had a policy of engagement both political and economic for decades then why does it need to ask the U.S. to intercede on its behalf in these negotiations? The answer is that the terror sponsor list and economic sanctions provide leverage.  Finally, sanctions are a nonviolent way to restrict hard currency and limit resources to the dictatorship to limit its mischief which includes sponsoring terrorism.

Predicting the aftermath
Expect within a year or two, or perhaps sooner, when the case is made to remove the next terror sponsor to hear the argument that the terror sponsor list is useless because North Korea and Cuba are not on it and that it should be gotten rid of.  The world will be a more dangerous place with state sponsors of terrorism having more resources to sponsor and carry out acts of terrorism. 

Freedom House Report on Authoritarian Internationalism

Ever wonder why human rights have been on a steady decline for the past 7 years? Freedom House offers an explanation with this report.

Exporting Repression

March 26, 2013

written by

Daniel Calingaert 

Executive Vice President

Freedom House

Authoritarian regimes around the world are exporting their worst practices and working together to repress their own citizens and undermine human rights standards internationally. They have collaborated extensively to strengthen their grip on power, often in the face of domestic discontent and international criticism. This cooperation, which might be dubbed “authoritarian internationalism,” presents a significant challenge to democracy around the world and has likely contributed to the decline in global freedom registered by Freedom House over the past seven years.

The interactions between authoritarian regimes are largely opaque, but they have become evident as methods of repression are replicated from country to country, direct assistance is provided across borders to crack down on dissent, and joint efforts are made to chip away at international protections for fundamental freedoms. Authoritarian internationalism is manifested in multiple ways:

Photo Credit: Malika Khurana

• The “China model”: China, with its combination of rapid economic growth and political repression, presents an appealing policy model for other authoritarian regimes. It offers a supposed alternative to democracy as a route to prosperity, and its vague ideological emphasis on national sovereignty and the guiding role of a permanent ruling party is easily transferrable to other regimes that seek to resist international pressure and crush political opposition. However, the sustainability of China’s economic growth under the existing system is increasingly questioned by experts, and dictatorships that claim admiration for the Chinese example often function as mere kleptocracies, where economic gains come from the extraction of natural resources rather than industrial expansion and accrue largely to the benefit of a small elite.
   

Belarusian president Alyaksandr Lukashenka at Hugo Chávez's funeral.
Screengrab from Canal de n24fuenteno

• Close ties between dictatorships: Authoritarian regimes have built extensive economic, military, and political ties with like-minded governments, both in their neighborhoods and further afield. The government of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, for example, provided $82 billion in grants and subsidies to more than 40 countries from 2005 to 2011, according to the opposition’s estimate, and established close relationships with distant countries, such as Iran, that have little in common beyond a shared opposition to democracy. The mutual affinity of dictators around the globe was on display during Chávez’s funeral on March 8, when Belarusian president Alyaksandr Lukashenka bade a tearful farewell to his Venezuelan counterpart.
  
  

  Counter protesters attack LGBT rights advocates peacefully demonstrating in Voronezh, Russia. Photo Credit: Article20.org

• Replicating worst practices: Authoritarian regimes tend to adopt the same kinds of restrictive laws and policies as their peers. Their laws on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), for instance, often share features like ambiguous or onerous registration requirements, wide discretion for authorities to block NGO activities, and restrictions on foreign funding. Foreign prodemocracy groups have increasingly become the targets of repression; they were put on trial in Egypt, kicked out of the United Arab Emirates and Russia, and vilified in the media in Azerbaijan. The pattern of copying worst practices was evident most recently in a wave of bills to ban “homosexual propaganda” that were introduced in Russia, Ukraine, and other settings.
   
• Technology exports: China has set the standard for sophisticated methods of control over the internet and actively exports technology for monitoring digital communications. It has reportedly supplied telephone and internet surveillance technology to Iran and Ethiopia and provided several Central Asian governments with telecommunications infrastructure that may increase their ability to spy on their own citizens.
   
• Security service collaboration: While authoritarian regimes naturally try to avoid notice of cooperation between their security services, indications of such cooperation have surfaced. Cuban intelligence officials are reportedly working within Venezuelan government and military structures. Central Asian governments appear to have carried out several renditions of their citizens from Russia, probably with the complicity of Russian officials. And Russian opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev was abducted last October in broad daylight in Kyiv, where he was seeking political asylum, then driven to Russia, abused, and pressured into signing a confession.
   
