UN committee hits U.S. role in Puerto Rico
UNITED NATIONS — It was right out of the old UN playbook from the 1980’s — a quiet UN Committee hearing, a politically stacked deck, and then a clarion call by indignant representatives demanding that the United States follow some sort of global diktat. But when the Special Committee on Decolonization approved a draft resolution calling on the United States to speed up the process to allow Puerto Ricans to exercise fully their inalienable right to self-determination and independence, few noticed at first.
The sonorous meeting of a nearly moribund committee has called for the matter to be referred to the full UN General Assembly for a non-binding vote later this year.
In the resolution sponsored by Cuba, the Committee expressed its “deep concern over the intimidation, repression and other violent acts committed in the last few months against Puerto Rican pro-independence leaders and encourages an investigation into such acts.” Cuba’s representative said it was increasingly urgent for the General Assembly to carry out a comprehensive review of Puerto Rico’s status and the island’s future.
Recently the Non-Aligned Movement expressed its solidarity with the Puerto Rican people during its ministerial meeting in Malaysia.
While this action occurred off the political radar screen it clearly represents a clear and consistent policy by both Havana and Caracas to keep up the political pressures on American interests in Latin America, in this case the “Yanqui presence” in Puerto Rico.
Both Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez use such forums as a place for political agitprop against Washington.
Cuba’s Ambassador Rodrigo Malmierca who served as ringmaster for this politically charged committee charged, “The Puerto Rican people continues without being able to exercise its legitimate right tot genuine self-determination as the United States of America, the colonial power, tries by all means to consolidate its economic, political and social dominance over this brotherly Latin American and Caribbean people.”
Despite the pious nostrums of the Decolonization Committee, the American presence in Puerto Rico is, if anything, a blanket of costly big government with a stifling nanny state socialism. Puerto Rico remains a self-governing American Commonwealth—a unique status affording the Spanish-speaking island of 4 million many of the benefits of American citizenship without U.S. federal taxes.
The Caribbean island was removed from the UN’s list on non-self governing territories back in 1952.
Moreover three plebiscites on the islands status showed conclusively that the popular majority wish to keep the Commonwealth status quo. There’s lukewarm support for formal American statehood and virtually nil support for independence. Historically the independence movement was supported by the pro—Castro communists and socialists of various stripes. In a 1999 referendum only 3 percent favored independence.
Petitioners before the committee included representatives of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party; Pro Libertad Freedom Campaign; Socialist Workers Party; Socialist Front of Puerto Rico; Popular Democratic Party; among others. Representatives of Cuba, Iran and Venezuela also addressed the forum.
The delegate of Chavez’s Venezuela stated “Venezuela firmly and categorically favored the total independence of Puerto Rico with the understanding that any solution in that regard must originate with the Puerto Rican people.”
The resolution was adopted prompting Cuban Ambassador Malmierca to comment “the approval of the draft resolution was a tribute to the patriotic spirit of the Puerto Rican people, and Cuba would continue to defend their legitimate right to self-determination and independence.”
The unanimous vote on the resolution reflected the curious membership of the Special Committee. Not so coincidently of its twenty-four member states—few democracies among them save for Chile, India, and Iraq. Cuba, Bolivia, Islamic Iran, the People’s Republic of China, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela are among the members.
Should Puerto Rico wish to change its relationship with the USA or its political system, it has far more opportunity to freely do so than do the citizens of most members of this committee offering meddlesome advice.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense
issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com. |
