HAVANA- At least 300 activists and human rights defenders, both in Cuba and in exile, signed a letter addressed to the high representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, asking that the resolution approved in February by the European Parliament, which calls for the repeal of the subsidy that the European bloc offers the regime.
The initiative was led by the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, an organization that in a statement highlighted that Josep Borrell received the Annual Report on Crimes Against Humanity, published by the Casla Institute. This document describes the role that the Cuban regime plays in the induction and execution of crimes against humanity in Venezuela, and is one of the main elements to demand that the EU modify its policy towards Cuba.
“Cuba tortures and persecutes dissidents beyond its borders. We cannot continue silencing Cuban interference and delaying the measures that the representatives of the citizens of Europe have reiterated in the European Parliament,” the activists expressed in the letter.
“Deterioration of public liberties”
On February 29, the European Parliament approved a resolution in which it exposed the deterioration of public freedoms on the Island, while demanding the activation of the human rights clause of the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (PDCA), signed by the EU and the regime in 2016.
“The abuses and violations of human rights systematically perpetrated by the Cuban regime against protesters, political dissidents, religious leaders, human rights activists and independent artists, among other people, have increased,” said the resolution.
“The PDCA established clear conditions linked to the improvement of human rights and democracy in Cuba. These conditions have not been respected. And the European Parliament has made it known to you. With this letter we reiterate it,” the activists highlighted. .
This initiative of the Cuban Resistance Assembly was signed by prominent opponents of the regime such as the leader of the Ladies in White, Berta Soler, the former political prisoner Iván Hernández Carrillo and the coordinator of the Eastern Democratic Alliance, Rolando Rodríguez Lobaina.
“The decision to send this document is because all economic potential to the totalitarian regime in Havana helps them to repress the people, not to develop society in general. It is public knowledge that we Cubans live in a critical situation in the middle of a state failed where there is more poverty and more desperation,” said Rodríguez Lobaina.
The promoters of the letter assure that this action is “an endorsement of MEP Hermann Tertsch, who has led the fight to repeal the infamous cooperation agreement in the European Parliament and who a few days ago sent a letter to Borrell on the subject.”
“No more agreements with criminals”
In the midst of the escalation of questions about the regime from the European Parliament, the Spanish MEP from the Ciudadanos party José Ramón Bauzá wrote in March on his X account: “Let us immediately suspend the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement with Cuba. We cannot tolerate not a single day more agreements with criminals. Cuba demands democracy.
In March, in addition, a hundred parliamentarians from European and Latin American countries sent a letter to the European Parliament about the need to reform the policy towards Cuba, stop the sending of community funds to Havana and review the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement. . “The agreement has not led to improvements in the human rights situation in Cuba,” they said.
Likewise, in April, several members of the European Parliament paid tribute to the more than a thousand political prisoners serving sentences in Cuban prisons, during a press conference organized by the NGO Prisoners Defenders, in which Borrell’s policy was rejected in around the Island.
Source: With information from Diario de Cuba
