Havana ‘cheated’ on its UN human rights review

By MCT Information Services/MiamiCuba committed “fraud ... on a massive scale” to influence a UN review of its human rights record by using hundreds of “front groups” to submit comments favourable to the island, a watchdog group reported.While 454 non-governmental organisations submitted comments for Cuba’s review, 48 NGOs commented on Canada’s - the second highest number of comments - and 32 on Russia’s, according to the report by the group UN Watch.Although “critiques by genuine NGOs do appear, they are overwhelmed by an unprecedented amount of submissions by fraudulent ‘NGOs’ that, if they do exist, are mere puppets of Cuba and its allies abroad,” the report said. “This is fraud committed on a massive scale,” added the report, timed to coincide with Cuba’s review this week by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.The UNHRC audits each nation every four years for its Universal Periodic Review, or UPR.“Cuba used hundreds of front groups to hijack the UN compilation of NGO submissions and turn it into a propaganda sheet for the Castro Communist regime,” UN Watch’s 13-page report said.The UPR is not binding on anyone “but does have an impact because it’s a megaphone, a podium, which does shape the way people think and it’s a source of legitimacy,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch and a Canadian lawyer.UN Watch is a Geneva-based NGO that monitors the UN’s work on human rights.Affiliated with the American Jewish Committee, it often criticises the UNHRC because many of its members have poor human rights records themselves.During a UNHRC meeting last week on Cuba, Syria and North Korea praised Havana while Western nations criticised its abuses and lack of democracy. All the comments and Cuba’s responses are eventually added to the UPR. The UN Watch report, titled “Massive fraud: The corruption of the 2013 UPR Review of Cuba,” did not directly challenge the praise heaped by the NGOs on the communist-run island. It simply listed some of their favourable comments and some of their names.Among the “NGOs” were several organisations controlled by the Cuban Communist Party and government, such as the Federation of Cuban Women, the Federation of University Students and the Pioneers, the island’s politicised version of the Boy Scouts.Also commenting were “solidarity” groups such as the Dambovita branch of the Romanian-Cuban Friendship Association, the Leogane Club of Friends of Cuba in Haiti and the Sri Lanka National Committee for Solidarity with Cuba.Another comment came from the Organisation of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America, founded in Havana in 1966 to support communism and “national liberation movements” - usually guerrillas - in the Third World.Many of the NGOs listed in the UPR summary of their comments were based in countries that have friendly relations with Havana, and especially in the nearly 70 countries where Cuba has sent medical, teaching or sports missions. Out of 105 numbered paragraphs in the UPR summary, UN Watch reported, 72 included “robust praise” for Cuba’s human rights record. “Approximately 77 reports mentioned that Cuba’s constitutional and legislative framework recognised and guaranteed basic human rights and freedoms,” according to the UPR summary.