Saturday, July 24, 1999

PM's Cuba stance criticized
Human rights report

Mike Trickey
Southam News

OTTAWA - Jean Chretien's "meek" approach to Cuba during his 1998 visit to the hemisphere's last remaining Communist country is symptomatic of the failures of Canada's policy of constructive engagement, says the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The 263-page report released yesterday focuses on continuing abuses by the "repressive machinery" of Fidel Castro's regime, but is unsparing in its criticism of both the United States-imposed economic embargo and the gentler approaches favoured by the European Union and Canada.

Mr. Chretien, the Prime Minister, is singled out for criticism, with the rights organization describing his April, 1998, visit to Havana as a "wasted opportunity" to build on the momentum toward political engagement and human rights improvements that had been started earlier in the year by Pope John Paul II.

"Although his agenda included human rights as well as trade, the prime minister avoided public comment on civil and political liberties, and eschewed meeting with Cuban dissidents," says the report, which notes other Canadian officials did meet with human rights groups.

Mr. Chretien handed Castro a list of four political prisoners that Canada wanted released. That request was ignored and the four were sentenced to prison terms in March, 1999, of between three-and-a-half and five years.

Those sentences brought a chill to the Canada-Cuba relationship, with Mr. Chretien issuing a statement in which he said, "Cuba sends an unfortunate signal to her friends" and that Canada would be reviewing its bilateral activities.

Last month, Lloyd Axworthy, the Foreign Affairs Minister who has been the strongest cabinet proponent of constructive engagement, told Sergio Marchi, the International Trade Minister, and Diane Marleau, the International Co-operation Minister, to postpone planned trips to Cuba.

Human Rights Watch says Canada has talked a better game than it has played on human rights, claiming it has produced few results other than "the release of a handful of prisoners on the condition they abandon their country."

The organization pointedly contrasted the Pope's criticism of Cuban human rights violations to Mr. Chretien's studied avoidance of the issue, even after Castro's rambling welcoming speech in which he compared the American embargo with the Holocaust.