Cuba says its territory will never be used by terrorists

Cuba says its territory will never be used by terrorists

Cuban Newsleter

Cuba strongly stated on Thursday May 1 that its territory has never been used and will never be used to shelter terrorists of any origin or to organize, finance or perpetrate acts of terrorism.

A declaration from the Cuban Foreign Ministry demands that Cuba be excluded for good from the “black list” of countries that sponsor terrorism, which Washington publishes every year and which Havana describes as "spurious, unilateral and arbitrary".

It is an affront to the Cuban people and it discredits its own government, says the document.

DECLARATION

The Cuban Foreign Ministry strongly rejects on Thursday May 1 the manipulation of such a sensitive issue as international terrorism and the attempt to turn it into an instrument of the policy against Cuba. The ministry demands that our country be excluded for good from that spurious, unilateral and arbitrary black list of “terrorist countries” that is an affront to the Cuban people and discredits the very Government of the United States.

On April 30, the U.S. Department of State published its Country Reports on Terrorism 2013, which included the absurd designation of Cuba as a "State Sponsor of Terrorism" for the thirtieth time.

However, the Department of State has no other choice but to acknowledge in its own report that "throughout 2013, the Government of Cuba supported and hosted negotiations between the FARC and the Government of Colombia aimed at brokering a peace agreement between the two", and that "there was no indication that the Cuban government provided weapons or paramilitary training to terrorist groups" or that "ETA members in Cuba were relocated with the cooperation of the Spanish government".

But even so, considerations of a political nature and the need to justify at all cost the blockade, which has failed and has been unanimously rejected by the international community, prevail over rationality once again.

As the only pretext to support that slanderous accusation against Cuba, the Department of State claims the presence in our country of "fugitives" from U.S. justice, none of whom, it is worth clarifying, has been accused of terrorism. Some of these citizens have been granted asylum legitimately, while others who committed crimes in the United States were fairly tried and sentenced, and decided to reside in Cuba after serving their sentences.

The Cuban Government makes it very clear that the national territory has never been used and will never be used to shelter terrorists of any origin, or to organize, finance or perpetrate acts of terrorism against any country in the world, including the United States. Likewise, it rejects and condemns unequivocally all acts of terrorism, anywhere, under any circumstances and whatever their motivations may be.

It is the Government of the United States that uses State terrorism as a weapon against countries that oppose its domination, uses reprehensible methods such as torture and uses advanced military technology, including unmanned planes, to execute alleged terrorists out of court, including U.S. citizens, and has also killed many innocent people among the civilian population.

Cuba is one of those countries that, for defending its independence and dignity, has suffered for decades the consequences of terrorist acts — organized, funded and carried out from U.S.

territory — resulting in 3,478 deaths and 2,009 disabled people.

Cuba, Latin America, the Caribbean and the world will never forget that it is the U.S. Government that continues sheltering terrorists of Cuban origin, like Luis Posada Carriles, the brain behind the first terrorist attack on civil aviation in the Western Hemisphere, which caused the explosion in midair of a Cubana de Aviacion plane off the coast of Barbados on October 6, 1976, and killed all 73 passengers. Paradoxically, it has unjustly held the Cuban antiterrorist fighters Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino and Antonio Guerrero in prison for many years, for crimes that they did not commit.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry strongly rejects the manipulation of such a sensitive issue as international terrorism and the attempt to turn it into an instrument of the policy against Cuba. It demands that our country be excluded for good from that spurious, unilateral and arbitrary black list that is an affront to the Cuban people and discredits the very Government of the United
States.

Ends

© Scoop Media