People's Democracy

Remembering Jose Marti

A three – member delegation from the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), consisting of Evangelina Seoane Dominguez, (vice president), Alica Elvira Corredera Morales (head of department) and Isabel Adela Perez Herrera (an official) had visited India from September 17 to September 25, and met, among others, eminent personalities like former President, K R Narayanan, CPI (M) general secretary, Harkishen Singh Surjeet, Congress (I) president, Sonia Gandhi, former external affairs minister, K Natwar Singh, IPU chairperson, Dr. Najma Hepthullah, Forward Block general secretary, Debabrata Biswas, CPI leaders D Raja and Pallab Sen Gupta, Chandrajit Yadav, MP, and leaders of the SFI, DYFI, AIKS, AIAWU, CITU, and AIDWA, among others.

They also met the eminent author, Ajeet Kaur and artist, Arpana Kaur, at the Academy of Fine Arts and Literature.

The National Committee for Solidarity with Cuba in India has decided to observe the 150th birth anniversary of Cuba's great patriot martyr, Jose Marti, with festivals, public meetings, exhibitions, debates and other activities that will help to popularise his life and ideas among the mass of people of our country.

A National Delegate Convention on Solidarity with Cuba was held at Andhra Bhawan, in New Delhi, on September 20th, presided over by A Vijayaraghavan, MP and Convenor of the Solidarity Committee With Cuba in India. This meeting was addressed by Suneet Chopra, joint secretary of AIAWU, MP's Hannan Mollah and K M Khan, Ramesh Chandra, former chairman of the World Peace Council, Atul Kumar Anjan, CPI executive committee member, Sumit Chakravarty, editor Mainstream, Professor Aparajith Chattopadhyay of JNU, G Devarajan, secretary of Forward Bloc, and Krishna Prasad, president of SFI, who spoke on the resolution proposed by the Solidarity Committee which was passed unanimously. The vice president of ICAP greeted the convention.

Following is the declaration adopted by National Delegate Convention On Solidarity With Cuba, held in New Delhi on September 20, 2002:

DECLARATION

WE the representatives of The National Committee for Solidarity with Cuba in India, express our firm solidarity with the Cuban people who have fought relentlessly against Spanish colonial rule and then against oppressive dictatorships foisted on the Cuban people by US imperialism, emerging as a sovereign socialist Republic in 1960. We believe that the people of every country have the right to govern themselves as they please without external interference. We further express our solidarity with the ongoing Cuban revolution, which has rooted out the vestiges of slavery, racism and illiteracy in the process of its evolution. We also express our support for the manner in which exploitation is sought to be rooted out and the foundation of a more just and equitable society laid by the Cuban people and their government.

In this year of the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Cuba’s great patriot martyr, Jose Marti, we deem the illegal blockade imposed on the people of Cuba by the US administration, (whose closest collaborators are the drug and arms mafia of Miami) a crime against humanity and join the growing numbers of sane people in the USA and all over the world in demanding that it be ended at once.

We further demand that the USA stop the proxy war it is conducting from its territory against the sovereign state of Cuba whose territory of Guantanamo it still illegally occupies. In this context we ask for the removal of concentration camps of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists from the Guantanamo Naval Base whose original agreement has no provision to turn it into a prison camp. We further demand the release of the Cuban patriots Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, Fernando Gonzales Llort, Ramon Labanino Salazar, Rene Gonzales Sechwrert and Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, who are being held as "spies" since September 12, 1998 without proper justice being meted out to them. We demand they be declared what they are, fighters against global terrorism, and be released at once. We condemn the constant threats being voiced by the USA against Cuba, North Korea, Iraq and Iran and call on our government to come out openly against such international terrorism and ensure that the USA and its allies are forced to behave according to international norms as other countries do. In this context we condemn the recent speech of President Bush at the UN General Assembly session and demand that the government of India dissociate itself from it publicly.

The Solidarity Committee has decided to observe the 150th birth anniversary of Jose Marti with festivals, public meetings, exhibitions, debates and other activities that will help to popularise his life and ideas among the mass of people of our country, strengthen the campaign to resist the US blockade with material aid to Cuba, and will attend all major international activities connected with these issues in strength.

The National Committee will ensure that the year 2003 will be one of cementing the relation between the Cuban and Indian people more than ever before.