Radio Havana Cuba-19 December 2001 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Radio Havana Cuba - News Update - 19 December 2001 . *GROWING INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT IN SOLIDARITY WITH MIAMI 5 PRISONERS *CUBAN PARLIAMENT DISCUSSES REPORT ON EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS *CUBA STRONGLY CONDEMNS CHILD ABUSE AND SEXUAL EXPLOITATION *HUMBOLDT NATIONAL PARK PROCLAIMED WORLD HERITAGE SITE BY UNESCO *ABU-JAMAL SUPPORTERS APPLAUD OVERTURNING DEATH SENTENCE, DEMAND HIS RELEASE *FOOD RIOTS CONTINUE TO SPREAD IN ARGENTINA *UNICEF CALLS FOR INTERNET CENSORSHIP AGAINST CHILD PORNOGRAPHY *INDIANS SLAM USA FOR URGING RESTRAINT IN REPRISALS AGAINST PAKISTAN *NEW CONCERNS THAT BUSH PLANS END-RUN AROUND CONGRESS ON NOMINATIONS Viewpoint: *HISTORY WILL ABSOLVE THEM *BUSH WILL NEGOTIATE FTAA USING A "FAST TRACK" WITH STRICT SPEED LIMITS . *GROWING INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT IN SOLIDARITY WITH MIAMI 5 PRISONERS New York, December 19 (RHC)-- The movement in solidarity with five Cuban patriots imprisoned in Miami is growing around the world. Committees to Free the Five have been organized and demonstrations are taking place in numerous cities of the United States, France, Italy, Spain, Ecuador and Australia. Speaking to demonstrators in front of the Manhattan Federal Building on Monday, Reverend Lucius Walker -- Executive Director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) and Pastors for Peace -- said that it was a travesty of justice to imprison those who were fighting against terrorism. Another speaker at the rally and informational picket in New York, Teresa Rodriguez from the International Action Center, noted that criminals like Orlando Bosch are freely walking the streets of Miami. Bosch was the mastermind of the sabotage bombing of a Cubana airliner in October 1976, killing all 73 passengers aboard. During an event at a downtown Miami hotel to honor relatives of the five Cuban political prisoners, speakers also addressed the issue of terrorism. Max Lesnick -- one of the organizers of the event, along with the Antonio Maceo Brigade and other groups opposed to Washington's policies against Cuba -- said that those who plant bombs in Havana are ironically called "heroes" and "patriots" by Miami's right-wing Cuban-American community. Lesnick affirmed that the true heroes and patriots are behind bars -- convicted and sentenced to long prison terms for trying to stop terrorist actions against their country. *CUBAN PARLIAMENT DISCUSSES REPORT ON EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS Havana, December 19 (RHC)-- Cuban Minister of Education Luis Ignacio Gomez presented an extensive report to the National Assembly of Peoples Power on the educational programs undertaken by the Cuban Revolution. Lawmakers, meeting at Havana's International Convention Center, analyzed and discussed the report -- dealing with audiovisual programs, teacher's training courses and investigative studies. The island's minister of education emphasized that there have been significant advances over the past year in the areas of school materials and supplies, as well as actions to raise the level of classroom quality. The report noted that while there are still problems with an insufficient quantity of textbooks and other supplies, distribution has greatly improved in recent months. Following the report on education and a wide-ranging discussion, Cuban lawmakers heard from the head of the Sugar Ministry, Ulises Rosales del Toro. The detailed report pointed to changes in the style and methods of work since the last sugarcane harvest -- expressing optimism that "la zafra," or the harvest, will soon reestablish itself as a solid economic base. *CUBA STRONGLY CONDEMNS CHILD ABUSE AND SEXUAL EXPLOITATION Yokohama, December 19 (RHC)-- During the Second World Congress Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, underway in the Japanese city of Yokohama, Cuba strongly condemned the commercial use and sexual abuse of children. The head of Cuba's delegation to the congress, Vilma Espin, called on all countries of the world to guarantee the rights of children -- including the right to health care, education, protection and love. Speaking before more than 3000 delegates from 138 countries, Vilma Espin pointed to the efforts being made in Cuba to provide adequate care for its youngest citizens. As an example, she noted that in Cuba, 98 percent of those under the age of 14 are in school. She also pointed to the low rate of infant mortality, as well as health and social programs put into place by the Cuban Revolution. During the inaugural address of the Second World Congress Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, the Executive Director of UNICEF, Carol Bellamy, said that governments must take the primary role in the fight against the sexual exploitation of children. Bellamy specifically mentioned Cuba, noting that Havana was one of the first countries to ratify a special UN protocol against child prostitution and pornography. *HUMBOLDT NATIONAL PARK PROCLAIMED WORLD HERITAGE SITE BY UNESCO Havana, December 19 (RHC)-- Cuba's Humboldt National Park, located between the eastern provinces of Holguin and Guantanamo, has been proclaimed a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The decision, made during a meeting of UNESCO's World Heritage Committee in Helsinki, was based on the unique, hard-to-find flora and fauna of the site, which makes the park an excellent model of Caribbean bio-diversity. Marta Arjona, President of the Cuban Culture Ministry's National Heritage Council and a member of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, said Cuban authorities were praised for their interest in preserving each and every species in the park. The proclamation of Humboldt National Park as a World Heritage Site allows for more coordinated international