MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Castro doesn't “give a damn” about civil liberties

Cuban President Fidel Castro says he does not “give a damn” about the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and whether it criticizes or not civil liberties in the island he has ruled since 1959.

"I don't give a damn and the Cuban people don't give a damn about the Geneva Commission" said Mr. Castro in a special speech broadcast live by Cuban television Thursday night.

The Cuban leader was referring to the United States sponsored motion to condemn Havana for its human rights record situation which will be debated in the Geneva-based Commission in the coming days.

In the same speech, Castro called the late Pope John Paul II an "exceptional man ... (and a) tireless fighter," adding that the objective of his 1998 visit to Cuba had not been to do away with communism on the island.

"In the empire (US) and in other places, they interpreted the Pope's visit as something that would cause the collapse of the Revolution" underlined Mr. Castro

"They thought that the Revolution would collapse like the city of Jericho at the sound of the trumpets, (but) the Pope didn't bring any trumpets and came with no intentions of destroying the Revolution" he added.

Despite the fact that John Paul II maintained a "very active attitude" in his struggle against communism, he was not responsible for the collapse of socialism in Poland or in other countries in the region formerly under the influence of the now defunct Soviet Union, argued the Cuban leader.

"What prevailed above all was his profound religious motivation" and "if one day Cuban socialism collapses, the blame will lie with nobody but us".

Mr. Castro, 78, also criticized the presence of U.S. President George W. Bush at the pontiff's Rome funeral, saying that "it's an insult to the memory of John Paul II" who openly opposed the U.S. led war in Iraq and was critical of capitalism.