Cuba signs two Human Rights Treaties that Fidel wouldn't sign

[Ichingcarpenter]

Cuba signs 2 human rights treaties
By James C. McKinley Jr.
Published: February 29, 2008

Just days after Raúl Castro took office as this country's new president, Cuba's Communist government has signed two important international human rights treaties that Fidel Castro had long opposed, another sign the new administration might set a new course.

It remained to be seen what the signing of the two pacts would mean for political prisoners on the island. The foreign minister, Felipe Pérez Roque, said after a signing ceremony in New York on Thursday the government still had reservations about some provisions.

Elizardo Sánchez, head of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said the signing was "positive news because the signing of these pacts is an old demand from inside Cuba and from the international community."

"I hope Cuba honors the letter and spirit of the law of these pacts, but I am not sure it will," Sánchez told The Associated Press.

The other pact signed Thursday, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, requires countries to ensure the right to work, fair wages, freedom to form and join trade unions, social security, education and the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.

In 2001, Fidel Castro criticized that covenant, saying it "could serve as a weapon and a pretext for imperialism to try to divide and fracture the workers, create artificial unions, and decrease their political and social power and influence."

Pérez Roque said Cuba had not dropped its opposition to independent labor unions. He said the country was signing the covenants now because the old UN Human Rights Commission had been replaced by a new Human Rights Council in 2006. The council dropped Cuba last year from the list of the countries whose rights records warranted investigation, a move the United States strongly opposed.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/29/america/cuba.php