International Human Rights Day: Recovering Cuba's Pre-Castro human rights legacy

Over the past 20 years, I witnessed how Cuban diplomats undermined international human rights standards, first at the United Nations Human Rights Commission and later at the UN Human Rights Council.

• On April 15, 2004 when the UN Human Rights Commission decided by a single vote to censure Cuba for its human rights record, a Cuban human rights defender attending the session, Frank Calzon, was physically attacked by a Cuban diplomat.
• On March 28, 2008 the Castro regime’s delegation, together with the Organization of Islamic Congress, successfully passed resolutions that turned the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression into an investigator into abuses of freedom of expression.
• On Feb. 2, 2009 during the Universal Periodic Review of China, Cuban Ambassador, Juan Antonio Fernandez Palacios, recommended that China repress human rights defenders with more firmness.
• On March 17, 2014 at the UN Human Rights Council, Cuban diplomats defended the North Korean regime’s human rights record.
•  On Sept. 21, 2018 Cuban Ambassador to the UN, Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta, during the Universal Periodic Review on Cuba at the UN Human Rights Council stated that “our country will not accept monitors. Amnesty International will not enter Cuba and we do not need their advice.”
• Less than a month later, Cuban diplomats led an “act of repudiation“ at the UN to prevent a discussion on political prisoners in Cuba.
• Euronews reported on February 24, 2022 that "only Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Syria supported the Russian recognition of independence for the occupied regions in Luhansk and Donetsk."
• On April 7, 2022 Cuba, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Vietnam, were among those who voted against suspending Russia from the UN Human Rights Council ( 93 voted to suspend, 24 against, and 58 abstentions.)
  
• On September 16, 2022 Cuba was one of seven countries voting "no" at the UN General Assembly together with Belarus, Eritrea, Nicaragua, North Korea, Syria, and Russia. This "no" vote was to silence Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky from delivering a pre-recorded address at the UN General Assembly. 
• Bruno Rodriguez, the Castro regime's foreign minister on November 16, 2022 and October 24, 2022 over Twitter repeatedly condemned new sanctions placed on Iran by the United States. This sanctions were in response to massive regime violence against Iranian protesters.

 Artists were arrested in Cuba in 2018 for protesting Decree 349, a law that eliminated the few artistic freedoms remaining there.

Prisoner of conscience Eduardo Cardet spent two years and 10 months in prison for speaking critically of Castro’s legacy. The sentence ended on September 30, 2019.

There are over a thousand political prisoners in Cuba today.

Luis Robles and Luis Manuel Otero are prisoners of conscience

On December 2, 2022 two prisoners of conscience observed their second birthdays behind bars. Luis Robles turned 30 years old, and was behind bars for holding up a sign silently in a public space that read " “Freedom. No more repression. #free-Denis [Solís].” He was arrested and jailed on December 20, 2020, and on March 28, 2022 was sentenced to five years in prison. 

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara turned 35 years old. He was arrested and jailed on July 11, 2021 when he announced that he was heading out to join the mass protests that broke out across the island. He was also sentenced to five years in prison on June 24, 2022.

Worse yet, the penal code in Cuba on December 1, 2022 became still more draconian. Amnesty International on December 2nd reported on its severity calling it "a chilling prospect for 2023," highlighting the expansion of the death penalty to 23 crimes, and punishing expression for even longer prison sentences.

It was not always this way.

Seventy four years ago, a democratic Cuba helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and establish the UN Human Rights Commission.

Cuba’s last democratic president, Carlos Prio Socarras, was elected in free and fair elections and assumed office on Oct. 10, 1948. President Prio respected human rights, and this was reflected by the actions taken by his diplomats at the founding of the UN.

Cuba, Panama, and Chile were the first three countries to submit full drafts of human rights charters to the Commission. Latin American delegations, especially Mexico, Cuba, and Chile inserted language about the right to justice into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in what would become Article 8.

Guy Pérez-Cisneros (center) &  Ernesto Dihigo (right) in Palace of Chaillot, París, December 1948.

Cuban delegate Guy Pérez-Cisneros addressed the UN General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948 proposing to vote for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Cuban Ambassador celebrated that it was his colleague who submitted the first draft, that the final document condemned racism and sexism, and also addressed the importance of the rule of law:

"Cuba could not fail to participate in the choir of nations that wish to celebrate the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man. We feel great pride that the first, very modest draft officially submitted to serve as the basis for the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man was written by Dr. Ernesto Díhigo, an eminent professor at the University of Havana and a member of the Cuban delegation." ...

“My delegation had the honor of inspiring the final text, which finds it essential that the rights of man be protected by the rule of law, so that man will not be compelled to exercise the extreme recourse of rebellion against tyranny and oppression.”

