Cuba Charges US Lacks Moral Authority on Human Rights
Havana, Mar 8 (Prensa Latina) Cuba's foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, categorically rejected a recent U.S. State Department report criticizing the island"s human rights record, charging that Washington has no moral authority to judge other countries after its own scandals over treatment of war prisoners.
"We urge the U.S. authorities to worry about their own problems," Felipe Perez Roque said at a news conference on Monday.
"Cuba recognizes that there are violations of human rights in our country, but they are at the Guantanamo Naval Base, in territory occupied against Cuba"s will," Roque remarked of the U.S. base used as a giant prison for alleged terror suspects.
Perez Roque noted that the State Department had not issued a report on the United States, based on the ongoing accussations by international human rights groups about inhumane prisoner conditions and harsh treatment at the Guantanamo base, and earlier scandals at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
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The Feb. 28 U.S. report on rights practices in Cuba is a repetition of Washington´s allegations over freedom of speech, press, assembly, as well as the imprisonment of individuals who were tried and sentenced for serving as foreign agents and that the U.S. government hails as dissidents.
The news conference was called to discuss the annual spring meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, where a U.S.-backed resolution to condemn Cuba"s rights record is presented every year.
US Troops Filmed Abusing Iraqi Inmates
Washington, Mar 8 (Prensa Latina) US troops who served in the Iraqi Sunni Muslin city of Ramadi filmed themselves in a video while abusing wounded Iraqi prisoners, entitling the tape "Ramadi Madness."
The video, edited and compiled into a DVD in January 2004, was released on Monday and showed US soldiers kicking a fatally wounded prisoner in the face and making the arm of a corpse appear to wave.
The tape also includes various sections entitled "Those Crafty Little Bastards" and "Another Day, Another Mission, Another Scumbag."
The existence of the video had been revealed in Army documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under court order through the Freedom of Information Act.
The US Defense Department has stated that soldiers showed in the new video would not face criminal charges.
The ACLU has obtained thousands of pages of documents from the Pentagon and said they show a pattern of widespread tortures of prisoners by US military troops in Iraq.
Digital photos that were disclosed last year of US soldiers torturing inmates at Iraq"s Abu Ghraib prison were strongly condemned worldwide.
