WIKICUBA: Canada 'kowtowing' to Havana to curry business favours

Canada 'kowtowing' to Havana to curry business favours: U.S. cable

December 18, 2010 Star

Canada is one of several countries that has stopped pressuring Cuba on human rights to gain business favours from Havana, according to confidential U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks and published Friday by the Guardian newspaper.

The Western governments paid lip service to concerns about political prisoners and censorship, but in reality were appeasing the island’s Communist rulers, wrote Jonathan Farrar, the U.S. head of mission in Cuba.

The diplomat made scathing remarks about his colleagues “kowtowing” to the Castro regime and joining what he scornfully termed the “best friends forever” camp, the Guardian reports.

“The Australian foreign minister, Switzerland’s human rights special envoy and the Canadian cabinet level minister of the Americas not only failed to meet with non-government Cubans, they didn’t even bother to publicly call for more freedoms after visiting Cuba in November,” Farrar wrote.

The cables were written shortly after Peter Kent, minister of state of foreign affairs (Americas), visited Cuba in November, 2009.

“The Canadians also failed to meet with the independent civil society or make public pronouncements after the visit of Minister Kent,” Farrar wrote.

“This was surprising, since Kent and Prime Minister (Stephen) Harper had been publicly critical of Cuba’s human rights record, something that led the GOC (Government of Cuba) to cancel Kent’s visit last April. Canadian officials in Havana told us that Kent raised the issue of Cuba’s political prisoners but that the GOC had immediately turned the discussion into one of definitions.”

Canada had softened its position over the past year, he wrote, with newly arrived diplomats minimizing civil society contacts.

“Promoting democracy may play well in political circles in Ottawa but the Canadian government appears to have decided that doing anything serious about it in Cuba under the current regime could jeopardize the advancement of Canada’s other interests.”

Washington has imposed trade sanctions on Cuba since the Kennedy administration in 1962. The fact that Canada continues to do business with Cuba has always been a sore point in relations between the two North American countries.

The U.S. envoy mocked those who claimed to push for human rights in private meetings with Cuban officials.

“The truth is that most of these countries do not press the issue at all in Cuba,” he wrote. The government of Cuba “deploys considerable resources to bluff and bully many missions and their visitors into silence.”