This democratic Cuba was overthrown 70 years ago on March 10, 1952 by Fulgencio Batista and hopes of a democratic restoration frustrated by the Castro brothers in 1959.

Guy Pérez-Cisneros died of a stroke in 1953.

Ernesto Dihigo, like Pérez-Cisneros, left the diplomatic corps following the 1952 coup, but returned as Cuba’s Ambassador to the United States in January of 1959 retiring in 1960. He left Cuba in 1989 and died in Miami in 1991.

The Center for a Free Cuba will share this history on December 10, 2022 at 12 noon to remind their international community that civil and political rights are an intrinsic part of a shared Cuban heritage that in 1948 made world history and that the Castro regime has spent 63 years trying to erase.

The event will be held in English. You can RSVP here.

Cuba and the 1948 origins of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

 Here are excerpts from the speech delivered by the Republic of Cuba’s Permanent Delegate to the United Nations, Dr. Guy Pérez ­Cisneros; as being one of the proponents of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, prior to its voting, at the United Nations Third General Assembly, taking place at the Chaillot Palace, in Paris, France on December 10, 1948 .

Guy Pérez-Cisneros (center) &  Ernesto Dihigo (right) in Palace of Chaillot, París, December 1948.

CUBA could not fail to participate in the choir of nations that wish to celebrate the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man. We feel great pride that the first, very modest draft officially submitted to serve as the basis for the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man was written by Dr. Ernesto Díhigo, an eminent professor at the University of Havana and a member of the Cuban delegation.

Today the initiative [is presented] by the illustrious Rapporteur of the Third Committee, Senator Emile Saint‐Lot, and by its President, Charles Habib Malik Laar, Lebanon’s envoy to Havana. Cuba is deeply satisfied to see a Haitian as the bearer to humanity of the United Nation’s most valuable message. Haiti is precisely one of those privileged lands whose whole history is characterized by a heroic and constant effort to defend and enforce the rights of man. And Cuba is proud of having nominated as Rapporteur [this] outstanding son of a French‐speaking American nation, Haiti, a land in which the great Simon Bolivar, our Bolivar, found both moral encouragement and material aid to achieve his great task of liberation and freedom.

My delegation is duty bound to acknowledge the meritorious work of the Committee on the Rights of Man, which labored untiringly for two years under the inspiring leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt and wrote a truly valuable document that beautifully and forcefully express the highest aspiration of 20th Century man: The dawning of a world in which all human beings, freed from fear and want, will enjoy freedom of speech and freedom of opinion.

Another historic document that inspired the Third Committee’s work was the First Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, endorsed in Bogotá by the nations of the Americas. Also, through the determined effort and great power of conviction of the Mexican delegate, Dr. Pablo Campo Ortiz, [was added] the important Article Nine [freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention or exile], based on Mexico’s right of protection.

My delegation had the honor of inspiring the final text, which finds it essential that the rights of man be protected by the rule of law, so that man will not be compelled to exercise the extreme recourse of rebellion against tyranny and oppression. Further, this is an homage to France from my country, which greatly admired and watch the stages of it’s glorious résistance.

We are pleased that the social rights that are the main contribution of the 20th Century to this issue – just as legal rights were in the 19th Century – were treated in the Declaration with the importance they deserve.

We also thank the United Nations for its favorable reception of two Cuban Amendments on the subject of labor that recognize the right of man to freely pursue his vocation and to receive a fair and satisfactory wage that will guarantee him and his family an existence befitting their human dignity.

My delegation will not forget the way in which the United Nations welcomed another of our initiatives. To include in the Declaration the right to the protection of one’s honor, a high moral concept rooted deep in the soul of every Hispanic person. And we can not silence the fact that – through the joint efforts of France, Mexico and Cuba – recognition was finally granted to those who belong to the only legitimate aristocracy: Creator, be the artist, writers, or scientists. They are entitled to the protection of the moral and material gains obtained through their scientific, literary, or artistic productions.

My country and my people are highly satisfied to see that the odious racial discrimination and the unfair differences between men and women have been condemned forever.

The Cuban delegation hesitated often before submitting its numerous amendments. It went ahead with the understanding that perfection and critical severity were among its duties. A delegation that represented a nation that proudly produced the Montecristi Manifesto was entitled to be demanding. The manifesto outlined goals of Cuba’s independence movement and was drafted by José Martí and Máximo Gómez.

The members of the Cuban delegation are deeply moved when – as they review the articles of the important Declaration that we will adopt in a few minutes – they recognize that all its provisions could have been accepted by the generous spirit who was the apostle of our independence: José Martí, the hero who – as he turned his homeland into a nation – gave us forever this generous rule: “With everyone, and for the good of everyone.”

By: Guy Pérez‐Cisneros,
Permanent Delegate of the Republic of Cuba to the United Nations(1948 ‐ 1953) .

Original Spanish text and English translation available here in PDF format