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3-13-08, 10:19 am
Havana, March 12 (acn) Attached to the most clandestine US reactionary policies, the French organization Reporters without Borders (RSF) announced with a great fanfare its “Online Free Expression Day,” that was supposedly supported by UNESCO.
However, the UN organization announced its withdrawal from sponsoring the move in time, probably after corroborating RSF’s links to the CIA and its actual objectives, which have been denounced by several experts on the topic from different parts of the world.
The announcement was notified by UNESCO’s Freedom of Expression, Democracy and Peace Division director, who said the organization could give its patronage to the “principle that inspires this day” but could not support the various demonstrations organized to mark it.
After learning of the decision, the RSF accused UNESCO’s general direction of behaving with “great cowardice at a time when the governments that had caused it to stage a U-turn continue to imprison dozens of Internet users.”
Moreover, showing a total lack of respect for the international organization, RFS’ statement says “UNESCO’s grovelling shows the importance of Online Free Expression Day and the need to protest against governments that censor.”
As denounced by Cuban Granma daily newspaper, RSF continues being obsessed with Cuba and has included the country in its updated list of “Internet Enemies,” along with other 14 nations: Belarus, Burma, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.
However, including Cuba on the list is not a casual action. Robert "Bob" Menard, the head of the French organization, who has “good friends” in Miami, has associated with Radio Mambi announcer Nancy Perez Crespo, a station based in Miami, and linked with the most active terrorist circles in South Florida. Among its actions against Cuba is the distribution of pamphlets to distort the tourist image of the island.
Voltaire Net’s President Thierry Meyssan published an article saying that, based on a dossier made by Jean-Guy Allard in which the author states the RSF’s executive director maintains close relations with Miami-based anti-Castro groups. A simple verification confirmed that Robert Menard frequents Miami’s extreme right wing, and that the RSF is financed by the anti-Castro lobby to carry out campaigns against Cuba.
In 2002, Reporters without Borders signed a contract, whose terms remain unknown, with the extreme right organization Center for a Free Cuba. The
director of the organization is Frank Calzon, the former director of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), a terrorist organization responsible for numerous attacks against the island.
According to Meyssan, Reporters without Borders’s contract with the Center for a Free Cuba was negotiated in 2001 with the head of the group at that time, Otto Reich, who later became the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs.
Reich was the organizer of the thwarted Coup D’Etat against Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 2002; later, he was Bush’s special emissary to supervise the operation for the kidnapping of Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
From Cuban News Agency
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