Vol. 77/No. 41      November 18, 2013

“During the government of President Obama, the blockade has been intensified,” Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez told the assembly before the vote, “particularly in the financial sector.”

The embargo began in October 1960, less than two years after the Cuban people, led by Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement, overthrew U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista and drew millions into the building of a new society based on the conquest of political power by workers and farmers.

Seeking to undermine the socialist revolution and punish the Cuban people, President Dwight Eisenhower initiated what became an almost total economic, trade and financial embargo, as well as a ban on U.S. citizens traveling to the island. It has been maintained by every U.S. president since then.

In his speech, Rodríguez gave numerous examples of the “human damage resulting” from the U.S. sanctions. Washington has blocked the drug Kalestra used to treat children born with AIDS and the Amplatzer device for children with heart defects.

Rodríguez said 30 U.S. and non-U.S. companies have been fined more than $2.45 billion since January 2009 for violating U.S. rules. In December 2012, the Treasury Department fined the British HSBC bank $375 million and Japan’s Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi $8.6 million.

Representatives of governments across the globe voted to condemn the embargo. Only two — the U.S. and Israel — voted against. The Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau, effectively U.S. colonies, abstained.

U.S. Ambassador Ronald Godard complained that “Cuba still has one of the most restricted economic systems in the world” and claimed that Cuba “silences critics, disrupts peaceful assembly, impedes independent journalism.”

In response to Godard’s demand that Cuba grant “unfettered access to the Internet,” Rodríguez explained that Washington denies Cuba access to high-speed underwater cables available to other nations, greatly restricting Cuba’s bandwidth.

“The government of the U.S. does not have the slightest moral authority to present itself as the accuser,” Rodríguez said. “It is responsible for wars that cause the deaths of millions of civilians, carried out extrajudicial executions with drones and deadly technologies, and has a pattern of racial and social differentiated use of the death penalty.”

Washington “atrociously uses torture and force-feeds hunger strikers,” Rodríguez said, referring to protests against torture and indefinite detention of inmates at the U.S. prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — where Washington maintains a naval base in disregard of Cuban sovereignty.
 
 
Related articles:
Montreal: Mariela Castro discusses gains for Cuban women, gays
Free the Cuban Five!
Che: Enthusiasm for work is a foundation for building socialism
 
 
 
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