• Military intervention: When heavy-handed police methods are insufficient to quell unrest, authoritarian regimes at times intervene militarily to save a fellow dictator. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates sent troops into Bahrain in March 2011 to help put down peaceful protests. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are reportedly advising Syrian generals and using Hezbollah to build a large Syrian militia to fight in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
   
• Challenging international norms: In an effort to blunt international criticism, authoritarian regimes seek to water down accepted international standards for human rights. Russia has sponsored a series of resolutions at the UN Human Rights Council to recognize “traditional values,” which serve as a handy excuse to infringe on the universal values of human rights that are codified in UN conventions. At the World Conference on International Communications last December, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and other authoritarian states pushed for an international treaty to give governments greater control over the internet.
   
• Undermining international institutions: Authoritarian governments have tried to impede and even gut international institutions that protect political and civil rights. Russia and like-minded Eurasian dictatorships have made concerted efforts to hamper the ability of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to issue hard-hitting observation reports on flawed elections. Meanwhile, Ecuador is leading leftist-populist governments in its region in attempts to stifle the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, particularly by defunding the special rapporteur for freedom of expression, who has strongly criticized restrictions on media in Ecuador and elsewhere in Latin America.
  
  

  Muratbek Imanaliyev and Vladimir Putin. Photo Credit: Premier.gov.ru

• Counter-organizations: At the same time, authoritarian regimes have built up their own regional organizations to provide a counterweight to existing international institutions. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a prime example. It promotes security and economic cooperation between China, Russia, and neighboring Central Asian states. The Commonwealth of Independent States’ Election Monitoring Organization directly challenges the OSCE by white-washing flawed elections. It called Ukraine’s parliamentary elections last October “transparent and democratic”; the OSCE said they were “a step backwards” and criticized the lack of a level playing field, of transparency in campaign finance, and of balanced media coverage.

The reach and vigor of authoritarian internationalism point to the need for democratic countries to bolster their own cooperation. The pushback against democracy extends beyond the borders of autocratic states and threatens international norms and institutions that contribute to global stability. The world’s democracies cannot afford to let the authoritarian challenge go unanswered.

Issues: 

Civil Society, Democratic Governance, Freedom of Association, Human Rights Defense, Intergovernmental Bodies, Internet Freedom, Rule of Law, United Nations

Regions: 

Americas, Asia-Pacific, Central and Eastern Europe/Eurasia, Middle East and North Africa

Countries: 

Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Iran, China, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, Venezuela, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia

http://www.freedomhouse.org/blog/exporting-repression

5th Annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy: Closing Statement

The 5th Annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy today is an opportunity for reflection. Unfortunately, the human rights situation around the world has not improved over the past five years and in many instances worsened.  The question is why?

Cuban democratic opposition activist, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, when awarded the Sakharov prize for Freedom of Thought on December 17, 2002 observed that “The cause of human rights is a single cause, just as the people of the world are a single people. The talk today is of globalization, but we must state that unless there is global solidarity, not only human rights but also the right to remain human will be jeopardized.” The past decade has demonstrated that he was right.

Freedom House in its 2013 report “Freedom in the World” documents the seventh consecutive year in which there have been more declines than gains in freedom worldwide. Worse still the report demonstrates that there is “a stepped-up campaign of persecution by dictators that specifically targeted civil society organizations and independent media.”

These have been years of challenge for human rights and democracy activists around the world. Listening to the testimony today, in 2013, from journalists, human rights activists and victims of rights violations in Cuba, Iran, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Mauritania, Morocco, North Korea, Russia, Sudan, Syria, and Tibet should shock the conscience of any reasonable person.

Elie Wiesel’s aphorism: "For the dead and the living we must bear witness" has been put into practice over the course of these five summits and especially today: genocide, slavery, concentration camps, extrajudicial killings, brutalization of women, rape as a military weapon, and the silencing of dissenting voices.

