Via the Center for a Free Cuba:
The failure of the European Union’s engagement with the Castro regime and its wider meaning for Europe
The European Union (EU) and the Castro regime elevated whataboutism to the level of international agreements. The European External Action Service (EEAS), the European Union’s diplomatic service’s press release on the EU – Cuba human rights dialogue that was held on October 3, 2019 requires a suspension of disbelief to read it. The second sentence in the first paragraph states, “the dialogue provides a structured framework to discuss openly and in a constructive way the human rights situation in both Cuba and the EU and a platform to explore cooperation in multilateral fora on shared human rights challenges.”
The EEAS press release also claimed that it “was preceded by a civil society seminar on 2 October, where representatives of Cuban and European civil society exchanged views in particular on the topics of combating gender-based violence and on the protection of families.”
This claim of the EEAS was contradicted by the Sweden based Civil Rights Defenders, a respected human rights organization that was founded in 1982 that over social media on October 2, 2019 reported: “Right now, a human rights dialogue between EU and Cuba is taking place in Brussels. All attending are approved by the Cuban gov, no independent civil society organisations present. Manuel Cuesta Morúa is going to Brussels despite not being invited.”
Rosa María Payá in an open letter published by Civil Rights Defenders warned that “the position of the EEAS, combined with the fact that European governments abandoned their previous position, the EU Common Position on Cuba [brought into force] in 1996, that condemned human rights violations, demanded democratic reforms in Cuba and kept their embassies on the island open to opposition activists and members of independent civil society, but that [today’s position] is used by the Cuban government to try to legitimize its actions.”
Cuban dissident Cuesta Morua in a video posted by Civil Rights Defenders states that “since 2016 when the deal was signed between the European Union and Cuba the human rights situation has worsened.” Interviewed in the Swedish publication, Aftonbladet, Manuel Cuesta Morúa explained that “this is the chance to demand democratic reforms, but it isn’t being taken.” The Cuban dissident also explained that Sweden will be missing an opportunity to demand democracy in Cuba, if the EU-Cuba deal is approved.
Shared challenges work when values are shared, in this case democratic ones. This is not the case with the dictatorship in Cuba and the democratic community of nations of the European Union.
The European project is in crisis, and it is reflected today in its foreign policy and the values that it promotes that are in contradiction with those enunciated with its founding. The European Union’s fundamental values are supposed to be “respect for human dignity and human rights, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law.” Reinterpreting the communist dictatorship in Cuba as a “one party” democracy is a betrayal of those values.
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