Wednesday 30 November 2016

Cuba allies join thousands to honour Castro in Havana


Several world leaders - and thousands of Cubans - gather in Havana to pay final respects to the late Fidel Castro.Hundreds of thousands of Cubans rallied for late communist leader Fidel Castro with Latin American and African leaders in Havana the night before his ashes were to be taken across the country. They chanted "Long live the revolution!" and "Fidel! Fidel!" on Tuesday at a packed Revolution Square, the vast esplanade where he gave so many of his legendary marathon speeches. 
A giant picture of a young, bearded Castro in his guerrilla uniform and rifle hung on the National Library as his brother and successor, Raul Castro, waved at the crowd. "There are thousands of people in the square," Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher, reporting from the rally in Havana, said. "The ceremony began with the national anthem. Before that we saw some of the dignitaries, like Evo Morales of Bolivia and Jacob Zuma of South Africa, take their seats on the podium. They were cheered, applauded by everyone in the crowd." Leftist presidents Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua were also among foreign dignitaries to pay tribute to Castro. Correa praised Castro's ideology, telling the crowd: "We will keep fighting for these ideas. We swear!" Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, 92, himself a former Marxist guerrilla who has led his country as prime minister or president since 1980 despite financial and health crises, praised Fidel Castro's government for having trained thousands of Zimbabwean doctors and teachers. "Fidel was not just your leader. He was our leader and the leader of all revolutionaries. We followed him, listened to him and tried to emulate him," Mugabe told reporters as he arrived in Havana. "Farewell, dear brother. Farewell, revolutionary," he said. South African President Jacob Zuma hailed Castro as "one of the great heroes of the 20th century", citing his opposition to apartheid and his deployment of Cuban troops to back Angola's government against rebels in 1975. Mexico's Enrique Pena Nieto also flew in, but Colombian Juan Manuel Santos, whose government negotiated a peace deal with the Marxist FARC rebels in Havana, did not come as expected. Read more

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