At the same time, despite the horrors there is cause for hope. During the first session this morning “Women’s Rights: The Struggle for Human Dignity” Marina Nemat , a former prisoner of conscience in Iran who had been repeatedly tortured and raped made an observation that went to the heart of the challenge for human rights when she remarked that “Victim-hood is not a perpetual state. A victim can become a torturer and a torturer can become a victim. The tables can be turned. They will turn for me. One day they will place the cable in my hand and I will put it down. Justice and revenge are two very different concepts.”

Too many believe that immoral and unjust means can lead to moral and just ends.  This is the key idea that combined with the impulse for revenge can lead a victim to become a torturer in a cycle that generates greater levels of barbarism and inhumanity.

Breaking the cycle of bloodshed and revenge involves pursuing justice and accountability, in other words ending impunity.  To do this the right for victims and their loved ones to know the truth is a fundamental concern to end impunity.  This is a theme that has been heard throughout the day and especially from Marina Nemat, Colette Braeckman, and Mukesh Kapila.

Mukhtar Mai, the first speaker this morning outlined her harrowing account overcoming great horrors including being sentenced to gang rape and managed to build a school to educate hundreds of women; and she continues her struggle for justice, not revenge, stating “If a woman’s life is in danger, we can help them out. I want to make a change, and this will happen with education.”

This is part of what activists for nonviolence call a constructive program. The other common point heard throughout the day is that “military solutions are not real solutions.” Syrian activist Randa Kassis explained that in Syria: “a military solution is not a real solution. There is only one real solution and that is a political solution.” Marina Nemat repeated several times that the primary problem in Iran was not the nuclear program but the systematic violation of human rights and that she was against military action in Iran. Former Cuban prisoner of conscience Regis Iglesias explained that he did not hate the dictatorship in Cuba but at the same time he did not fear it and was seeking change using nonviolent means.

Rosa Maria Payá, whose father, Oswaldo Paya Sardiñas, died under suspicious circumstances along with Harold Cepero on July 22, 2012, recognized the commonality between the different activists who had spoken earlier in the day in favor of nonviolent change. During her presentation she quoted her father from his Strasbourg Address to the European Parliament in December of 2002, “The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together.”

Another theme during the Summit is the importance of citizenry to be active and vigilant. Marina Nemat explained the importance of holding politicians accountable, “If you don't maintain democracy it is going to die. It is up to every single one of us to pressure politicians to do the right thing.” Dicky Chhoyang of the Central Tibetan Administration called on free peoples to “Have the courage to stand and be the change we want to see happen.”

This leads inevitably to the need for freedom of expression and critical voices to expose injustice and hold the politicians accountable. The Moroccan blogger Kacem El Ghazzali outlined the importance freedom of expression and of religion within the Islamic world and the challenges still faced in Morocco.  Pyotr Verzilov, the husband of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova one of the jailed pussy riot musicians also spoke about the madness of Putin’s Russia, the absence of freedom of expression, and the linkage between the Russian Orthodox Church and the authoritarian regime in Russia. Lukpan Akhmedyarov has offered a vivid example of the denial of freedom of expression in Kazakhstan and the consequences of authoritarianism.

Marina Nemet is right; silence is a weapon of mass destruction as is indifference to injustice. However the opposite is also true making noise and denouncing injustice using nonviolent means and not succumbing to hate is a weapon of mass construction.

However, throughout the day we have heard from speakers of different parts of the world and of different religious traditions or even non-religious traditions that injustice and human rights violations need to be confronted by nonviolent means without succumbing to hating one’s adversary.

Therefore Regis, Rosa and I invite you to sign a petition demanding an independent and transparent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Oswaldo Paya Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante on July 22, 2012. The document is available in draft form for your signature.

Thank you very much.

Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index 2010

Press Freedom Index 2010

The 15 countries with worse press freedoms according to Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index 2010 out of 178 countries. ranked in order from worse to least worse. Eritrea was the worse below is the rest of the lousy 15:

178. Eritrea
177. North Korea
176. Turkmenistan
175. Iran
174. Burma
173. Syria
172. Sudan
171. China
170. Yemen
169. Rwanda
168. Laos
167. Equatorial Guinea
166. Cuba
165. Vietnam
164. Tunisia

The only Latin American country to make the bottom 15 was Cuba at #166 . The country with the most press freedom in 2010 was Finland at #1 with the United States ranking 20th just after the United Kingdom.

