EDITORIAL: All Rights for All

Today we are celebrating the Human Rights Day and Cuba has reasons to celebrate as well. Of course, there are challenges to face on this issue (there will always be in a context of a dynamic society), but there are also achievements. Some enemies of the Revolution aim to use that date to their benefits in their propaganda campaigns. They will say, as every year, that Cuba is a nation that customarily violates human rights. They look at where they are ordered to look at. They repeat what they are told to say. It is biased and selfish approach.

But Cuba, a country besieged for decades, respects human rights that in some cases, may become referents for some other governments that infringe them. Starting precisely with the U.S., a country imposing the longest-ever blockade on a whole people. It is eye-popping that government’s double standard: punishing the allegedly violations of human rights with the greatest action of disrespect for them. The economic, financial, and commercial blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba is the greatest act of aggression against the human rights of the Cuban people. There is no pretext to implement it.

Simplifying the broad spectrum of ramifications of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights to a very controversial and perfectly debatable vision from a few articles is a strategy used over and over by certain people in power. The goal is to discredit and erode projects that do not match with theirs. Cuba has been one of the victims of these politics.

The U.S. government would better revise their own history in this regard. There is no moral authority to impose standards.

Anyway, Cuba has the right to debate, with no foreign meddling, its own model. The debate shall be among Cubans, whose limits are clearly set by the unanimous decision to preserve our sovereignty and national dignity.

A lot more can be done here in Cuba to foster the full respect to human rights. And we actually do. A new, revolutionary Family Code is being discussed now. All rights for all: is the slogan that stands behind it. The idea is to embrace human rights in its broadest and comprehensive concept. It is all about this.

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff