Cuba plans to tender an official invitation
next week to the UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Novak, to visit the
island this year, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said Wednesday, dpa reported.
This move and others come in the context of the communist country's increased
cooperation with global human rights organs.
Cuba is also set to ratify "in the coming days" the International
Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Forced Disappearance, Perez
Roque said at a press conference in Havana.
In a further move in this direction, Cuba plans to file "at the end of the
first semester" of 2009 a report for the body that monitors the
implementation of the UN convention against torture.
Such moves express Cuba's "permanent commitment to cooperation" with
"non-selective" international human rights mechanisms, the minister
said.
The Cuban government always condemned the UN Commission on Human Rights - which
included a special rapporteur for Cuba - as an organ manipulated by the United States that offered a partial view of the island's record. Havana refused to host
any representatives of the commission.
In 2006, however, the commission was replaced with the Human Rights Council and
the special rapporteur for Cuba was abolished in 2007. Cuba is a member of the new council and has made efforts to cooperate with it, including a
visit for the special rapporteur for food in late 2007.
Cuban dissidents claim that various freedoms are severely restricted by the
authorities in the island, but the government denies any human rights
violations.
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