Ten countries where it is not good to be a journalist

In recent years, Reporters Without Borders drew particular attention to the three countries that were always in the last three positions – Eritrea, North Korea and Turkmenistan. This year, a bigger group of ten countries – marked by persecution of the media and a complete lack of news and information – are clumped together at the bottom. The press freedom situation keeps on deteriorating in these countries and it is getting harder to say which is worse than the other. The difference between the scores of the “best” and worst of the last 10 countries was only 24.5 points this year. It was 37.5 points in 2009 and 43.25 points in 2007.

It is worth noting that, for the first time since the start of the index in 2002, Cuba is not one of the 10 last countries. This is due above all to the release of 14 journalists and 22 activists in the course of the past summer. But the situation on the ground has not changed significantly. Political dissidents and independent journalists still have to deal with censorship and repression on a daily basis.

Freedom is not allowed any space in Burma, where a parliamentary election is due to be held next month, and the rare attempts to provide news or information are met with imprisonment and forced labor.

Finally, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Mexico, countries either openly at war or in a civil war or some other kind of internal conflict, we see a situation of permanent chaos and a culture of violence and impunity taking root in which the press has become a favorite target. These are among the most dangerous countries in the world, and the belligerents there pick directly on reporters such as French TV journalists Stéphane Taponier and Hervé Ghesquière, who have been held hostage in Afghanistan for the past 300 days.

Welcome by John Suarez, International Secretary of Directorio on behalf of the Geneva Summit coalition

Madam La Conseillire d'Etat, Isabel Rochat

The Mayor of Geneva, Mr. Remy Pangini

Excellencies

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good Morning and welcome to the 2nd Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy. My name is John Suarez. I am a human rights activist and the International Secretary of the Cuban Democratic Directorate. The Cuban Democratic Directorate is part of a civic nonviolent resistance movement that defends pro-democracy activists, human rights defenders, and members of independent civil society from the abuses of a 51-year old communist dictatorship. We publish an annual human rights report on Cuba as well as Steps to Freedom - our last two issues are available here - it is an exhaustive accounting of opposition and independent civil society activities inside of Cuba.

On behalf of the co-organizers, an international coalition of more than 25 human rights NGOs I am both honored and humbled to welcome all who have come near and far to join us today here at the Geneva International Conference Center directly across from the United Nations Human Rights Council which is now in session and all those joining via web cast from around the world.

The first Geneva Summit coincided with the Durban Review and the second summit takes place now in tandem with the main annual session of the UN Human Rights Council.

Summit organizers are honored to have human rights heroes Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, the former presidents of the Czech Republic and Poland as co-chairs of the Geneva Summit's Honorary Committee. As we gather here and many of us are also watching, listening, and participating in the Human Rights Council session across the way and are witnessing some of the worse systematic human rights abusers exerting undue influence and power over the Council and the session. In some cases silencing victims from speaking and frustrating human rights activists I think back to both of our co-chairs.

In Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, Vaclav Havel was a dissident play write followed by secret police, imprisoned for his beliefs and in Poland Lech Walesa, an electrician working at the Gdansk shipyards before being fired in 1976 for his activities as a shop steward would later be followed and frequently detained for his independent labor activism. All this at a time when the world was convinced that these repressive communist states would go on forever.

Both have said much that is relevant to the challenges that we face today:

Months after the Warsaw Pact invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia crushing the Prague Spring and the idea of Socialism with a human face. Vaclav Havel wrote a letter to the overthrown Czechoslovak Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek in August of 1969 in which he stated: "Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance." That in one sentence describes the evolution of dissident movements in Communist states and their impact in shaking up a seemingly all powerful totalitarian state creating cracks in its edifice and over time tearing it down.

By 1983 Lech Walesa had played an important role in organizing labor strikes that brought the Polish communist government to the negotiating table where for the first time in a communist state an independent labor union - Solidarity - was legally recognized - only to face repression and attempts to destroy it through Martial law, but by 1983 through great repression Martial law was formally lifted but repression continued. This was the year when Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize. He was not allowed to attend the award ceremony in Oslo but Walesa's wife Danuta was able to go in his place and read his acceptance speech in which he explained what motivated this movement: "We are fighting for the right of the working people to association and for the dignity of human labour. We respect the dignity and the rights of every man and every nation. The path to a brighter future of the world leads through honest reconciliation of the conflicting interests and not through hatred and bloodshed. To follow that path means to enhance the moral power of the all-embracing idea of human solidarity."

