By Vanessa Bauzá
Havana Bureau

HAVANA · The United Nations' top human rights body approved a resolution to censure Cuba by a razor-thin margin on Thursday.

The highly politicized 22-21 vote, with 10 abstentions, followed the unexpected release from prison of a gravely ill dissident who suffers from chronic kidney failure.

Julio Antonio Valdez is one of 75 dissidents and independent journalists jailed by the Cuban government last year. He was released from the prison ward of a Havana hospital Wednesday night and admitted to the Institute of Nephrology on Thursday afternoon for a possible kidney transplant.

Valdez, 51, had gathered signatures for a dissident-led petition drive known as the Varela Project and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Valdez's wife, Cruz Delia Aguilar, said she expects him to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest. She said Valdez was released from prison a month after she wrote a letter to prison authorities stating he was too weak to be incarcerated.

"I think they took too long [to answer] because he is gravely ill," Aguilar said. "The situation he is in is not easy, to be behind bars only for his ideas. He didn't commit any crime."

Unlike the mildly worded resolution passed by the U.N. Human Rights Commission last year, this year's resolution made reference to the Cuban government's crackdown on dissidents and called on it to "refrain from adopting measures which could jeopardize the fundamental rights, the freedom of expression and the right to due process of its citizens."

It also urged Cuba to accept a visit by a U.N. human rights monitor.

On Thursday, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque dismissed the resolution as "ridiculous."

"Cuba rejects the very existence of a resolution ... and therefore will not cooperate," Perez Roque said.

He accused the U.S. government of using blackmail and strong-arm tactics to get other countries to back the resolution. He also announced that Cuba had introduced a resolution criticizing the "arbitrary" detentions of terror suspects at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay.

In Washington, a State Department official praised the resolution against Cuba and denied that the United States put pressure on commission members to vote for the statement.

"This sends a strong message to courageous Cubans who struggle daily to defend their human rights and fundamental freedoms as well as to the repressive Castro regime," the official said.

Each year the Cuba resolution is among the most politicized items on the commission's agenda.

On Thursday in Geneva the tense atmosphere of the conference room spilled over into the hallway when, moments after the vote, a member of the Cuban delegation allegedly attacked a prominent anti-Castro activist.

Frank Calzon, who runs the Washington-based Center for a Free Cuba, was knocked to the ground and briefly lost consciousness after he approached members of the Cuban delegation.

"There was a provocation from Frank Calzon against one woman in the Cuban delegation, and he received the due response from our Cuban delegation," Cuban ambassador Jorge Mora Godoy told The Associated Press in Geneva.

Vanessa Bauzá can be reached at vmbauza1@yahoo.com.

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