Vol. 79/No. 36 October 12, 2015
NEW YORK — In three speeches during his visit at the United Nations, Cuban President Raúl Castro drew attention to the deteriorating conditions faced by billions of workers and farmers around the world. He called for measures to close the gap between imperialist and semicolonial countries. And he appealed for support in the continued fight to end Washington’s economic war against Cuba.
In his Sept. 28 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, the revolutionary leader said that since 1945 when the organization was founded “there have constantly been wars of aggression, and interference in the internal affairs of states; the ousting of sovereign governments by force.”
Today “795 million go hungry, 781 million adults are illiterate, and 17,000 children perish every day from curable diseases, while annual military expenses worldwide amount to more than $1.7 trillion. Barely a fraction of that figure could resolve the most pressing problems afflicting humanity,” he said.
“Even in industrial nations the ‘welfare society,’ usually presented as the model to imitate, has practically disappeared,” Castro added, describing the effects of the growing capitalist crisis of production and trade.
Castro condemned the continuing attempts by imperialist powers, principally the United States, to undermine any government that doesn’t follow imperialist dictates, including those of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. He reaffirmed Cuba’s support of independence for Puerto Rico “after more than a century of colonial domination.”
U.S. economic war against Cuba
Despite the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States, Castro noted that the U.S. economic war against Cuba continues.Normalization of relations between the two governments “will only be achieved,” he said, “with the end of the economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba; the return to our country of the territory illegally occupied by Guantánamo Naval Base; the cessation of radio and TV broadcasts, and of subversion and destabilization programs against the island; and when our people are compensated for the human and economic damages they still endure.”
“No less than 2.7 billion people in the world live in poverty,” Castro said at the Sept. 26 U.N. Summit for the Adoption of the Post-2015 Development Agenda. “Wealthy individuals and transnational companies grow richer while the number of poor, unemployed and homeless people increase dramatically as a result of the harsh so-called austerity policies, and waves of desperate immigrants arrive in Europe escaping misery and conflict that others have unleashed,” he said.
The next day the revolutionary leader addressed a U.N. “leaders meeting” on women’s empowerment and gender equality, pointing to advances on women’s conditions and rights in Cuba, with one of the lowest rates of deaths in childbirth in the world and the large number of women in the workforce there.
“We shall never renounce honor, human solidarity and social justice, for these convictions are deeply rooted in our socialist society,” Castro told the Sept. 26 summit.
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