efforts to protect and preserve existing resources at the park, in order that its beauty can be appreciated by generations to come. The Humboldt National Park has now been added to a list of other UNESCO-proclaimed World Heritage sites in Cuba. Among them: Old Havana and its fortifications, central Trinidad City, the San Pedro de la Cabana fortress, the Villages of Viñales and Valle de los Ingenios or Sugar Mills Village and the Granma Yacht Landing Park located at the Sierra Maestra mountain range. *ABU-JAMAL SUPPORTERS APPLAUD OVERTURNING DEATH SENTENCE, DEMAND HIS RELEASE Philadelphia, Paris, December 19 (RHC) -- A US federal court decision overturning a death sentence against African-American political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal has drawn criticism from his supporters who say he was a victim of a corrupt and racist judicial system and should be set free. US District Judge William Yohn, while overturning the death sentence and ordering another sentencing hearing, refused to grant Abu-Jamal another trial. Yohn said his ruling was based on erroneous instructions given to jurors concerning the consideration of mitigating and aggravating circumstances when deciding on a death penalty verdict, in violation of a 1988 Supreme Court ruling. But Pam Africa, leader of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, said the judge has sufficient factual evidence on trial proceeding irregularities to release the death row prisoner. Numerous pieces of evidence hves surfaced over the past 20 years concerning the police coercion of witnesses and the withholding of evidence. Several witnesses changed their stories, Abu-Jamal was not permitted to defend himself and was instead given a court-appointed lawyer with no interest in the case and no experience in capital punishment trials. Prosecutors used against him his political writings as a member of the Black Panther Party, something that the Supreme Court had ruled against in another case. The state trial proceedings were also presided over by Judge Albert Sabo, a member of the Philadelphia Order of Police who is widely called the hanging judge. Sabo has sentenced to death more, mostly African-Americans, than any other sitting judge. The prosecution was also unable to positively trace the bullet that killed a Philadelphia police officer to the legally registered gun in Abu-Jamal's possession. Larry Frankel, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Philadelphia, said the ruling reinforces concerns about the fairness of the process in Pennsylvania's state court system. Human rights activists in France, grouped in the organization Together Against the Death Penalty, stated that the ruling is positive because it should save Abu-Jamal's life, but that it still doesn't establish the truth about the racism that permeated his first trial. Mumia's case, and his writings on the deep-seated racism in the US judicial system, have attracted supporters around the world. Local government authorities in Paris recently granted him honorary citizenship of that French city. *FOOD RIOTS CONTINUE TO SPREAD IN ARGENTINA Buenos Aires, December 19 (RHC) -- Food riots have continued to spread in Argentina, in what are being called the worst such disturbances of this type in more than a decade. TV news footage showed hundreds of people looting supermarkets in Concepcion del Uruguay, in Entre Rios province - and other cities - as police stood by and watched. But in other food riots police used force to disperse looters, as occurred in several suburbs on the outskirts of the capital, Buenos Aires, where some forty supermarkets and grocery stores were broken into and emptied. Sporadic looting began last Friday in several Argentinean cities, gradually spreading and threatening to lead to a nationwide social explosion amid Argentina's dramatic economic crisis. At the same time, police in the provincial capital Cordoba clashed with angry city workers who virtually destroyed municipal headquarters while protesting layoffs and delays in payments of their salaries. An undetermined number of people were wounded and arrested as police firing tear gas and rubber bullets were met with a shower of rocks and small homemade bombs. Cordoba Governor Jose Manuel de la Sota stated that Argentina is not only a ship with no life jackets that is sinking, but also one in which the captain doesn't know to plug up the hole through which it's taking on water. He said there has never been such a lack of authority or such anarchy. Opposition Senator Eduardo Duhalde stated that this situation is the logical consequence of an economic model that has led to the brutal impoverishment of the population. In related news, Argentinean President Fernando de la Rua was insulted and targeted with eggs and rocks as he entered and as he left a social emergency gathering called by the Catholic Church. De la Rua was called a thief and worse as his visibly nervous bodyguards rushed him into the building and rushed him out when the meeting was over, speeding away as the rocks and eggs thrown by the crowd on the street and people on their balconies pounded his automobile. Political, business and labor leaders participated in the meeting, where the Argentinean president reportedly defended his Economy Minister, Domingo Cavallo, who came under fire from diverse sectors. During the gathering, one ruling party legislator reportedly called for a national salvation government with a cabinet chief elected by Congress to put in place a new economic plan. *UNICEF CALLS FOR INTERNET CENSORSHIP AGAINST CHILD PORNOGRAPHY Tokyo, December 19 (RHC) -- The United Nations Children's Fund has called for greater censorship of the internet to combat the explosion of child pornography sites on the world wide web. Participating in the Second World Congress Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children - taking place near Tokyo - UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy said concerns about freedom of expression should take a back seat to the urgent need to protect minors from child porn sites that are a breeding ground for international pedophile rings. Bellamy said there is no need for a philosophical discussion when it comes to child pornography, that there has to be control of what is available on the internet. During Tuesday's workshops at the congress, delegates called for the establishment of a new international organization to pursue child pornographers across the borderless internet, whose growth, they added, has far outpaced police and legal powers. Delegate John Carr, of the Bangkok-based End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes - an international network of groups - stated that that the internet has internationalized and expanded the trade in child pornography in a way that was simply unimaginable as little as six year ago. Carr said that while child pornography explodes, Interpol is hard pressed to find more than 20 or so countries in the world with the personnel and the technical capacity to participate in the coordinated hi-tech action that these crimes demand. During the first congress on the sexual exploitation of children, held in Stockholm, 1996, Japan was identified as the world's biggest producer of child pornography. By while Tokyo is still a hub of the trade, since Japan enacted legislation on child pornography in 1999, it has been overtaken by Russia, Cyprus, Taiwan and the United States. According to a recent study by Interpol, the United States is now the main source of websites offering sexual images of minors. American producers are said to have filmed a million children, generating an industry reported to be worth two to three billion dollars a year. *INDIANS SLAM USA FOR URGING RESTRAINT IN REPRISALS AGAINST PAKISTAN New Delhi, December 19 (RHC) -- Many legislators in India Wednesday slammed the United States government for urging restraint in the conflict with Pakistan, asking why is Washington as supportive of India's concerns about terrorism as India was in backing the US's war in Afghanistan. Said to be caught in the cross-currents, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government is under intense pressure to choose a course of action following last week's terrorist attack against the Indian parliament that New Delhi says was organized by Pakistani intelligence services. India has blamed the organizations Army of the Pious and Soldiers of Muhammad, two Pakistani-based groups involved in an armed insurrection by Muslim militants to drive India out of Kashmir - a disputed Himalayan region claimed by both countries. The two groups are among several Muslim organizations fighting in Kashmir with Pakistan's support, which, charges New Delhi, includes providing them with weapons and training to carry out cross-border terrorism. One controversial option Indian authorities are considering is sending security forces across the border and striking at the training camps in Pakistan, which surveys indicate is supported by 85 percent of the population. But such strikes could easily escalate into a full-blown war between the two nuclear-armed rivals. *NEW CONCERNS THAT BUSH PLANS END-RUN AROUND CONGRESS ON NOMINATIONS Washington, December 19 (RHC) -- Rumors are again afloat the President George W. Bush may act on his own to install controversial nominees at the Labor and State Departments if the Democratic Senate refuses to vote on them this week. Quoting anonymous administration officials, Associated Press White House correspondent Ron Fournier reported Tuesday that Bush is exploring ways to give Otto Reich and Eugene Scalia temporary appointments during Congress' end-of-the-year recess. Reich, Bush's choice for secretary of Western Hemisphere Affairs, was accused as an official of the Ronald Reagan administration of running an illegal, covert domestic propaganda effort against Nicaragua's Sandinista government and in favor of the Contra rebels. Scalia's father, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, voted against Vice President Al Gore in the case that determined the 2000 presidential election. Under the Constitution, the president has the right to make a one-year appointment bypassing the usual confirmation proceedings, but Democrats controlling the Senate are reportedly considering skipping the recess, citing the war on terrorism, to block Bush's plan. According to observers, a recess appointment, which would inflame relations with Senate Democrats, would reflect the Bush administration's determination to make aggressive use of all presidential powers - as has been his tendency since he assumed office. Viewpoint: *HISTORY WILL ABSOLVE THEM The Dreyfus affair that rocked the national conscience of France at the end of the 19th century, involved the set-up and sentencing of a young French officer, Alfred Dreyfus, to life imprisonment for purportedly passing along secret documents to the German embassy in Paris. The entire process of accusation, arrest and conviction became a national and international scandal in which the renowned writer, Emile Zola, wrote his famous condemnation of the affair, entitled "J'Accuse", in which he proved that racism and politics underlined the arrest of Dreyfus and that his innocence could not and would not be covered up forever. One hundred years later five young men were similarly railroaded in a politically charged case in which they were falsely accused of spying against the United States. Their conviction for conspiring to penetrate US military installations and failing to register as foreign agents was, as with the Dreyfus case, rife with injustice and hypocrisy. "This accusation of espionage is possibly one of the most ridiculous in the history of the US" said Gerardo González before a Miami court that moments later condemned him to life imprisonment. He