Through a combination of great courage, persistence, patience, civic nonviolent resistance, international solidarity, and a little luck both of these men played a crucial role in seeing that repressive totalitarian regimes in their respective countries were brought to an end without democrats engaging in bloodshed against their oppressors and today in both of their countries they and their countrymen are free to travel, express themselves, associate freely, and enjoy all those rights that many in the West have long taken for granted. Looking around the room and seeing human rights defenders from Azerbaijan, Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Tibet, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Activists that today live in societies where fundamental human rights are systematically denied and abused. They share with Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa the real knowledge of living in countries that are not free and where exercising your fundamental human rights is an act of defiance and great courage.

One objective of the 2010 Geneva Summit is to give voice to victims of the world’s worst human rights abuses and a second objective is to empower those who suffer repression under closed systems of government. The program over the next two days addresses both these goals whether they will be accomplished is up to all of us. It is a tall order because the global human rights situation is deteriorating.

In Iran, the contested June election sparked an unprecedented wave of state-sponsored violence and repression. Thousands of peaceful protesters were beaten, arrested, tortured, and killed. One of them Neda Agha-Soltan, age 27, was shot and killed on June 20, 2009 during the protests denouncing election fraud. Her fiancé, Caspian Makan, is with us here today, and will address the Summit tomorrow. Neda’s death was captured on video and in those terrible moments reflected the great crime committed by the Iranian government against the people of Iran. Official numbers place the number of killed at 36 during the protests but the opposition places the dead at 72. In 2009 at least 270 people were hanged and in 2010 at least 12 so far. 4,000 have been arrested including journalists and reformist politicians.

In China, according to Amnesty International "...a minimum of 7,000 death sentences were handed down and 1,700 executions took place" in 2009. Chinese Dissident Liu Xiaobo was arrested on June 23, 2009 and charged with “inciting subversion of state power” for co-authoring Charter 08, a declaration calling for political reform, greater human rights, and an end to one-party rule in China that has been signed by hundreds of individuals from all walks of life throughout the country. On December 25, 2009 Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison and two years' deprivation of political rights. The Beijing High Court rejected his appeal on February 11, 2010.

In North Korea, the Communist regime continues to deny all basic freedoms to its citizens. According to Amnesty International opposition of any kind is not tolerated. According to reports, any person who expresses an opinion contrary to the position of the ruling party faces severe punishment, and so do in many cases their families. Unauthorized assembly or association is regarded as a "collective disturbance", that is punishable. Religious freedom, although guaranteed by the constitution, is in practice sharply curtailed. There are reports of severe repression of people involved in public and private religious activities, through imprisonment, torture and executions. Many Christians are reportedly being held in labour camps.

In Sudan, the regime of Omar al-Bashir continues to kill thousands of innocent people with impunity. On 24 November, three prominent human rights defenders were arrested in Khartoum: Amir Suleiman, Abdel Monim Elgak and Osman Humeida and tortured in custody before being released. Amnesty International considered the three individuals to be prisoners of conscience who were detained solely because of the peaceful exercise of their rights to freedom of expression and association.

In Zimbabwe, elections were followed by a wave of human rights violations that resulted in at least 180 deaths, and at least 9,000 people injured from torture, beatings and other violations perpetrated mainly by government forces. About 28,000 people were displaced from their homes.

In Burma, Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who won the last free election held in Burma in 1990 whose results were ignored by the ruling military junta who then imprisoned her unjustly. Last years sham trial by the military junta to extend her imprisonment has caused major damage to the process of national reconciliation and indicates that the upcoming 2010 elections in Burma will be a farce.

