Human Rights
Hypocrisy: US Criticizes Cuba
Saturday, 19
March 2016 00:00
By Marjorie
Cohn, Marjorie Cohn's Blog | News Analysis
In advance of
President Barack Obama's historic visit to Cuba on March 20,
there is
speculation about whether he can pressure Cuba to improve its human
rights. But a
comparison of Cuba's human rights record with that of the
United States
shows that the US should be taking lessons from Cuba.
The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights contains two different categories
of human
rights - civil and political rights on the one hand; and economic,
social and
cultural rights on the other.
Civil and
political rights include the rights to life, free expression,
freedom of
religion, fair trial, self-determination; and to be free from
torture, cruel
treatment, and arbitrary detention.
Economic,
social and cultural rights comprise the rights to education,
healthcare,
social security, unemployment insurance, paid maternity leave,
equal pay for
equal work, reduction of infant mortality; prevention,
treatment and
control of diseases; and to form and join unions and strike.
These human
rights are enshrined in two treaties - the International
Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International
Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The United States
has ratified
the ICCPR.
But the US
refuses to ratify the ICESCR. Since the Reagan administration, it
has been US
policy to define human rights only as civil and political
rights.
Economic, social and cultural rights are dismissed as akin to social
welfare, or
socialism.
The US
government criticizes civil and political rights in Cuba while
disregarding
Cubans' superior access to universal housing, health care,
education, and
its guarantee of paid maternity leave and equal pay rates.
Meanwhile, the
US government has committed serious human rights violations
on Cuban soil,
including torture, cruel treatment, and arbitrary detention
at Guantanamo.
And since 1960, the United States has expressly interfered
with Cuba's
economic rights and its right to self-determination through the
economic
embargo.
The US embargo
of Cuba, now a blockade, was initiated by President Dwight D.
Eisenhower
during the Cold War in response to a 1960 memo written by a
senior State
Department official. The memo proposed "a line of action that
makes the
greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to
decrease
monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and the
overthrow of
the [Castro] government."
That goal has
failed, but the punishing blockade has made life difficult in
Cuba. In spite
of that inhumane effort, however, Cuba guarantees its people
a remarkable
panoply of human rights.
Healthcare
Unlike in the
United States, healthcare is considered a right in Cuba.
Universal
healthcare is free to all. Cuba has the highest ratio of doctors
to patients in
the world at 6.7 per 1,000 people. The 2014 infant mortality
rate was 4.2
per 1,000 live births -- one of the lowest in the world.
Healthcare in
Cuba emphasizes prevention, rather than relying only on
medicine,
partly due to the limited access to medicines occasioned by the US
blockade. In
2014, the Lancet Journal said, "If the accomplishments of Cuba
could be
reproduced across a broad range of poor and middle-income countries
the health of
the world's population would be transformed." Cuba has
developed
pioneering medicines to treat and prevent lung cancer, and prevent
diabetic
amputations. Because of the blockade, however, we in the United
States cannot
take advantage of them.
Education
Free education
is a universal right up to and including higher education.
Cuba spends a
larger proportion of its GDP on education than any other
country in the
world. "Mobile teachers" are deployed to homes if children
are unable to
attend school. Many schools provide free morning and
after-school
care for working parents who have no extended family. It is
free to train
to be a doctor in Cuba. There are 22 medical schools in Cuba,
up from only 3
in 1959 before the Cuban Revolution.
Elections
Elections to
Cuba's national parliament (the National Assembly) take place
every five
years and elections to regional Municipal Assemblies every 2.5
years.
Delegates to the National Assembly then elect the Council of State,
which in turn
appoints the Council of Ministers from which the President is
elected.
As of 2018
(the date of the next general election in Cuba), there will be a
limit of no
more than two five-year terms for all senior elected positions,
including the
President. Anyone can be nominated to be a candidate. It is
not required
that one be a member of the Communist Party (CP). No money can
be spent
promoting candidates and no political parties (including the CP)
are permitted
to campaign during elections. Military personnel are not on
duty at
polling stations; school children guard the ballot boxes.
Labor Rights
Cuban law
guarantees the right to voluntarily form and join trade unions.
Unions are
legally independent and financially autonomous, independent of
the CP and the
state, funded by members' subscriptions. Workers' rights
protected by
unions include a written contract, a 40-44-hour week, and 30
days' paid
annual leave in the state sector.
Unions have
the right to stop work they consider dangerous. They have the
right to
participate in company management, to receive management
information,
to office space and materials, and to facility time for
representatives.
Union agreement is required for lay-offs, changes in
patterns of
working hours, overtime, and the annual safety report. Unions
also have a
political role in Cuba and have a constitutional right to be
consulted
about employment law. They also have the right to propose new laws
to the
National Assembly.
Women
Women make up
the majority of Cuban judges, attorneys, lawyers, scientists,
technical
workers, public health workers and professionals. Cuba is ranked
first in Save
the Children's 'Lesser Developed Countries' Mother's Index.
With over 48%
women MPs, Cuba has the third highest percentage of female
parliamentarians
in the world. Women receive 9 months of full salary during
paid maternity
leave, followed by 3 months at 75% of full salary. The
government
subsidizes abortion and family planning, places a high value on
pre-natal
care, and offers 'maternity housing' to women before giving birth.
Life
Expectancy
In 2013, the
World Health Organization listed life expectancy for women in
Cuba at 80;
the figure was 77 for men. The probability of dying between ages
15 and 60
years per 1,000 people in the population was 115 for men and 73
for women in
Cuba.
During the
same period, life expectancy for women in the United States was
81 for women
and 76 for men. The probability of dying between 15 and 60 per
1,000 people
was 128 for men and 76 for women in the United States.
Death Penalty
A study by
Cornell Law School found no one under sentence of death in Cuba
and no one on
death row in October 2015. On December 28, 2010, Cuba's
Supreme Court
commuted the death sentence of Cuba's last remaining death row
inmate, a
Cuban-American convicted of a murder carried out during a 1994
terrorist
invasion of the island. No new death sentences are known to have
been imposed
since that time.
By contrast,
as of January 1, 2016, 2,949 people were on death row in state
facilities in
the United States. And 62 were on federal death row as of
March 16,
2016, according to Death Penalty Information.
Sustainable
Development
In 2016, the
World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a leading global environmental
organization,
found that Cuba was the only country in the world to have
achieved
sustainable development. Jonathan Loh, one of the authors of the
WWF report,
said, "Cuba has reached a good level of development according to
United
Nations' criteria, thanks to its high literacy level and a very high
life
expectancy, while the ecological footprint is not large since it is a
country with
low energy consumption."
Stop Lecturing
Cuba and Lift the Blockade
When Cuba and
the US held talks about human rights a year ago, Pedro Luis
Pedroso, head
of the Cuban delegation, said, "We expressed our concerns
regarding
discrimination and racism patterns in US society, the worsening of
police
brutality, torture acts and extrajudicial executions in the fight on
terror and the
legal limbo of prisoners at the US prison camp in
Guantanamo."
The hypocrisy
of the US government in lecturing Cuba about its human rights
while denying
many basic human rights to the American people is glaring. The
United States
should lift the blockade. Obama should close Guantanamo and
return it to
Cuba.
This piece was
reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not
be reproduced
in any form without permission or license from the source.
Marjorie Cohn
is professor of criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence and
international
human rights law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. A former
president of
the National Lawyers Guild, her most recent book is Drones and
Targeted
Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. Follow her on
Twitter
@marjoriecohn.
Donations
can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The
master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought
the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while
the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially
their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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