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What I will now read is a text
I wrote on December 2012.
It was during the invitation I received from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
by its Special Rapporteur Farida Shaheed.
This was an event held behind close doors with a dozen cultural experts,
among them artists from every field,
that is, literature, cinema, theater, visual arts, and so on.
Institutions for the defense of artists' rights,
lawyers, intergovernmental institutions
and, well, some representatives
of the Commission in charge of creating, on this basis,
a paper on Cultural Rights and
Artistic Freedom of Expression.
This, of course, was an event which was brought forth
after seeing reactions whether by the governments, or religious, corporative or even civic institutions,
how they reacted to some works
created by artists, whether cartoons, films, music,
visual arts, performances, and so on.
In these two days we met and
each of us offered examples of direct or indirect censorship on us.
We also talked about cases of other artists we knew,
of censorship on other artists.
We talked about everything, we can say, about all the elements we considered problematic, on providing a freedom
that would allow artists to express themselves.
Always, of course, we expressed in a way that
was respectful to others,
but perhaps artists might say something people would not like to hear
or governments would not want to hear, or corporations did not agree
with the use of their images, Then, after these two days of
much debate and much conversation, four artists were chosen.
That is, 4 persons. There was 1 artist,
a person who was a cultural institution himself, another person was from an institution defending the rights of artists
who had been imprisoned (especially musicians)
and, well, the Special Rapporteur. Each of us chose a topic
to submit the conclusions or a summary
of all we talked in those two days we met.
This was first presented to the nations and then there was a debate
in which each nation offered its point of view
and where some ideas were discussed and reasoned. This gave rise to
a project voted in March this year.
It was adopted. It was on Cultural Rights and
Freedom of Artistic Expression.
Cuba is among the countries that voted for the document.