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Cuba: "Bush = Hitler"
25/01/2006 11:18 - (SA)
Havana - Fidel Castro directed a vast protest march past the US mission on Tuesday, leading many thousands of cheering Cubans who carried signs equating US President George W Bush with Adolf Hitler and accused the United States of preparing to free one of the hemisphere's worst terrorists.
The government-sponsored march coincides with a US court deadline evidence to be filed in the case of Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative and anti-Castro militant held on immigration charges at a detention centre in El Paso, Texas. His lawyers are seeking his freedom as US immigration authorities seek his deportation.
Castro called Posada a "repugnant character" as well as a terrorist as he spoke to a sea of cheering Cubans along the coastal Malecon highway.
Cuba and Venezuela accuse the Cuban-born Posada of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner and staging bombings in Havana in 1997 and 1998. Together the attacks killed 74 people. Castro has also accused Posada and his colleagues of plotting to assassinate him at a summit in Panama in November 2000.
Justice wanted
"We don't want revenge, we just want justice," said Lucia Roja, a retired educator. Although she is 67 and diabetic, Roja said, "It's important to be here - I've never missed a march."
Organised by school, work and military groups, several hundred thousand marchers waved little red, white and blue Cuban flags and chanted "Bush: fascist! Condemn the terrorist!" The 79-year-old Cuban leader watched the nearly seven-hour event, and then marched at the end.
The crowd also included former Nicaraguan president and Sandinista Party leader Daniel Ortega; Castro's wife, Dalia; his older brother Ramon and his eldest son Fidel jun along with top Communist Party leaders. His younger brother Raul Castro, Cuba's defence minister and the president's appointed successor, was apparently not there.
Another focus of Castro's ire is a new electronic sign installed outside the US Interests Section in Havana, which handles consular affairs in the absence of full diplomatic relations. The sign was activated as Castro began speaking on Tuesday, relaying global news and quotes including Abraham Lincoln's: "No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent."
"They already turned on the little sign - the cockroaches are brave," Castro said before starting his speech.
The mission launched the sign a week ago with streaming text of sayings from Martin Luther King jun and excerpts from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Cuba is a signatory.
"It's nonsense!" said marcher Carla Smith, a 61-year-old lawyer. "Within a few days, we'll have forgotten all about them."
In Washington, State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said was ironic, Cuba protesting messages containing quotes about freedom. "I don't see why that should be such a source of concern for the Cuban government."
- AP
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