Evidence of meeting #17 for Subcommittee on International Human Rights in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cuban.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Caravane d'amitié Québec-Cuba
In general, according to what we are hearing from the media—I am not familiar with 100% of the cases—people being called political prisoners are not political prisoners.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Jason Kenney
So do you believe that the United Nations is wrong about the reality of these political prisoners?
Caravane d'amitié Québec-Cuba
I think that the definition is perhaps not very good.
Cuba-Nouvelles
Mr. Chairman, I think that the United Nations Commission on Human Rights is probably as right as it is wrong. It is trying to assess a situation. It is drawing information from various sources, and it is as right as it is wrong in condemning Canada for not respecting aboriginal rights. However, if we study Ms. Chanet's report in its entirety instead of just considering recommendation No. V.35, we can see that it is part of a dynamic where the entire United Nations General Assembly, in other words almost all of the 192 countries, for the past 15 years, year after year, have been calling for the blockade to be lifted—
Cuba-Nouvelles
—from the outset, Ms. Christine Chanet identified that as being the cause—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Jason Kenney
My question is this: Do you agree with the recommendations I quoted?
Cuba-Nouvelles
The issue deals with the definition of political prisoners and with what you say about that. You quoted Ms. Chanet's report, which discusses the impact of the tension between the United States and Cuba, the impact of U.S.-Cuba relations on human, civil and political rights. I do think that logically, as you pointed out in your quote earlier, anything Canada can do to reduce this tension can only help the civil and political rights situation in Cuba.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Jason Kenney
Mr. Leroux, I am confused. I am going to ask you a question and I want you to provide me with a yes/no answer.
Do you agree with the recommendations I just quoted?
Cuba-Nouvelles
I cannot support them until they are put in their proper context. You know full well what you can do with a quote. If I were to modify them, the same recommendations could apply to the United States, that carries out 100 times more death penalties than Cuba—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Jason Kenney
Thank you.
Monsieur Caner Camejo, are you in agreement? Would you endorse our inclusion of recommendations like these in our report?
Table de concertation de solidarité Québec-Cuba
As Mr. Leroux explained, we must make sure that these prisoners are actually political prisoners. I have the impression the United Nations is missing some information. I don't know. As for the people of Cuba, they agree that these people, who want to bring down the regime... Cubans do not want to go back to what they had in the past.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Jason Kenney
So I think your answer is that you're not in agreement with these recommendations.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Jason Kenney
You disagree with the predicate that there are political prisoners in Cuba. You believe there are no political prisoners, therefore these recommendations are not well founded.
Table de concertation de solidarité Québec-Cuba
They are not political prisoners. They are—
Bloc
Caroline St-Hilaire Bloc Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I did read the report that you are so blithely referring to left and right. I don't think that everything is black or white. Most organizations that defend human rights talk about political prisoners in Cuba. You do understand that your position contradicts that of others. They are prisoners, but I do not really know what type of prisoners they are.
There is a problem. I agree with the rapporteur's recommendations, but since they date back to 2006, I would like to know if the Cuban government has responded to them. That is my first question.
My second question is for Mr. Leroux. You said it yourself by quoting Ms. Chanet: she talked about not respecting human rights. In her report, she discusses it. Regardless of what it is due to, we agree on the fact that there is a problem with respect to human rights. You cannot deny that.
As members of the subcommittee, we want to find ways of providing our assistance without interfering in Cuban politics, because Cuba is sovereign. Could we go as far as suspending ODA to Cuba until the prisoners have been released? Because there are prisoners. And there are not just five or six, there are many. Maybe there is a plot against Cuba: like the series 24, but set in Cuba—but we have to find a way of proving that.
We are somewhat uncomfortable, because there are people in Cuba telling us that there is a problem, that human rights are not being respected, that there are political or other prisoners, but that there are prisoners, and torture. Moreover, people have told us the opposite. You can tell us something else, but human rights defence groups have told us that there is a problem. So the onus of proof is on you and your organizations are more representative of Canada and Quebec than they are Cuba. I am not in any way diminishing the work that you do—far from it, I value it—but you must understand that we have heard other versions of the situation and that reports like the one prepared by Ms. Chanet are telling us that a problem with human rights exists.
What do you have to say about that?
Cuba-Nouvelles
I have never denied that there were problems with human rights in Cuba. Respecting human rights is a problem for all countries in the world, including the United States and Canada. Even Canada was singled out by the Commission on Human Rights. No country is perfect, and that is why we are all working together to try and improve things. Having said that, the notion of political prisoner is not defined in any international covenant. The interpretation of political prisoner is subjective.
I will go back to the absurd example I gave earlier. If Canada were to arrest people funded by the Government of Iran, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia for having caused a transition from a peaceful democracy to an Islamic republic, how would we deal with those people? Many organizations that defend human rights would describe the people arrested using security certificates as political prisoners. Should other countries then put an end to their economic or government relations with Canada?
There are political prisoners in the United States. People are regularly arrested at demonstrations. In the United States, one prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, has been in prison for over 25 years for his opinions. He is on death row; he is facing the death penalty. None of these so-called political prisoners in Cuba are facing the death penalty. The only cases involving the death penalty in the past 10 years were due to the highjacking of a boat by terrorists, to something tantamount to what occurred on September 11. Indeed, we must determine whether or not these people are political prisoners. That issue is the subject of considerable media hype.
You talked about a plot. Unfortunately, it is not just on the TV series that you see the Government of the United States, the Pentagon, and the CIA put in place policies and wage a psychological war to take economic or political control of a country. Just look at what happened in Chili and in other countries.
The White House website talks about a plan to annex Cuba, which I referred to. The Government of the United States freed up $80 million last year to fund a campaign to tarnish Cuba's reputation and to defame it. It was discovered that Reporters Without Borders, which was long considered an independent and local organization, received money directly from those funds. That is unfortunately the current situation.