ZIMBABWE ANTI-SANCTIONS TRUST
Nembudziya, Gokwe North, Zimbabwe
PRESS STATEMENT
On CMA CGM's Complicity in the Blockade Against Cuba
17 July 2026
The Zimbabwe Anti-Sanctions Trust (ZAST) condemns the French shipping company CMA CGM for stranding dozens of Cuba-bound containers at the port of Kingston, Jamaica, rather than honouring its contracts. Among the cargo are over 3.5 million syringes and needles sent by the Spanish solidarity organisation SODePAZ for the healthcare system in Santiago de Cuba, and mattresses and pillows sent by Defensem Cuba for families displaced by Hurricane Melissa. CMA CGM's only offer to the senders-return the goods to their port of origin, or pay again to ship them through another carrier-amounts to abandoning humanitarian cargo in order to appease Washington's illegal, extraterritorial sanctions regime.
This is not a logistics failure; it is submission. CMA CGM and Germany's Hapag-Lloyd, together responsible for a significant share of Cuba's container traffic, suspended new bookings to and from the island in May 2026 following the expansion of United States sanctions under Executive Order 14404. As of this statement, CMA CGM has announced no date for resuming service and no solution for the containers still held in Kingston. None of the goods involved are sanctioned military or energy materials-they are syringes, needles, mattresses, and pillows.
Zimbabwe knows this pattern well. For over two decades our people have endured the corrosive effects of illegal unilateral sanctions imposed by the same architects of coercion-measures that claim to target a government but land squarely on ordinary citizens, on trade, and on the sick. What is happening to these containers in Kingston is that same mechanism at work.
ZAST calls on CMA CGM to release the detained cargo immediately and at no further cost to the senders. We further call on shipping companies, financial institutions, and corporations across the Global South and beyond to refuse to serve as instruments of a blockade that has been condemned by the United Nations General Assembly for over three decades. Sovereignty and humanitarian dignity are not for sale to the pressure of any single power.
Issued by:
Zimbabwe Anti-Sanctions Trust (ZAST)
Nembudziya, Gokwe North, Zimbabwe