SPECIAL EDITION FROM RADIO HAVANA CUBA Wednesday, November 5, 1997 E-mail: rhc@radiohc.org http://www.radiohc.org ADDRESS BY RICARDO ALARCON, SPEAKER OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PEOPLE'S POWER, TO THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY. NOVEMBER 5, 1997. Mr. Chairman: For six years now, the General Assembly has been analyzing the need to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade the United States imposes on Cuba. Five resolutions have been adopted by the vast majority of this Assembly, but the United States has ignored them and has not ceased to take measures to strengthen the blockade and to add new violations to the sovereignty of other nations. The arrogance and cynicism of that policy cannot be matched. In 1991, when the issue was considered for the first time, Washington went as far as to say that the blockade did not exist. On August 21 of that year, in an official document which was distributed here, the State Department was brazen enough to state that: "A blockade implies that the United States is taking measures to prevent other countries from trading with Cuba. Clearly, this is not the case." The truth is that by that date the United States had been taking measures to prevent trade between Cuba and other countries for more than thirty years, that, to achieve this, it had established mechanisms and regulations and had taken illegal and interfering actions that on many occasions had brought forth the protests and the legitimate countermeasures of other countries. In 1992, the General Assembly adopted its first Resolution demanding the end of the blockade. That same year, Washington had enacted the Torricelli Act, which specifically forbids the subsidiary enterprises of American companies in other countries to trade with Cuba and prohibits the entrance to U.S. ports of ships of any flag involved in trade with Cuba. In other words, it does not only try to prevent trade between Cuba and other countries, but also violates the sovereignty of those countries. The inadmissible extraterritoriality contained from the very beginning in its administrative regulations and its officials' actions took on the character of a law, spurious in itself. Every year since then, this Assembly reiterates its rejection to that policy, which is not only the worst crime against my people, and which does not limit itself to grossly violating international standards, it is also an evident display of the most glaring disrespect for the rights, the interests and feelings of humanity, including broad sectors of the United States itself. In support of its conduct, Washington cannot cite a single intergovernmental, religious or trade-union organization. No other government, parliament or political party endorses it. No institution, no decent person in any part of the planet advocates it. The number and the diversity of those who all over the world demand that it should stop grow, also the religious institutions, the entrepreneurs and the personalities who in the United States itself are joining the universal protest. But Washington's reply cannot be more obdurate. In 1996, as if out of the Stone Age, emerged the Helms-Burton Act. Its infamous text denies Cuba's independence and overtly proclaims the intention of dominating it totally, reviving the annexation plans of almost two centuries ago. This act codes all the regulations and practices that the world has been rejecting for three decades now and includes new and more unsound ones to the prejudice of international legality and of the legitimate rights of other states, their enterprises and citizens. We arrive at 1997 under circumstances which oblige the international community to act more energetically, more consistently. Since passing the Helms-Burton Act, the United States has been practicing the most grotesque farce. It is trying to implement a machination which it knows is irrational and indefensible. In the face of international rejection, it begins negotiations and makes commitments it does not plan to comply with. Lacking true leadership, its rulers acknowledge that they are serving only the vile interests of a small group and want the rest of the world to follow suit. Only a few weeks ago, President Clinton, who is supposedly the leader of a superpower, admitted that that policy is the responsibility of the most extremist elements in the city of Miami. Sorry task, that of the representatives of sovereign states, who try to negotiate seriously with those who gleefully accept falling prey to a municipal mafia. And this is confirmed by facts. They announced with great fanfare the understanding signed with the European Union last April 11, but they have done nothing to honor it. On that occasion they committed themselves to trying to bring about some minor modifications to the aforesaid Law, but until now, nothing has been done is this respect. On the contrary, in the course of this year, many amendments and other proposals that would make the Law more inadmissible have been put forward in Congress, some of them directly opposing that understanding and others attempting to universalize the measures originally conceived for Cuba. Obviously, Cuba is not part of the negotiations that, it is stated, are taking place in relation to that Law and its implementation. We only know what sometimes leaks out to the press. We must, nevertheless, make certain clarifications. U.S. hostility toward Cuba, including its first actions in the economic war it imposes on us, began before the nationalizations carried out by the Cuban Revolution. Furthermore, these nationalizations were conducted in compliance with international law and with our own legislation, had the support of all of the people, did not have an arbitrary or discriminatory character and answered to great needs and the most legitimate interest of our country. The legitimacy of those nationalizations was acknowledged by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1964, in a memorable decision in which it reiterated: "Every sovereign State is obliged to respect the independence of each of the other sovereign States, and the courts of a country must not judge the government actions of another country performed within its own territory". Our laws contemplated a proper, fair compensation for the former owners, regardless of their nationality, and those laws were strictly applied and are still in force. Based on those laws, the matter was successfully solved with the other States involved. The United States was the only exception, and this has been the exclusive responsibility of its rulers and of no one else. Washington has no right to place on other people's shoulders a problem which only exists thanks to its blind obstinacy. As a matter of fact, the U.S. blockade against Cuba was not contrived to defend the interests of the former U.S. owners. If this had been the case, they would have accepted our sovereignty and our laws as all the other States did, and as the United States did with socialist countries or countries it considers as enemies, including states whose existence it did not recognize. Maintaining the blockade for more than 30 years, far from favoring those former owners, has harmed them. Its intensification now, with