King deserves praise for defending democracy
Bravo to King Felipe VI of Spain.
Despite his ill-advised trip to Cuba, he made a courageous speech in which he called for democratic freedoms in front of the island’s dictator, Miguel Diaz-Canel.
At the official dinner on Nov. 14 before ending his visit to Havana, the king talked about Cuba’s future and said, “Nothing can be frozen in time.” He added that citizens should have the rights “to freely express their ideas, freedom of association and assembly.”
Granted, his full speech was not broadcast live in Cuba, nor was it printed by the Cuban press. Cuba’s official media — the only ones allowed on the island — only released excerpts, omitting the parts where he talked about democracy. The speech was posted on the king’s website.
The speech contained enough references to Cuba’s “right to decide its own future” without foreign meddling to allow Diaz-Canel to applaud and to pretend that it was an overall show of support for the Cuban regime.
The king’s choice of Cuba for his first official trip abroad with his wife, Queen Letizia, can rightly be criticized for giving diplomatic oxygen to one of the world’s oldest and most decrepit dictatorships. Cuba has not allowed free elections, political parties or independent media in six decades.
Dissidents on the island had criticized Felipe’s visit, mainly because the king’s agenda shamefully did not contain any meetings with human-rights activists or government leaders. The trip also came amid a new crackdown on peaceful opposition activists, including human-rights leader Jose Daniel Ferrer. He was arrested without charges Oct. 1, and, according to humanrights groups, has been tortured in jail.
In normal times, I wouldn’t have applauded the Spanish king’s visit to Cuba, even after his speech. I would have probably criticized him for giving political legitimacy to an unelected regime and for failing to meet with dissidents.
But these are not normal times. After U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory, there has been a widespread retrenchment by key world leaders — starting with Trump himself — from the cause of democracy and human rights.
Trump has virtually abandoned the post-World War II bipartisan U.S. support for democracy in the world, which, granted, was not always consistent. But it used to be a pillar of U.S. foreign policy. Except for the cases of Cuba and Venezuela, whose exiles in Florida he is courting for the 2020 elections, Trump almost never speaks up for democracy or against human-rights abuses by despotic regimes.
On the same day Felipe was making his pro-democracy speech in Havana, Trump was giving an enthusiastic welcome in the White House to Turkey’s authoritarian ruler, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“I’m a big fan of the president,” Trump told reporters with Erdogan at his side. Looking at the Turkish strongman, he added, “You’re doing a fantastic job for the people of Turkey.”
Trump didn’t say a world about Erdogan’s humanrights violations or about his habit of rigging elections. He has also gone out of his way not to criticize the leaders of Russia, China, North Korea and other totalitarian states.
Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador also has turned his back on the defense of democracy and human rights around the world. Last week, his government gave a hero’s welcome to Bolivia’s former authoritarian ruler, Evo Morales, who had just rigged elections in October, according to two separate observation and auditing teams from the Organization of American States that Morales himself had invited. Elected in 2006, Morales had long violated constitutional term limits, which allowed him to serve only two consecutive terms.
In the context of Trump, Lopez Obrador and other leaders’ pulling back from the defense of democracy and human rights in other countries, King Felipe VI’s words in front of Cuba’s dictator were a breath of fresh air.