Lebanon pays tribute to Fidel on the 8th anniversary of his physical demise
The Cuban Embassy in Lebanon paid tribute to Commander in Chief, Fidel Castro, on the 8th anniversary of his physical disappearance.
Ambassador Jorge Leon Cruz began the tribute by informing that we learned the sad news while on mission in Senegal. It was a very hard moment. My wife and I could not believe it. We never imagined that this day would come.
As Martí said: “death is not true when the work of life has been accomplished”.
That is why we resisted the idea of his physical disappearance and thought that on that day, Fidel passed into immortality.
In Senegal we received wide expressions of solidarity and we had to keep the book of condolences open for more than a week, due to the large number of Senegalese friends who came to Dakar from different parts of the country to pay posthumous tribute to the Commander in Chief, Fidel.
Comrade Mayra Nieves Escobar, administrator, then recalled some of Fidel's words during his speech at the opening session of the VI Summit Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement, held at the Havana Convention Palace on September 3, 1979:
“I cite first of all the long-suffering and courageous Palestinian people. No more brutal dispossession of a people's rights to peace and existence has been committed in this century.”
“Let it be well understood that we are not fanatics. The revolutionary movement was always educated in hatred of racial discrimination and pogroms of any kind, and from the depths of our souls, we repudiate with all our might the ruthless persecution and genocide unleashed in its time by Nazism against the Hebrew people. But I cannot recall anything more similar in our contemporary history than the eviction, persecution and genocide carried out today by imperialism and Zionism against the Palestinian people.”
“Stripped of their lands, expelled from their own homeland, dispersed throughout the world, persecuted and murdered, the heroic Palestinians constitute an impressive example of self-sacrifice and patriotism, and are the living symbol of the greatest crime of our time.”
“Piece by piece the Palestinian lands and territories of neighboring Arab countries: Syria, Jordan and Egypt, have been seized by the aggressors, armed to the teeth with the most sophisticated means in the U.S. arsenal.”
“Why can the Zionist aggressors equally bomb Palestinian refugee camps and the populations of Lebanon on a daily basis? Who has given them that right? Who has given them that power? Why can they use the most sophisticated weapons of destruction and death? Who supplies them?”
“Do we not see in this irrefutable proof of the aggressive role of imperialism and the kind of order and peace they want for our peoples? Or is it that when you kill a child, an old man, a woman, a black adult, a Palestinian, a Lebanese, you are not committing a crime?”
“Can these methods and these conceptions be distinguished from the conception and the methods practiced at the time by Fascist Germany? ”
“However, day by day, news of genocidal acts of this type reach us on the wires, even through the imperialist press agencies, as if they wanted to accustom us to the resigned and meek acceptance of the facts.”
The Cuban ambassador, at the conclusion of the ceremony, stressed that these words are fully valid in the current situation we are living. That is why he concluded by affirming that today, Fidel's immortality continues to be evidenced by the fact that his work and thought are eternal, impregnated with great humanism, solidarity and internationalism in defense of justice, peace and just causes.