• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 09 / 18 / 2010

---

HAVANA, Cuba, Sept 17 (acn) Cuba again rejected on Thursday the use of unilateral coercive measures that violate international law.

Speaking before the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, the Cuban representative, Juan Antonio Quintanilla, said that for over 50 years Cuba has been a victim of this kind of measures and, particularly, of a financial,commercial and economic blockade imposed by the United States.

Quintanilla noted that this illegal siege is an act of genocide as it is an attempt to make a whole nation surrender through hunger and disease. This, he pointed out, is a massive, systematic and flagrant violation of the human rights not only of Cubans but also of the American people.

The Cuban diplomat said that Washington’s blockade has a clearly extraterritorial nature and that the new US Administration of Barack Obama has not changed this policy.

“On the contrary, earlier in September, President Obama prolonged the blockade against the Caribbean country,” he stated.

In regards to the case of five Cuban antiterrorists who remain unjustly imprisoned in the United States since 1998, Quintanilla added that the White House has ignored the opinion of the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention which ruled that the imprisonment of the Cuban Five "as they are internationally known" was illegal and that it violates international law.

Gerardo Hernandez, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino and Fernando Gonzalez were arrested and given harsh and unjust sentences for monitoring anti-Cuba extreme right-wing groups in South Florida that were planning and carrying out terrorist actions against the island.

Source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/117841