WASHINGTON, USA – The General Secretariat of the Organization of American States (OAS) expresses its greatest alarm over the delicate situation of the 27 people who are on hunger strike against the repressive practices of the Cuban dictatorship, and holds the dictatorship responsible for having led to this extreme by its repression against the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) and its members.
The General Secretariat expresses its solidarity with UNPACU and its members, as they are people who fight for basic freedoms facing a dictatorial regime. It is time for the Cuban dictatorship to accede to the demands of the strikers, who are doing nothing but claiming basic rights and freedoms for the human condition, recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the legal instruments of the Inter-American System.
The Cuban dictatorship is an enormous burden on its people and should have been extinguished like the other dictatorships of the sixties and seventies in the hemisphere.
The tragedy of the Cuban people is to suffer a dictatorship for decades, a dictatorship that is responsible for all the crimes against humanity typical of State terrorism of the other hemispheric dictatorships: forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, political prisoners, political persecution, and torture.
The Cuban dictators are responsible for the tragedy of their people and the suffering of the UNPACU strikers, and we democrats around the world must always bear this in mind.