Did Someone Say ‘Human Rights’?

The following questions were asked in 1978:

"With what moral right can the rulers of a nation speak of human rights when within it the millionaire and the beggar coexist, the Indian is exterminated, the black man is discriminated against, women are prostituted and large masses of Chicano, Puerto Ricans and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited and humiliated? 

How can this be done by the rulers of a nation where the Mafia, gambling and child prostitution predominate, where the CIA organizes subversion and universal espionage plans and where the Pentagon creates neutron bombs capable of preserving material assets while exterminating human beings, in an empire
that supports reaction and counterrevolution throughout the world, that protects and encourages the exploitation by monopolies of the wealth and human resources on all continents, unequal trade, a protectionist policy, an incredible squandering of natural resources and a system of hunger for the world? 

How can this be done by the representatives of a capitalist and imperialist society whose essence is the exploitation of man by man and, with it, egotism, individualism and total absence of human solidarity? 

How can such watchwords be written by those who train and send military supplies to the most reactionary, corrupt and bloody governments in tie world such as those of Somoza, Pinochet, Stroessner, the Uruguayan gorillas, Mobutu and the shah of Iran, to mention only a few cases?

How can there be talk of such rights by those who maintain close relations with the South African racists who oppress, discriminate against and exploit 20 million Africans, by those who supply the Zionist aggressors with large quantities of sophisticated weapons with which they dislodged the Palestinian people from their lands and who refuse to return to the Arab countries [applause] and they refuse to return to the Arab countries the territories they have taken by force?

How can the leaders of a nation speak of human rights when their
intelligence agencies organized attempts against leaders of other nations and their armies dropped explosives in Vietnam many times the equivalent of the nuclear bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing millions of Vietnamese, without even having the dignity of apologizing for the one and indemnifying the other? 

How can the leaders of such a nation speak of human rights when they have traditionally intervened in the nations of Latin America, subjugating the peoples of this continent to their exploitation, and who are responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of children each year through illness and hunger? 

In fact, how can the imperialist government that maintains a military base by force on our territory and subjects our people to a criminal economic blockade speak of human rights?" 

—Fidel Castro, July 26, 1978.

Now, shall we talk about "human rights" since 1978?