Cuban delegates to Panama forums repudiate dissidents’ presence
Members of the official Cuban delegation to the Parallel Forums at the Panama Summit have repudiated the presence in Panama City of Cuban dissidents who have vowed to take part in those forums.
At a press conference on Tuesday (April 7), Liaena Hernández Martínez, member of the National Committee of the Federation of Cuban Women, read the following statement, translated here by Progreso Weekly:
“We, the representatives of Cuba at the Parallel Forums of the Summit of the Americas, denounce the presence in these spaces of mercenaries paid by the historic enemies of our nation.
“They form a scanty ‘opposition’ fabricated abroad, lacking all legitimacy and decorum. Several of their members even associate themselves publicly with well-known terrorists who have caused infinite pain to the Cuban people.
“It is offensive to see in these forums individuals who have turned treason against our homeland into a well-remunerated business and shamefully usurp the name of the country that they malign and offend day in and day out.
“To a proud and sovereign Cuba that has resisted more than five decades of blockade and harassment, to the overwhelming majority of the Cubans, to us, who have come to bring to Panama — with modesty and the spirit of cooperation — the experiences of our social development, the presence here of characters of such a low moral ilk is inadmissible.”
[For more insight on the topic, click here to read an article (in Spanish only) titled, “Cuba’s civil society has nothing to discuss with mercenaries” which appears in today’s (April 8) Granma.]
Active dissidents — identified as Elizardo Sánchez, Guillermo Fariñas, Berta Soler and Rosa María Payá — are already in Panama. Also reportedly scheduled to attend the forums are Manuel Cuesta Morúa, José Antonio Madrazo, Eliecer Ávila, Carlos Oliva and Laritza Diversent.
The official Cuban delegates apparently suspect that the oppositionists will try to disrupt or otherwise sabotage the forums, which will deal with hemispheric issues such as education, health, the environment, emigration, safety, energy and civil society at large.
The forums will be held Wednesday through Friday. Summaries of the debates will be submitted to the government leaders attending the summit.
At the press conference, the members of the official Cuban delegation distributed a pamphlet titled “Mercenaries in Panama.” One of the photos in it shows Fariñas at a 2013 gathering in Miami of anti-Castro activists that included Luis Posada Carriles.
The Cuban government has blamed Posada for the destruction in flight of a Cuban airliner in 1976, causing the death of 73 civilians.
In Panama in 2000, Posada was arrested for trying to assassinate the Cuban president, Fidel Castro, but the country’s president at that time, Mireya Moscoso, pardoned him before he could go to trial.
