LIMA, Peru – The Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH) and representatives of other Cuban organizations urged the Government of Canada this Thursday to promote a “coordinated international response” to promote an economic and political opening in Cuba, focused on civil liberties, private initiative and respect for human rights.
During an appearance Before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Canadian Parliament, Yaxys Cires, director of Strategies at the OCDH, stated that “only a structural change, and not a cosmetic one,” will allow Cubans to regain hope.
He also requested that humanitarian assistance destined for the Island be delivered directly to the population, especially vulnerable sectors, and channeled through churches and independent civil society.
Cires requested that Canada, along with other investing countries, demand modifications to the labor regime applied in foreign investments in Cuba, considering that it violates rights by preventing direct hiring and channeling salaries through entities of the dictatorship.
The activist recalled that more than 800 people remain imprisoned for reasons of conscience and maintained that the Cuban crisis is the result of structural problems linked to the planned economy model, which concentrates the means of production in the hands of the State and suffocates economic and social freedom.
“The deterioration of hospitals, the lack of medical supplies, the collapse of homes, the increase in blackouts and the mountains of garbage in the streets that appear in the international media today, is the result and accumulation of decades of failed policies,” Cires highlighted.
Representatives from other organizations such as Carolina Barrero Ferrer, from Ciudadanía y Libertad; John Suarez, from the Center for a Free Cuba, and Kirenia Carbonell, from the Cuban-Canadian Coalition.
“The embargo is not the cause of the embargo in Cuba, it is the regime itself. And what we ask of Canada is not to help us (Cubans) who will achieve freedom, but to not continue to legitimize an oppressive and corrupt regime that has tried for 70 years to steal all the aid it has received and always victimize itself, from the embargo, or from anything, without ever assuming responsibility,” Barrero Ferrer stressed in statements that shared on Facebook.
“Canada must be on the side of the Cuban people — not by legitimizing a repressive status quo, but by aligning its policy with transparency, accountability and human dignity (…) Humanitarian aid cannot be managed effectively in a country where independent civil society is criminalized and the distribution of aid is monopolized by the same structures responsible for the crisis,” said Carbonell.
