WE SHALL DEFEND THE TRUTH WITH OUR MORALS AND OUR PRINCIPLES

The empire and its allies have launched a new crusade to demonize Cuba. Their powerful political and media apparatus have undertaken a huge misleading operation aimed at discrediting the revolutionary process, destabilizing the country and creating such conditions as would favor the destruction of our social system.

In their feverish campaign they are using their mercenaries willfully and to derive shameful political benefits they send these people to death; they couldn’t care less about the fact that these are human beings. They don’t mind the three thousand Cubans who have lost their lives due to terrorist actions organized and funded in the United States or the destiny of the over two thousand countrymen who have been maimed as a result of such monstrous actions. They don’t care about the people who have perished in the Florida Straits after undertaking ill-fated adventures in pursuit of the siren songs of the murderous Cuban Adjustment Act.

They cynically invoke the human rights they have trampled on and continue to trample on today with impunity in different parts of the world. They hypocritically accuse the Revolution of the death of a person, a common offender disguised as a political prisoner by work and grace of the anti-Cuban campaigns and the huge resources and means allocated to them, a man they sacrificed to use him as a spearhead with the purpose of denigrating the country that has made the greatest efforts to save lives in the world by sending tens of thousand of its selfless healthcare workers to assist people in the remotest places of over one-hundred countries.

They accuse the Revolution that did not hesitate to volunteer its doctors to help Americans in New Orleans and other cities in the US South after the devastating hurricane Katrina; the Revolution that offers the possibility of higher studies to youths who would not have been able to graduate in their own countries, including some from the United States. They accuse the Revolution that has made available to the international community an original teaching method that has enabled millions of people in various countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, Africa and Oceania to accede to the sacred human rights of education and knowledge.

The Cuban Revolution has been consistent in its ethical, political and moral principles following the teachings of Fidel. Respect for the human being, which is the very essence of our system, has been one of the key reasons of the popular support our process has enjoyed from the heroic days of the Sierra Maestra, when we never failed to respect the lives of the captive enemies.

Despite the continued policy of hostility and aggression of the Empire, from armed invasion, terrorist sabotage and plans to attempt on the life of Fidel and our leaders up to the promotion of subversion and the genocidal economic, trade and financial blockade for five decades, the Revolution has never murdered, tortured or vanished even one of its enemies.

Can the same be said of the US Administrations and European governments that shout their heads off criticizing Cuba and condemning it as if they were vestal virgins? What can they say about the one million dead in Iraq and the tens of thousand people in Afghanistan victims of the illegal wars carried out there? How can they explain the secret prisons and the torturing of the alleged terrorists? What is the legal basis of the selective murders ordered by the United States against its enemies in various parts of the world and executed by a task force commanded by the same General who is now at the head of the troops in Afghanistan? How can they justify the death in the past five years of over 100 immigrants kept in custody by the US Immigration and Customs Services? What is the human right that supports the brutal beatings of representatives of the social movements protesting during the Copenhagen Climate Summit or the Californian students claiming higher budgets and lower charges for education? Who supervises the humiliation that immigrants are subjected to in the hundreds of detention centers disseminated throughout Europe? Have the US Congress, the European Parliament and the right-wing parties of the Old Continent, who seem so worried today about Cuba, showed any concern, denounced or condemned such scandalous violations of human rights?

What they really find annoying is the moral strength of the Revolution and its loyalty to principles; its growing prestige in our region where it has become a major actor in the process towards integration and its smart and serene behavior in tackling the hard consequences of the international economic crisis and the blockade; and, its clear notion about the need to change everything that needs changing in order to conquer for our people all of the justice, as Fidel and Raul have asked us to do.

That is why the empire and its European allies devise their plans in concert, coordinate the work of their security services, send their diplomats to the streets to monitor the work of their hirelings in the island, and increase the funds destined to subversion in Cuba. Just the USAID has allocated 20 million dollars this year to supply the counterrevolutionary groups and to finance the media harassment of Cuba.

Now, they are focusing their cynical campaign on a new hunger striker, a man whose common crimes and counterrevolutionary actions were denounce by Granma last March 8, and who is receiving highly qualified medical care.

They globalize his show while contemptuously silencing his cruelty and criminal record, his assault and battery and his death threat against a woman doctor, the director of the hospital where he used to work, and the beating of a helpless old person who required emergency surgery for the bodily harm he was inflicted by this man.

They also make a fuss about the self-called “Ladies in White,” who play along the enemy and live on the dollars tarnished by Cuban blood and supplied, among others, by the terrorist Santiago Alvarez Fernandez Magriñá who intended to blow up the Tropicana Cabaret and who is Luis Posada Carriles’s “benefactor” in Miami. Thus, it’s not surprising that the author of the blowing-up of a Cubana de Aviacion passengers’ plane and other despicable actions came out a few days ago to express in Miami his support for these “ladies” whose only sanction until today has been our people’s resounding and strong repudiation in the streets.

Taking money from a terrorist organization is a severely punished felony in the United States, just like working at the service of a foreign power. The crimes of the so-called “dissidents” have nothing to do with the freedom of expression but rather with being paid collaborators of the enemy superpower in its plans against our country. In all cases, we have proof that they directly or indirectly receive funds from the United States government and from more than a few European foundations aligned in the war policy against Cuba.

What would happen to these “dissidents” if they carried on in their master’s country the actions they do in Cuba? The US Penal Code provides a 20-year prison sentence for anyone who encourages the ousting of the government or the established order; 10 years for anyone making false statements aimed at attempting against the national interest in its relations with another country; and, 3 years for anyone who “corresponds or sustains a relationship with a foreign government […] with the intent of influencing its behavior […] with respect to a conflict or a controversy with the United States.”

The enemy resorts to all kinds of pressure. It uses political blackmail and orders the annihilation by the media of anyone who is in solidarity with Cuba and tries to silence any voice that disagrees with its dictates. It even forgets its much-trumpeted “freedom of expression” to force Google to close down the digital blog of a Cuban intellectual who has refuted with undeniable arguments the true political purposes of the campaign orchestrated against our Homeland.

It’s not at all surprising. These are the same perverse methods they started implementing 50 years ago when President Eisenhower approved the Covert Actions Plan against Cuba.

As comrade Raul said in the closing session of the YCL 9^th Congress:

“We will never yield to blackmail from any country or group of countries, no matter how powerful they might be, and regardless of the consequences. We have the right to defend ourselves. Let them known that if they try to corner us, we will defend ourselves, first of all with truth and principles. Once again we shall keep ourselves firm and calmed, and we shall be patient. Our history is rich in such examples!”

We shall fight with our ideas in our streets and in every international scenario.

Next May 1^st they’ll receive from our people and its workers a resounding and unequivocal response of support for the Revolution!

We shall defend the truth with our morals and our principles!