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In view of the recommendations made at the International
“Against Terrorism, For Peace and Justice” Symposium, the undersigned, members
of the “In Defense of Humanity” network of networks, have reviewed the
denunciations, proposals and reports submitted by the 681 participants from 67
countries who met in Havana on 2, 3 and 4 June 2005, and make a call to create
a movement against terrorism that will denounce and condemn the age of terror
spawned by the United States in our hemisphere, affecting us since the second
half of the 20th century.
The moving testimonies of victims and their relatives and
the well-documented reports of respected jurists, statespeople,
journalists, economists and other intellectuals committed to the defense of
human rights, allowed us to reconstruct the history of terrorist actions,
committed with impunity, which numerous US administrations perpetrated in Souther Cone countries, Central America and the Caribbean,
in complicity with Latin American and Caribbean leaders, armies and police
forces.
The people have a right to know the truth. Those who wage a
genocidal war in the name of a war on terrorism must not be allowed to cover up
their systematic use of the most perverse of terrorist methods against the
peoples of Latin
America
and the Caribbean. There is an urgent need to break
the silence which shrouds the past, present and forseeable
future of this criminal policy.
It is impossible to suppress the intimate, proven and documented
ties of international terrorsits to the US White
House, State
Department and intelligence services. One cannot forget the atrocious
consequences of Operation Condor, that International
of Terror, as Nobel Prize for Peace recipient Adolfo Pérez
Esquivel would call it, nor those of the dirty war waged in
Central America and the
Caribbean. The crimes of those who have
worked for the CIA and of the high officials of successive
US administrations cannot go
unpunished.
George H. W. Bush, father of the current US leader, must be
held accountable, as ex CIA director, for the creation, with Cuban born
terrorists, of CORU, an organization responsible for the assassination of ex
Chilean Minister of Foreign Affairs Orlando Letelier
and the murder of US citizen Ronnie Moffit, the
midair bombing of a civilian plane with 73 people on board and other crimes
against humanity. The same terrorists collaborated with Pinochet’s
DINA, and other repressive bodies of South American military dictatorships, in
the planning and execution of Operation Condor. Then Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger must also be held accountable for these genocidal crimes.
The close ties of
Florida’s current governor, Jeb Bush, to the Cuban American National Foundation and
other terrorist groups based in
Miami must be denounced. These
organizations made a decisive contribution to the fraudulent electoral victory
of his brother in the 2000 presidential elections; they financed terrorist
actions against Cuban tourist facilities, actions Posada Carriles
admitted to in an interview for the New York Times and American television, the
latter’s “pardon” in Panama and his stay in the United States the past two
months; they organized and financed his escape from a Venezuelan prison and
coordinated his work with the White House in Iran-Contra and US-supported
state-terrorist and dirty war strategies in Central America. Today more than
ever, we must denounce this long-standing network of accomplices which sustains
the impunity and the protection illegally granted by US authorities to Luis
Posada Carriles, ignoring the well-founded
extradition request submitted by the
Bolivarian
Republic of
Venezuela. It is the same protection they have
offered an hope to maintain for Orlando Bosch,
securing impunity for his crimes.
We must reveal the terrorist nature of the alliance that,
against the interests of the American people, the Bush dynasty has established
with the
Miami mob and which dishonours the
memory of those who perished on
11 September 2001 and in the name of a supposed war
on terrorism. The
US people, who mobilized against fascism
in World War II and
contributed to ending the Vietnam war, who supported the civil rights struggle
and the return of Elián González
to
Cuba, must be informed, through all the
mass media, about the criminal actions of its government.
The impunity of terrorists cannot continue. No crime can go
unpunished.
BECAUSE OF ALL THIS, WE HAVE DECIDED TO INITIATE AN
INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT AGAINST TERRORISM BASED ON THE “IN DEFENSE OF HUMANITY’
NETWORK OF NETWORKS, TO UNDERTAKE THE FOLLOWING ACTIONS:
- Establish
an Anti-Terrorist Observatory for the hemisphere.
- Create
a data base which gathers information on these genocidal policies.
- Prepare
and publish an Encyclopedia on Terrorism in the hemisphere, to include the
essential concepts and categories, the background of the genocidal agents,
repressive bodies and terrorists involved, a chronology of these criminal
actions and a description of the national and supra-national components of
the terror apparatus.
- Create
a collection of works on historical memory and terrorism.
- Create
the “Against Terrorism, in Defense of Humanity” Hemisphere Court, to be
made up of prestigious jurists, intellectuals and human rights activists,
to try Henry Kissenger, George Herbert Walker
Bush, Jeb Bush, George Walker Bush and the
following current or ex State Department or National Security Council
officials Oliver North, John Dimitri Negroponte and Otto Reich, for setting in
motion and encouraging state terrorism in Latin America, the Caribbean and
even the United States, in flagrant violation of international and US law,
putting the lives of their own citizens in danger; for recruiting,
training and financing terrorist groups and for the protection they have offered
and continue to offer Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles
and other renowned perpetrators of criminal actions that have claimed the
lives of ten of thousands of innocent people.
The work of this court will be handled by four commissions:
a commission for the gathering of testimonies and documentary evidence; for
research and analysis; for technical and juridical matters and for information
and dissemination.
This is the commitment assumed in
Havana: to defend ethical values and
dignity, in defiance of brute force and terror, and to carry out law and
justice. All voices must be raised against these crimes. We shall not rest
until the murderers are tried and convicted. Silence only benefits terrorists
and those who protect them. We shall not rest until the path is cleared for
truth. As Fidel has said: “Humanity yearns for justice”.
Havana, 10 June
2005
Francois Houtart,
Belgium; Isabel Parra, Chile; James Cockcroft,
USA; Pablo González Casanova, Victor Flores Olea, Gilberto López y Rivas and
Juan Bañuelo, Mexico; Thiago
de Mello, Beto Almeida, Roberto Amaral,
Beth Carvalho, María Ciavatta and Marilia Guimaraes, Brazil; Roberto Fernandez Retamar,
Cuba; Marcos Roitman, Manuel Talens,
Jaime Losada, Alicia Hermida
and Carlos Tena, Spain; Miguel Bonasso,
Stella Calloni, Ana de Skalon, Tristán Bauer, Atilio Borón, Néstor Kohan, Carlos Ruta, Luciano Alzaga and Marcelo Cafiso, Argentina; Hernando Calvo
Ospina, Colombia; Jorge Sanjinés,
Bolivia; Antonio Pecci, Paraguay; Raúl
Pérez Torres, Ecuador; Gennaro
Carotenuto, Italy; Tarik Souki, Venezuela; Samuel Blixen, Uruguay.
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