Stop the blooding of the innocent

Havana, July 15, - When Timothy McVeigh broke into the Oklahoma Federal Building and delivered his deadly message, the whole world prayed that we may all find a peaceful way to overcome our differences. McVeigh's willingness to plant an explosive artifact, able to pulverized a building, including its children day care, is not an isolated incident. It is part of a chain that links attacks perpetrated from Algiers to Jerusalem, from Colombia to Buenos Aires. Just like in Spain's Basque provinces, the "Etarras" murdered the young commissioner Miguel Angel Blanco, in Havana two explosive devices were detonated inside hotels designated for the foreign tourist.

It is the dark hand of terrorism, creeping into our world to impose its demands by the violence of explosions. Nothing may be more distant from the universal human desire to live in peace. The Cuban people have not been immune to the consequences of terrorism, executed under the garment of an ideological crusade.

Between 1956 and 1959, Havana, and many other major cities of the island, were the targets for the violent actions of the "26 de Julio" movement in its confrontation with Batista's dictatorship. In those days, the young Urselia Diaz, a member of the rebel movement, was blown to pieces in the America theater bathroom by the same explosives she was attempting to place. Many years later, seventy-six Cubans were brutally murdered when the Cubana de Aviacion airline plane was blown up in mid air while covering the Barbados- Havana route.

Each one of these acts pretends to find support in some ideological, or almost philosophical, reasoning. No matter how different they may be in their basis, their fruits are the same, to pierce the skin of innocents that have no control over the issues that generated their struggle.

It is being twenty years since the first Cuban Human Rights organization, was created. A constant battle during that lapse has been the advocacy of a more tolerant social environment, for a less bigoted and more accommodating political climate.

The use of violence may only bring disgrace whenever is adopted without concern for those who are going to be harmed the most.

The Cuban people, has not accepted quietly the incidents of July 12, on the contrary; it has firmly expressed its rejection of such acts. Fortunately, this time we only have to mourn the mild injury to three innocent bystanders. Nevertheless, we are all aware that the lost may have potentially been much greater.

The people had examined the evidence. None of the injured was a senior officer with the Arm Forces, or the Interior Ministry, were neither they with the Communist Party, nor the State Security Department, nor even State officials. They were simple Cubans, people who came two steps away from their death, as a result of irresponsible acts that must be rejected by every decent human being in the planet.

We ought never to attempt to bring a democratic change to our country by means of terror. Such a path only leaves the wasteful bitter taste of its eternal sequel of death and destruction. This fruitless blood shed sickens the whole world.

More than help to fuel the transition process, which our country so desperately needs, such acts, fuel on the fires of internal repression and excuse the government in his entrenchment within a totalitarian model of government.

We still have time, to put the more pressing problems of our nationality and our future on the table. With our eyes on that goal, let close the door on the bombs, and any other form of terrorism.