2016-12-09Staff Report 2 I have the duty to respond to the insults hurled at Commander Fidel Castro, as contained in The Namibian edition of last week Friday. I was still under the impact of the combative presence of a million Cubans of all ages in the Revolution Square in Havana paying tribute with their presence to Fidel and I was also watching early morning the farewell offered to Fidel´s ashes on his its route from the capital city to Santiago de Cuba, in the eastern region of my country. Thousands of my countrymen and countrywomen waited along the route to repeat “I am Fidel”. That´s a way to express his legacy remains in each one of us and will be forever a main objective in our lives. Later on I started to read the Namibian press and I was shocked by the editorial of The Namibian newspaper of December 2. It is not in my faculty to respond to the infamous and permanent Namibian newspaper attacks against the Namibian government, its president and against Swapo, though I think those calumnies are part of the open campaigns of imperialism, the former Western coloniser powers and their lackeys who wish to see the end of those governments in Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, which took power in the armed struggle against colonialism, apartheid and imperialism. Using Namibia’s present difficulties to reverse the situation of poverty, unemployment, lack of education and health care attention they inherited from exploitation of the colonial rule and apartheid, The Namibian tries to magnify them deliberately ignoring the real causes of Namibia’s underdevelopment. But I have the duty, and will do so to respond to the infamous attack to the memory of Fidel Castro in The Namibian editorial. There the author repeats the usual dirty campaigns prepared during decades by the US government and its allies about the supposed violations of human rights in Cuba and the existence of a Castro dictatorship. It is not an innocent coincidence that such attacks coincide with the upcoming International Day of Human Rights in which the biggest violators of human rights in the world, using their control of the so-called free western media, promote by all means attacks against countries and leaders that oppose their neo-colonial programs to continue their exploitation, accusing them of violations of humans rights. The Namibian newspaper joins them using this editorial. The Namibian also mentions that human rights violations exist in Cuba but ignores deliberately that the economic, financial and economic blockade imposed by the US on Cuba during more than 54 years is genocide and the most outstanding violation of the human rights of a whole people as denounced on more than 24 occasions by the UN General Assembly. It additionally ignores that in spite of Cuba’s denouncings and resolutions promoted in the Council of Human Rights in Geneva, a portion of Cuban territory, Guantanamo Bay, has been occupied by the US against our will and converted into a humiliating centre of torture, the only place on Cuban soil where violations of human rights are committed. The newspaper also prefers to ignore that in the United Nations Human Rights Council all states are submitted to a global evaluation and Cuba has passed it several times and is positively recognized for its efforts and results in human rights. They ignore that Cuba was re-elected precisely this year as one of the 47 members of the United Nations Humans Right Council with the vote of the majority of the states of the UN. How is it possible for Cuba to be elected if it is a violator of human rights? The Namibian lies bluntly when saying that the Cuban professionals in Namibia have no access to their passports because they are confiscated upon arrival and returned only when going back to Cuba. All Cubans working in Namibia have their documents with them. Can The Namibian really prove the contrary? Also the editorial adds that their salaries “are stripped to the minimum” and also something incredible “that they are not permitted to choose what life to live and where to live it.” Each one of the Cuban professionals receives an adequate income and is provided by the ministry of health or by other Namibian institutions. Comfortable residences with the necessary equipment, health care attention and transport according with the agreements signed by both governments. In addition their salaries in Cuba are paid every single month that they are away. Of course all of them come to support Namibia’s needs and they have to work where the Namibian institutions contract them. They are not here as tourists, they are here to support a sisterly country. Human rights are indivisibles. Even the Pope proclaims it. But the former colonizers and the imperialists that through the international financial institutions demand the reduction of the health and education programs to grant a loan, do not want to admit that access to education, health care, to food and to work are part of human rights and only insist on the so-called civilian rights. The Namibian may continue writing its usual lies and try to distort the reality but it will never mislead the Namibian people who know very well why they enjoy forever the real human rights that Fidel conquered for them and the infinite love he won among us. For that minority of selfish rich people in the world who possess more money than billions of human beings put together, Fidel may be seen as a dictator because he decided to share his life with the poor people of earth. How is it possible that a dictator as alleged by imperialist propaganda supported by The Namibian newspaper could receive such enormous and spontaneous expressions of love from his people, from the African, Latin-American, Asian and other peoples of the world? * Giraldo Mazola is Cuban Ambassador to Namibia. 2016-12-09Staff Report 2
