Durban: "No One Has the Right to Sabotage this Conference"-Fidel Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Granma International Digital - September 1, 2001 FIDEL AT THE ANTI-RACISM SUMMIT "Nobody has the right to sabotage this conference or to demand that there is no discussion of just reparations" DURBAN, Sept 1 (PL)--In an implicit observation on the conduct of the United States in relation to the world summit on racism, the Cuban president emphasized that "nobody has the right to sabotage this conference," which seeks to alleviate terrible suffering and huge injustices. "And even less," he continued, "does anybody have to right to impose conditions or demand that historical responsibility and just reparations should not even be mentioned, or on the way in which we decide to qualify the horrific genocide currently being committed against our sister nation of Palestine. This Saturday, speaking to representations from some 160 countries, Fidel Castro gave a vibrant speech in the plenary session of a conference that responded with repeated applause and a final ovation of close to one minute. "Put an immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people. Protect the elemental right to life of its citizens, of its children. Respect its right to independence and peace, and there will be no fear of UN documents," he affirmed. The Cuban leader pointed out that the war against Palestine is managed by extreme-right leaders who, allied to a hegemonic superpower, are currently acting in the name of another people that throughout close to 2000 years was in its turn the victim of the greatest discrimination, injustice and persecution committed in history. When Cuba talks of compensation, with the important precedent of reparations received by Jewish descendents, it is not aspiring to the impossible search for direct family descendents or the specific countries of origin of the victims of deeds over the centuries, he clarified. THE RICH WORLD POSSESSES THE RESOURCES TO SETTLE THE DEBT WITH HUMANITY Fidel added that it is a true and irrefutable fact that tens of millions of human beings were captured, sold as merchandise or forced to work as slaves. Today the rich and wasteful world possesses the technical and financial resources to settle that debt with humanity, he affirmed. Fidel Castro's dissertation covered the majority of the objectives outlined in the anti-racist assembly agenda, from reparations to the African continent for its enslavement, the problems of indigenous communities and the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Finally, the Cuban president offered concrete solutions for these Controversial dilemmas, inextricably linked, he reiterated, to the historical economic exploitation of the so-called Third World. Racism and xenophobia constitute a social, cultural and political phenomenon, not a natural human instinct. "They are the direct offspring of wars, military conquests, enslavement and the exploitation of the weakest by the strongest throughout the length of history," he emphasized. "From my point of view," he added, "we are facing a great economic, social and political crisis of a global nature. Let us become aware of these realities and alternatives will arise," he affirmed to an auditorium of 10,000 conference delegates and a plenary session of 12 heads of state. He noted that history has shown that great solutions only emerge from great crises. The right of peoples to life and justice will inevitably impose itself in the most varied forms, he highlighted. "I believe in the mobilization and in the struggle of the peoples! I believe in just ideas! I believe in the truth! I believe in humanity!" proclaimed the leader of the Cuban Revolution (PL). ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-09.01.01-20:51:54-3053