Right of peoples to self-determination – CHR – NGO statement

THE RIGHT OF PEOPLES TO SELF-DETERMINATION AND ITS APPLICATION TO PEOPLES

UNDER COLONIAL OR ALIEN DOMINATION OR FOREIGN OCCUPATION 

Written statement* submitted by the Federation of Cuban Women, 

a non-governmental organization in special consultative status 

  The Secretary-General has received the following written statement which is circulated in accordance with Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31.

[30 January 2004]

____________

* This written statement is issued, unedited, in the language(s) received from the submitting non-governmental organization(s).

GE.04-11218

   The turbulences of these last years put in evidence that we are passing through a critical stage, times of great challenges, unknowns, daily surprises and higher dangers.

  Nobody is out of this planet process of changes that entails and affects all of us, and especially the Third World countries.

  In this context, where North American Imperialism using the most absurd and injurious means, pretends to raise as a world gendarme, its necessary to understand the way run ,be conscious of the reality we are living today, and keep an eye in the alternatives of the future. On this basis it will be possible to delimit the contents and forms of actions within the anti imperialist struggle, solidarity, national liberation, sovereignty and self determination.

  The XX Century came to an end leaving us an extraordinary inheritance, where the differences are bigger in development and life levels between nations, increasing the gap between rich and poor, where the powerful ones want to impose their economic, political and military power under any circumstance, even though to achieve this they will use the most sophisticated weapons and commit the most flagrant violations of human rights.

  This XXI Century has been characterized by conflicts, massacres, genocides, violence of all type, including extermination wars. Every day there are more innocents victims as a result of irresponsible political actions. Never, as now the dispraise for life, irrationality, and lack of respect for the self determination of people, has achieved such a force.

  Every day is more evident the supremacy of the powerful countries headed by the United States that using its interference fever and imperial madness wants to transform each territory, in any part of the world in its military operation theatre, and a sure target of its pretensions, ambitions and selfishness .His domination policy becomes more deviated each day, mass destruction, the return to fascism, terror and xenophobia are present in their command station and their puppet allies.

  Until when the Puerto Rico’s People will continue been a slave of their design. Until when will they be the backyard of their war practices.

  Until when will Iraq be target of their bombing, as a receptor of a policy of “Preventive war” , what preventive war is that , where each day thousands of innocent people die, and their only interest is to appropriate their oil, what a lie and demagogy !

  And what to say of Palestine, that suffer the continuous attacks of Israel, pretending to take the Palestinian people out of their own territory. Palestine has a right to a just and lasting peace and the right of going back to their home and their properties from where they have been evicted, and also to establish their own sovereign and independent State with Jerusalem as their capital.

  What right do they have to impose their will and destroy countries with their attacks and monstrous bombings, having as their principal victims women, elders, and innocent children, what right do they have to decide for other countries? Each nation, each people has the legitimate right to elect their own way, to project its own struggle strategy, design its own policies and impose its own laws.

  Every country in the world has the liberty to dispose of its natural resources without foreign interference, decide by themselves, but in the minds of the owner of power, does not exist a bit of rationality, nor the capacity to understand that they are leading humanity to a blind street, that the present panorama is Dantesque and what they are supporting is a world of degradation and misgovernment.

  To detent this terrible, powerful and irrational enemy, to detent the ghost of war so that we can construct above the ruins of the decaying world, a better one, more just and equal, for a real and true peace, where principles and norms of international right be respected, and the right of the people to sovereignty and self determination, the Federation of Cuban Women once more raises her voice appealing to reasoning and calling to unity and to solidarity globalization.

—–