Cuban Democratic Resistance Denounces the Possible Readmission of Castro Regime to the OAS

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Cuban Democratic Resistance Denounces the Possible Readmission of Castro Regime to the OAS
By Assembly of the Resistance

Miami. Assembly of the Resistance. May 18, 2009. More than 250 activists of the Cuban democratic resistance movement in Cuba have signed an open letter to the OAS denouncing Cuba’s possible readmission to the organization and calling for acknowledgement of Cuban civil society.

“Embrace the Cuban people. Condemn its dictatorship. Do not reinstate the Castro regime in the Latin American democratic community; open the doors of the OAS to the Cuban civil society that non-violently struggles for democratic transformation,” affirms the letter.

The message, an initiative from within the island and released in a press conference called by the Assembly of the Resistance, has been signed by distinguished Cuban leaders such as the activist and former political prisoner Jorge Luis García Pérez “Antúnez” and the president of the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina.

The proposal by the Secretary General of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, to abolish the resolution suspending Cuba’s membership to the Inter-American System will be presented in the 39^th General Assembly of the OAS held in San Pedro de Sula, Honduras on June 2^nd and 3^rd.

The Assembly of the Resistance is a coalition formed by members of pro-democratic organizations that support the Non-Cooperation with the Dictatorship Campaign launched by human rights activists in Cuba.

Below, the full text of the letter to the OAS with signatures:

To the Organization of American States

Republic of Cuba

May 15, 2009

We, members of the Cuban democratic opposition, along with our brothers in the Resistance who are exiled, consider it necessary to address you in the name of our people’s sovereign democratic aspirations.

We contemplate how a call for the readmission of the longest-lived and most oppressive of Latin American dictatorships to has been raised in the Latin American region, which, as if were not enough, the Castro dictatorship itself has reviled. It is a painful contradiction for the complete normalization of all ties with this tyrannical regime and the diplomatic acceptance of despotic rule on our Island to be proposed precisely on the 50^th anniversary of the advent of totalitarianism in Cuba.

Cuba has not been separated from the OAS. It is the tyrannical regime which violates the public liberties of Cubans that has been separated. It is the Cuban nation which has continued to belong to this organization in symbolic tribute to the thousands of Cubans who have paid harshly for their democratic resistance against this regime.

Nevertheless, what worries us most is not the affront which would be committed against our rights by accepting the dictatorship which oppresses us as an equal in terms of the fundamental values of its democratic neighbors, but rather the damage that would be inflicted on the hemisphere itself.

It has cost great pain and sacrifice to banish dictatorships from our Latin America. To ignore the Inter American Democratic Charter, and specifically articles 1, 2, and 3 which state:

Article 1 - The peoples of the Americas have a right to democracy and their governments have an obligation to promote and defend it.

Article 2 - The effective exercise of representative democracy is the basis for the rule of law and of the constitutional regimes of the member states of the Organization of American States.

Article 3 - Essential elements of representative democracy include, inter alia, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, access to and the exercise of power in accordance with the rule of law, the holding of periodic, free, and fair elections based on secret balloting and universal suffrage as an expression of the sovereignty of the people, the pluralistic system of political parties and organizations, and the separation of powers and independence of the branches of government.

To readmit the totalitarian Castro regime to the OAS would mean opening the door to every kind of future despotism for the region, and would portend grave and unpredictable consequences for the millions of human beings who are part of the Latin American community.

We ask you, in the name of the very values of civilization, not to take this step. To do so would be to lower our American democratic community to the level of totalitarian barbarism. The 1962 Resolution expresses a clear democratic principle: there can be no democratic tolerance for the institutionalized violation of human rights embodied totalitarian, Marxist-Leninist regimes.

The Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, an institution affiliated to the OAS, has been one of the most serious and consistent institutions to document the atrocities committed by the Castro dictatorship against its own people.

Furthermore, we consider that the free Cuban nation would leave through the same door that the Castro regime may potentially be admitted to the OAS.

Consideramos además que por la misma puerta que entraría la dictadura castrista al ser admitida potencialmente por la OEA, saldría la nación cubana libre.

Embrace the Cuban people. Condemn its dictatorship. Do not reinstate the Castro regime in the Latin American democratic community; open the doors of the OAS to the Cuban civil society that non-violently struggles for democratic transformation.

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