The United Nations General Assembly suspended Russia from the Human Rights Council after a vote this Thursday in which 93 countries supported the resolution, 58 abstained and 24 opposed the exclusion, including Cuba.
However, the Cuban population agreed to the measure, agreed three interviews by Radio Television Martí.
“The parallelism between the Cuban tyranny, the Russian dictatorship and the invasion of Ukraine is striking. There is great solidarity of the Cuban people with the Ukrainian people, with the Ukrainian government and a great admiration for Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and this is reflected in the constant reference to the desire, the value of Ukrainians,” emphasized the literary researcher and historian Julio Aleaga Pesant, resident in the Cuban capital.
“But what is striking is that the Cuban government, along with 23 other tyrannies, opposed the resolution. It is the Communist Party government’s incomprehensible targeting of Russia, because I do not believe that Russia is capable of pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for the Cuban government; and it shows the disconnect between what the people are striving for, peace, democracy, freedom, and what the regime, which definitely thinks like a tyrant, is striving for,” he stressed.
Aleaga recalled that “many compatriots” would support the possibility of removing Cuba from the Human Rights Council.
“The point is that international diplomatic politics is much more complex. In the Russian case, because it has committed serious crimes against humanity, genocide, and although we would be willing to present a proposal to condemn the Cuban government for human rights violations, for more than a thousand political prisoners, for convictions of peaceful July 11 protesters, because they kidnapped people who have no freedom of movement within the country or abroad.”
“But to reach a consensus like the one against Russia is a difficult thing. We should consider that the only country that was expelled from the Human Rights Council before Russia was Libya, the Libya of Muammar Gaddafi, the medieval tyranny that existed in that country,” Aleaga stressed.
The General Assembly issued its decision just after the attacks on civilians in Bucha were exposed, after the withdrawal of the Russian army.
Cuban activist Rosa María Payá, president of Cuba Decide, said from Geneva, Switzerland, that behind Russia there is an urgent need to exclude Cuba and other dictatorships.
“We know that it is very difficult, practically impossible, for the General Assembly to vote to remove Cuba and the other violators, but given the scale of the crimes that the regime has committed and continues to commit internally, it is logical to do so ask the island,” he claimed.
The initiative “is a victory, and it is very positive that the General Assembly has voted for Russia to leave a place it should never be, nor the Cuban dictatorship, which is its closest and most strategic ally in America, with which they strengthened a military accord and heard from those of us who have direct support for the demands [Vladimir] Putin, the criticism of NATO, the systematic violation of human rights and the use of state terrorism against Cubans,” he said.
“Therefore, it is simply elementary that after Russia, the Cuban dictatorship of this council must go, as well as the dictatorships that belong to it and that have made this council a body without any effectiveness and without content beyond the protection of international criminals the exercise dictatorial power in the world,” Payá stressed.
For his part, independent Havana journalist Boris González Arenas praised the decision to separate Russia from the UN entity.
“Another phenomenon to be welcomed is that two-thirds of the members of the United Nations have agreed to remove this state from this body, where it in no way deserves it, due to the horrific aggression and the amount of crime that is going on in the Ukraine committed,” he said.
“Obviously it sets an enormous precedent for the rest of the tyrannies that are part of the Council that this makes them aware that their chair is not safe because the decent countries of the world order are willing to meet and exclude them from the bodies , where they don’t deserve you to be.
“Once again, Cuba is voting for the invasion of Ukraine, for the systematic and planned annihilation of the Ukrainian population, and among the abstentions, it is sad to see that Mexico and Brazil are not taking a more resolute stance,” González Arenas said.