6-02-08, 9:33 am

Original source: Granma International

Eleven years ago, when an orchestrated media campaign attempted to discredit the Reaffirmation of Cuban Dignity and Sovereignty Act by presenting it as repressive legislation against mercenaries, I wrote a commentary in the Trabajadores newspaper pointing out the hypocrisy of certain political and press circles in the United States, the principal points of which I shall return to now, given their current validity.

And to me, this is important, because the U.S. government has always tried to incriminate the Cuban decision to defend itself in legal terms while, under the Helms-Burton Act, declaring any form of direct or indirect cooperation illicit and, above all, distorting the content of our legislation attempting to prevent the brazen conduct of those 'independent' groups in Cuba, but which are in fact dependent on the United States.

Cuba has merely acted to defend itself by establishing limitations which, relatively speaking, are far fewer than those currently in force in the United States to reprimand U.S. citizens’ having relations with any foreign government.

It is not only about the laws of McCarthyism, still in force, which imposed so much terror in the 1950s with the aim of destroying the labor movement, the Communist Party and other progressive organizations. Nor is it about legislation protecting national security, or even regulations on this matter contained in that country’s Penal Code to punish such conduct.

It is an entire additional structure of rules that set limitations in order to put pressure on U.S. citizens and to repress them.

Let’s look at some examples:

--The Treasury Department and its Foreign Assets Control regulations in the case of Cuba prohibit:

1.—The receipt of money from the Cuban government or Cuban nationals. (However, the United States abrogates the right to finance counterrevolutionary groups, as established in the Helms-Burton Act and the Bush Plan.

2.—The receipt of any object from the Cuban government or Cuban nationals. For example, it is explicitly stated that typewriters, fax equipment, ink, pens, paper, etc. (Section 109 of the Helms-Burton Act concedes the power to do so with counterrevolutionary groups in Cuba).

3.—The import of any item of Cuban origin (even smoking a Cuban cigar is punishable).

4.—The signing of a contract or legal agreement with the Cuban government or with Cuban nationals, whether or not that is evidenced in writing.

5—The provision of any service to the Cuban government or Cuban nationals, whether this is on a voluntary or a paid basis.

6.—The receipt of any service from the Cuban government or Cuban nationals, including those that are unpaid, such as undertaking research, drawing up reports, giving lectures or classes.

These measures carry the punishment of a prison term of up to 10 years and fines of up to $250,000 in the case of an individual, or $1 million in the case of a corporation, or both. The Treasury Department can also impose a type of administrative fine of up to $50,000 for such violations.

--The Foreign Agents Registration Act, which establishes that every U.S. citizen who acts as an agent of a government, political party, political movement, corporation or on behalf of foreign individuals must register as such. Violating this statute can be punished by a prison term of up to five years and a bond of $10,000, or both.

--The Logan Act prohibits any U.S. citizen (unless authorized by his/her government to do so) from maintaining correspondence or relations with a foreign government with the intention of influencing measures or the conduct of any government in relation to any dispute or controversy with the United States, or to defeat U.S. measures. Violation of these regulations is punishable by a fine of $5,000 and a prison term of up to three years, or both.

In an article titled The Contradictions of Amnesty International, Salim Marani, a French professor, journalist and writer commented on the how the criminal legislation of a number of European countries (France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland and Sweden) includes extremely stiff penalties for individuals who act in the way that mercenaries try to act in Cuba.

As the researcher emphasizes in this article, 'International law considers illegal the financing of an internal opposition in another sovereign nation. The (U.S.) policy flagrantly violates the principles and regulations ruling relations among states. All countries in the world have a legal arsenal that allows them to defend national independence against this type of foreign aggression, by codifying as a crime conduct that favors the application of measures that lead to subversion. This is a primordial duty of every state.'

Recent Cuban Radio-TV 'Roundtables' have clearly explained for public opinion revelations as to the murky relations between anti-Cuban terrorist groups in Miami, accredited U.S. diplomats in Havana, and U.S. mercenary groups operating in our country, as well as everything related to the ferrying of money from the United States to those groups.

The U.S. government wants to bury its transgressions in silence and, meanwhile, to return to its attacks on Cuba’s capacity to defend itself. That cynical way of acting: ‘do as I say and not what I do,’ is totally unacceptable.

From Granma International