In Cuba, the communist regime continues to systematically deny Cubans there human rights, Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, mentioned here at the Summit last year was abducted by Cuban State security and beaten to stop her and Claudia Cadelo another blogger from attending a performance art happening celebrating nonviolence. On International Human Rights Day government organized mobs assaulted the Ladies in White as they marched for the release of Cuba's prisoners of conscience. At least 24 Cuban patients died of exposure at Mazorra, a government hospital in January of this year and when Amnesty International prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo initiated a water only hunger strike to demand that prisoners be treated decently in December of 2009 prison officials responded by taking away his water for more than two weeks when he was already extremely weak trying to break his spirit and failed but contributed to his death on February 23rd.

In Venezuela, the government response to those Venezuelan citizens protesting against the Chavez regime shutting down independent media outlets is to denounce those using twitter and text message as terrorists; police firing tear gas at students and a call for government supporters to prepare for battle. In the midst of all this President Hugo Chavez continues to demonize the opposition and welcomes into his ranks a high ranking Cuban official: Commander Ramiro Valdez, "a historic leader of the revolution" to address the energy crisis in Venezuela currently suffering power outages. Valdez is the Vice President of the Council of State and Minister of Communications in the Cuban government. He doesn’t know much about electricity but knows how to set up the repressive apparatus of a totalitarian police state which is what he did in Cuba. Ironically, the man Hugo Chavez does not want to visit Venezuela with much experience in electricity is Lech Walesa who he has barred from entering the country. In addition to being an electrician Lech Walesa knows a thing or two about defending human rights and democracy. A skills set that Mr. Chavez views as a threat. At the same time a Spanish court offers an insight into terrorism in Venezuela but twitter/text messages sent by students are not the object of the inquiry but Mr. Chavez’s ties with terrorist groups ETA and the Colombian FARC and apparent plans to assassinate the Colombian head of state.

Regrettably, the chief international body charged with protecting human rights is failing to live up to its mission to stop these and other abuses. The Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council—as acknowledged in a recent report by 17 of its 47 member states, supported by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Commission of Jurists—falls short in its handling of country situations, in the efficiency of the process involved in highlighting violations, and in its reactivity to crisis situations. Strong politicization of the Council, driven by bloc-based voting patterns, has led to inaction in face of atrocity and abuse. We saw this sad spectacle last week within the Council, first with the secretary general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights denying the documented and rampant instances of torture, executions, and mass detentions of Iranians followed by the Cuban Foreign Minister’s speech who echoing his Iranian colleague also denied Cuba’s horrible human rights record and to add insult to injury went on to blame the United States for the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo as well as slander the deceased Cuban prisoner of conscience as a criminal.

Little wonder that the March 1st magazine issue of Newsweek contains an article titled “The Downfall of Human Rights.” The article highlights Freedom House's report "Freedom in the World," released in January, and reveals a global decline in political freedoms and civil liberties for the fourth year in a row, the longest drop in the almost 40 years that the survey has been produced.

In his 1986 Nobel Acceptance speech writer, activist, and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel issued a challenge not only to activists but to people everywhere challenging us all when he said: "I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Amidst all the documented evils of the past year there is hope. The rise of citizen journalists, social networks, twitter, and cell phones able to document these atrocities and show them to the world is a response to Elie Wiesel's call not to remain silent to speak out and denounce repression. We've seen its impact across the world. This meeting has a focus on internet freedom, and it is necessary because the enemies of freedom recognize this technology as a profound enemy to maintaining monopoly control over information which for totalitarians is a pillar of their power.

New opportunities exist, and human rights defenders need to brainstorm and collaborate to improve activism and to offer a counterbalance to the collaboration and coordination of repressive regimes and movements. The international stage can be used to put a spotlight on the world’s worst abusers. We saw it this last week when 30 NGOs from this Summit called on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to intervene on behalf of Cuban human rights defender Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina barred by the Cuban dictatorship from attending this meeting. The Cuban ambassador protested loudly when Hillel Neuer of UN Watch raised the matter in an interactive dialogue with the High Commissioner, but Nestor on the other hand was grateful that you spoke up for his human rights.

The Geneva Summit seeks to offer dissidents and human rights activists from around the world a global platform and forum to share their personal struggles, their fight for freedom and equality, and their vision for how to bring change. This past week we saw with action how it can be done and how much it upsets those who would prefer that we remain silent. Let us make sure that the victims of human rights violations receive the solidarity of people of goodwill and that the abusers be given cause to be shamed by their actions and to change there ways.