the new Law, directly turns them into victims of those who allegedly represented their interests. All one has to do is read the Helms-Burton Act to realize in whose benefit it was conceived, who were the "proprietors" who drafted it. Besides setting up a plan for the colonial absorption of Cuba, and seriously working against the rights of other states, it introduces an element which radically changes even the United States' traditional position, makes it particularly abhorrent for the Cuban people and should bring about the strongest rejection from the other states and from the U.S. entrepreneur themselves who are affected by it. Washington's new position is no longer the alleged defense of those people who were U.S. citizens when the nationalization laws were enacted in Cuba and who were not compensated --as provided for by our own laws-- as a result of its government's conduct. Washington confers nonexistent prerogatives on people who were Cuban when they were affected by our nationalization laws. This arbitrary equalizer constitutes a juridical absurdity, contradicts universal and American standards and violates the United States' Constitution by conceding a special group of its citizens privileges which it does not concede the rest. It must be said that they have already been granted a unique advantage by being permitted to reimburse by way of tax reductions the alleged value of the property that was nationalized before they had even obtained the U.S. residence. It is a privilege that no one else has received in the history of the United States and that has turned the other taxpayers into their tributaries for several decades now. How many times over have they collected the value of those properties? What are they still claiming for? But Washington's new stance goes even further: Batista's clique, his band of killers and torturers, of thieves and yes-men, who illegally grew rich during the bloody regime that started to crumble on January 1st, 1959, are the main beneficiaries of this infamous deed. That date, incessantly repeated throughout the text, is the key to understanding the unfathomable moral abyss and the juridical idiocy of the Helms-Burton Act. According to it, the fierce blockade they impose on us will continue until we Cubans "return" the properties to those who lost them on January 1st, 1959, and the other states and their own subjects will be punished if they establish economic links with those properties. It behooves us to make certain historical clarifications. The first revolutionary Cuban law which entailed nationalization was the Agrarian Reform Law, enacted on May 17, 1959. No revolutionary law was passed on January 1st, 1959. On January 1st, 1959, the Cuban Revolution had not yet conquered power. It was still confronting the U.S. attempts to save the old regime, and, in order to prevent this, the people, convoked by Fidel Castro, began a general strike which brought victory a few days later. What actually occurred that day was Batista's flight and that of his main collaborators and their replacement by a military junta who was trying to prevent the people's complete triumph. The fugitives had plundered the treasury and left behind, abandoned, lands, factories and other enterprises which they had illegally taken over through the abuse of power, theft and oftentimes through the use of violence. That band of criminals was described by the New York Times in an editorial of January 3, 1959 as: "sadists and crooks in high positions and in the business world, who had fatten by graft and corruption". Those bandits, who totally controlled illegal gambling and the racket of prostitution, also took over the state resources, and became the owners of numerous farms and urban lands, of sugar mills, banks and financial institutions, of almost all of the textile, chemical, steel and construction industries. The expropriation of those illegally acquired assets-- actually their recovery by the nation-- was an act of justice absolutely endorsed by all of Cuban society without exception. There were no protests or complaints by any foreign government then. The United States welcomed those people, protected them and turned them, to this day, into its main instrument against the Cuban Revolution. Washington now openly proclaims with shameless brazenness its identification with a tyranny which existed thanks to its support in all fields. But to force the world to also do this is, to say the least, a despicable aberration. To try to protect such criminals with "property rights" is an offense to human dignity, an insult to honest entrepreneurs. To condition the solution of the bilateral differences between Cuba and the United States to this is also to sacrifice the legitimate interests of the U.S. people and enterprises. Mr. Chairman: It urges to put an end to U.S. arbitrariness. While it is true that this arbitrariness reaches its greatest intensity against Cuba, which the United States is trying to smother with a total blockade, the economic sanctions that Washington unilaterally imposes on other countries are multiplying at present. According to data published by the National Association of Manufacturers of this country, from 1993 to 1996, the United States has imposed 61 economic sanctions against 35 countries. In addition, there are 40 similar measures dictated against 18 countries by state and local governments. Currently, 42% of the world population lives in countries who suffer from this practice contrary to the world trade system. How far will this policy which attacks everyone go? How long must we put up with it? My delegation trusts in the world's ability to confront it. The vote of this Assembly will serve to confirm, once again, that there are many who are willing to defend the principles of justice and of respect among nations. The Cuban people shall continue to resist and shall never yield to the barbarous forces which try to annihilate it. We are facing a big challenge, but even greater than this is and shall be our will to preserve the independence and justice conquered through many years of struggle and the immense sacrifice of successive Cuban generations. No one can take away from us Cubans our houses, our lands, our factories, our schools, our hospitals. No one shall despoil us of our properties or our rights. The executioners and exploiters, definitely and forever defeated, shall never return. Cuba is not and shall never be a colonial possession of the United States. Next year, it will be a century since the U.S. military invasion robbed Cuba of its independence and imposed a domination that ended once and for all in January 1959. Those in Washington who are still delirious with their imperial dreams should realize that it is high time that they wake up. * [c] 1997. Radio Habana Cuba All rights reserved Articles cannot be reproduced, reprinted or published in any system without the consent of RHC. This prohibition includes the distribution of this material via Usenet News, "bulletin board" services, e-mail lists, print media, radio and television. For the complete RADIO HAVANA CUBA NEWSCAST and other features, please write for our daily broadcast schedule. We welcome your comments and suggestions. 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