and his colleagues had attempted to infiltrate Cuban-American organizations engaged in perpetrating terrorist acts against Cuba such as the 1997 hotel bombings in Havana that resulted in the death of a young Italian tourist. Ramón Labañino, also sentenced to life, commented in court that Cuba didn't go to the United States to invade, attack and commit terrorist acts of all types - as is the case vice versa. "On the contrary", he added, "Cuba has every right to defend itself, which is what we were doing without harming anybody". Where in the US mainstream press are questions raised as to the impropriety and hypocrisy of condemning these five Cubans when in the name of combating the very same type of terrorism that these men were fighting, the US Congress has given the green light to the CIA to strengthen its spy network to protect their nation? The whole case was a political vendetta organized by the Miami right wing with its obsessive hatred against Cuba and its socialist form of government. To have held the trial in Miami with, incredibly, well-known Cuban-American terrorists sitting and smiling like Cheshire cats in the courtroom was a disgusting travesty of justice. Referring to the almost 3,000 Cubans killed in terrorists attacks since the beginning of the Revolution, René González, who was sentenced to 15 years, said "We are a people that chose our own path and have been able to defend it with success - although at enormous sacrifice". Rather than take satisfaction in the brutality of the sentences handed down to Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, René González, Fernando González, (who received 19 years) and Antonio Guerrero (who has yet to be sentenced), the Miami right-wing should reflect that their twisted cause will simply go down in history as one of ignominy and viciousness. The French War Minister, General Mercier, who for political reasons sought to ensure Dreyfus' conviction, was denounced at the time and subsequently by history as a liar, hypocrite and brute. Similar words have been used and will be used in the annals of history relating to the conduct of those who used political expediency to destroy the lives of five men whose only crime was to seek to protect those they loved. *BUSH WILL NEGOTIATE FTAA USING A "FAST TRACK" WITH STRICT SPEED LIMITS In yet another demonstration that after September 11th relations with Latin America are no longer a priority for Washington, the U.S. Congress has conceded George Bush the right to negotiate Free Trade Area of the Americas treaties. However, the president will be working under serious limitations because the he is excluded from employing the so-called "fast track" in the case of agricultural products. This restriction on the speed of negotiations is of vital importance because it is precisely agricultural products that countries like Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, among others, urgently need to place on the international market, due to the drastic drop in prices over the past few years. Brazil was the first nation to react to the news, announcing that it will not participate in FTAA negotiations under such limitations or it will, at the very least, block the importation of U.S. electronic products. Like Brazil, Latin American governments will discover little by little, if they don't already know it, that Washington's interest in the Free Trade Area of the Americas has nothing to do with its claims that the agreement will generate development and create a commercial block that is both supportive and solid. The truth is that what the White House needs is a region that is completely open to its products; A region that provides low cost fuels and guaranteed offer, as well as job priority for U.S. citizens, rather than Latin Americans. In the area of political relations however, the US government continues looking towards the European Union, Russia and the developed Asian countries rather than Latin America. This is occurring at a time when the region's economies are experiencing a severe crisis caused by a long history of pressures exerted by international financial institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The principal victims have been Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. For the countries of Latin America, which are the presumed beneficiaries of the FTAA, commercial association with the North only serves to emphasize even more the differences in growth and development. That is something that doesn't enter into commercial negotiations but it was constantly referred to in the recently held summit of the Association of Caribbean States in Margarita Island, Venezuela. For example the region's spiraling foreign debt, which now stands at 740 billion dollars, must not be forgotten. That shocking figure represents nearly two times the exports of all Latin America's economies. At the same time unemployment is constantly rising and the flight of capital in the last fiscal year reached nearly 60 billion dollars. In 2001, the average regional economic growth rate will be less than two per cent, compared to the four per cent achieved last year and international trade continues frozen. Faced with such a bleak economic picture it doesn't make sense to insist on negotiating the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which is obviously not the answer to the economic woes of Latin America and the Caribbean. That is graphically illustrated by the great difference in development between the North and South as well as by their different interests. And, if anyone wants more proof, they should simply take another look at the odd "fast track" granted by the U.S. Congress to negotiate the agreements: It's like a freeway with school zone speed limits. Just try and drive on such a speedway. You certainly won't get very far. (c) 2001 Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= rhc-eng-633 2001-Dec-20 03:57:41