HAVANA, Cuba, (acn) Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said on Wednesday in Geneva that, for half a century, Cuba has been a victim of US terrorist actions and aggressions and added that Washington’s anti-Cuba policy remains intact.

Speaking during the third day of the 13th Session of the Human Rights Council underway in this Swiss city until March 26, the Cuban diplomat condemned the human rights violations committed in the US torture centers of Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantanamo, among others, and he also criticized the European countries that allowed secret jails and flights.

Meanwhile, regarding the situation in Palestine, he called it a true genocide and accused
the US Government of imposing and supporting dictatorships that for decades caused thousands of deaths.

Rodriguez stressed that a new subversive escalation has been launched by the US Government with total disrespect for all ethical principles.

“They intend to present mercenaries as patriots, US-paid agents in Cuban territory as dissidents and unpatriotic criminals as prisoners of conscience,” he noted.

“The powerful machinery of the Empire does not hesitate in using a recurrent inmate, appropriately punished for common crimes and who was later recruited in prison, as a human rights activist,” said the Foreign Minister in reference to Cuban citizen Orlando Zapata, who recently died after staging a long hunger strike.

“In order to achieve spurious political dividends and despite the painstaking medical care given to the inmate, he was later forced to death, a regrettable event as expressed by President Raul Castro,” said Rodriguez, who described the case as another victim of the subversive US policy against Cuba.

The diplomat recalled that since the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, there has not been “a single case of assassination, torture of extrajudicial execution” in Cuba.

“Cuba has an exemplary record in the protection of human rights, even beyond its borders,” he added.

Rodriguez stressed that the US economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba is an act of genocide as typified in the Convention against Genocide and a massive, flagrant and systematic violation of human rights.

“I must say, in the name of the heroic and noble people of Cuba, that no campaign will ever separate us from our ideas of liberty and independence,” he concluded.