GENEVA -- The United States Tuesday compared Cuba's Fidel Castro to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin and demanded an investigation by a U.N. commission into alleged violations of freedoms by Cuba.
Ambassador Vernon Walters, permament U.S. representative to the United Nations, said the U.N. Commission on Human Rights 'can and often does help cast a beam of light into the world's many dungeons and torture chambers.'
Walters told the commission's 1988 annual session that Cuba is 'one of the world's darkest dungeons.'
'I am old enough to remember those who apologized for Hitler and Stalin,' he said. 'I remember the cries of shock and betrayal when the truth of what those dictators had done filtered out to the world.
'I think that sooner rather than later the same cries will go up when the world finally acknowledges the horrors of life under Castro.'
Walters said he came to Geneva to repeat his unsuccessful attempt in 1987 to have the 43-nation commission begin an inquiry into the human rights situation in Cuba. The U.S. delegation leader to the annual session is Armando Valladores, a former Cuban political prisoner.
'I very much understand the sense of Hispanic solidarity,' Walters said. 'We are after all the world's fifth largest Hispanic power. We feel however, that Hispanic solidarity should be with the people of Cuba, not with their unelected rulers.'
Walters said Cuba 'is governed by one of thje longest surviving dictatorships in the world, one that continues to resist the wave of democracy sweeping over most of Latin America.'
'Torture and clandestine executions continue to occur,' he said. 'Thousands of political prisoners exist -- perhaps as many as 10,000 to 15,000 in Cuba's more than 200 prisons and labor camps.'
American officials said they expected the Commission to vote Wednesday or Thursday on the latest U.S. proposal that Cuba be made a permament agenda item and that a special investigation be conducted into allegations of Cuban violations of human rights.
