Cuban youth in Brussels rejects exclusion from international forum

Havana, July 16 (ACN)-- Following the recent announcement of the exclusion of civil society organizations from Cuba from the European Union-Latin America and the Caribbean Summit, ACN contacted José Ernesto Nováez Guerrero, coordinator of the Cuban chapter of the Network of Intellectuals in Defense of Humanity, who agreed from Brussels to share via WhatsApp his impressions of the event.

According to what has been appreciated so far, the young writer and journalist pointed out that such exclusion responds to a clear intention of taking the dialogue towards positions closer and more comfortable to the manifest interests of the organizers of the space.

In that sense, he pointed out, debates have arisen where they have noticed the formulation of distorted visions of the Cuban reality, with which the representatives of the island's civil society do not agree and which have been responded to by both on-site and virtual participants.

In his opinion, the exclusionary decision has clearly failed because it could and should have been more transparent in order to have a more fluid dialogue with the different instances and actors that group the civil society in Cuba.

The organizers should have been more careful from the point of view of a more equitable inclusion, articulated with the different institutions and groups of the Caribbean country and others, since it was not only in the Cuban case where exclusions occurred, and not to intend the specific selection of certain members, according to their own interests or agendas, he added.

He stressed that the forum could have been much more participatory and dialogic, as some of the sessions were held with very few people in the room and this detracted from the impact of what could have been a great meeting space for diverse positions on diverse realities.

He specified that Cuba attends these meetings with the intention of letting itself be heard, demonstrating all the willingness to dialogue that the actors of the civil society show in their daily actions, defining this capacity as a revolutionary exercise in the different stages, against which there is no reservation to find in this journey positions with which it disagrees as long as this is issued from the basis of respect and honesty.

As an alternative, he pointed out that on the 17th and 18th, in unison with the meeting of the heads of state and government of both blocs, the Peoples' Summit will be held, characterized by another dynamic conceived with an inclusive and plural approach where representatives of hundreds of organizations will be present and where several members of the Cuban delegation will also participate to present Cuba's truth at those levels.

Due to the lack of transparency and seriousness in the organization of the meeting, it was characterized in recent days as an illegitimate management that reveals ingrained tints of colonial thinking.

In this regard, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla recently denounced that the lack of transparency of the European Union jeopardizes the success of the III CELAC-EU Summit.