Pretoria, April 10, 2020. - End Sanctions, Save Lives International Solidarity in the time of Covid-19
Whilst COVID-19 has shown how very unprepared most of the world is for such a pandemic, what has been equally
revealing has been seeing the true faces of our enemies and our friends. Or rather, the enemies and friends of humanity itself.
Whilst the states of Cuba and China, who have faced decades of economic warfare and mainstream media
misrepresentation, have shown immense leadership and support in the fight against the virus, the so-called developed
nations of the world have taken the opposite approach: refusing responsibility, closing themselves off, retreating and
lagging in providing decisive and effective confrontation of the situation. United States imperialism, in particular, continues to
persecute and fire bullets, rather than show compassion and cooperation.
This is happening on multiple levels. There is the ever present threat of direct military action: the United States still maintains
nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad and more than 80 US military bases exist in
Latin America.
It is also happening through the more invisible, insidious hybrid warfare, characterized by information warfare,
diplomatic warfare and a spectrum of economic warfare. The United States has been in an ideological and economic war
against China during the last few years.
There has seen an increase in public character assassination of China and their people in order to maintain a sense of
superiority in the face of China’s clearly successful confrontations with the virus domestically and abroad.
Racist and xenophobic diatribes have littered statements made by Donald Trump and his imperialist gangsters. At the
beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross went so far as to rejoice in the prospect that the
situation could be “good for bringing jobs back to the United States,” as companies review their supply chains and
potentially move out of China. This is part of continued desperate attempts to maintain the
United States’ political and cultural hegemony, in a time of a pandemic that stretches across the globe.
US imperialism escalates conflict under Covid-19.
The US continues to employ various tactics, brutal sanctions and smear campaigns of right-wing propaganda, in the
hopesof crippling “threatening” nations and legitimating escalating future imperialist attacks. Most recently, the US is
peddling dangerous lies about President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela being a narco-terrorist in order to justify the
deployment of gun boats through the US Southern command toward Venezuela. This is incredible disturbing when we
consider that Venezuela is at its most vulnerable with the sanctions having gutted the domestic economy, public
services and infrastructure and led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths; in 2017 to 2018, a year which saw the
intensification of the sanction, there was a 31% increase in general mortality (more than 40,000 deaths) arising from the
lack of life saving medicinal, technological and nutritional supplies that would be attained through access to global
markets.
The continued imposition of sanctions aimed at Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and many more countries are the biggest
obstacle these countries face in their fight to deal with the virus and the well-being of people. Amongst many aspects,
these sanctions have inhibited each nation’s capacity to purchase the necessary medical and pharmaceutical
supplies.
This is criminal even in the eyes of the most conservative and globally-recognised international organisations. In fact, under
the 1949 Geneva Conventions, any policy that inflicts damage on an entire population is a war crime.
All sanctions must be lifted with immediate effect! Cuban compassion will not be blockaded
Despite the imposition of these economic blockades, exquisite acts of solidarity have been the marker of these difficult times.
Leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro once said:
“Our country does not drop bombs on other peoples, nor does it send thousands of planes to bomb cities; our country does
not possess nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, or biological weapons. Our country’s tens of thousands of
scientists and doctors have been educated in the idea of saving lives.”
Over the last 60 years, despite being suffocated by a range of economic sanctions and warfare, Cuba has performed
incredible contributions to humanity: from the very first mission to Algeria in 1960 (only one year into their
independence as a new nation) to the battle against ebola in West Africa and cholera in Haiti more recently.
Cuba has been able to show real revolutionary internationalism because of the deep investment in and
commitment to a preventative public healthcare system. The Caribbean island has one of the highest doctor to patient
ratios in the world. Instead of putting funds into military expenditure, Cuba from the earliest days of its revolution,
invested the large majority of its funds into education and healthcare.
Cuban doctors continue to serve the interest of the majority. During this time, Cuba has sent brigades of medical workers
to Venezuela, Nicaragua, Grenada, Italy and several other places deeply affected by COVID-19. Despite sanctions,
Cuba within a week sent 593 health workers in medical brigades to 14 countries to support in the fight against Covid-
19.
On March 18, Cuba received a British cruise ship with 1000 passengers on it, the MS Braemar, at its port in Havana. Of
those passengers, five had tested positive for COVID-19 and almost 50 showing symptoms. Prior to this, several Caribbean
nations and the United States had denied docking rights to the ship.
At the port of Mariel, the Cuban government explained the decision to receive the ship. “These are times of solidarity, of
understanding health as a human right, of reinforcing international cooperation to face our common challenges,
values that are inherent in the humanistic practice of the Cuban Revolution and our people,” said an official statement
issued by the Foreign Ministry of Cuba.
On 22 March, Cuba sent doctors and nurses to Lombardy, Italy, one of the worst struck areas. The health workers were
part of a 52-person brigade sent to work alongside the Italians. “What we are going to do is cure and bring relief, not
only to the Italian people but the world’s population. This is a global battle and we have to fight it together,” said Carlos
Armando Garcia Hernandez, a Cuban nurse part of the medical brigade. An intensive care specialist, Leonardo
Fernandez said, “We are all afraid but we have a revolutionary duty to fulfil, so we take out fear and put it to one
side... He who says he is not afraid is a superhero, but we are not superheroes, we are revolutionary doctors.”
No country in the world has felt the suffocation of a blockade as much as Cuba. It has been their ideological commitment to
socialist values that has guided their actions. For the Cubans, and all revolutionary movements, in times of crisis, cooperation and
mutuality is core. As Mozambican revolutionary Samoral Machel put it so well, “International solidarity is not an act of charity: it is an act of unity between
allies fighting on different terrains toward the same objectives. The foremost of these objectives is to assist in the
development of humanity to the highest level possible.” Covid-19 reveals the ongoing global struggles of class
conflict. We all exist in a global economy dominated by capital to which all other forms of economic activity - agricultural,
industry, energy, construction and telecommunications – are subordinate. The world capitalist system thrives on a deep,
long-term structural crisis. This crisis is characterized by:
• The domination of monopoly finance capital
• War as a means of stimulating and protecting capitalist accumulation
• The rise of extreme right-wing racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic politics
• Environmental degradation
• The ever increasing gap between the rich and the poor where the wealth of the world is controlled by a tiny
elite few.
Through the global spread of Covid-19, this system has been exposed naked for the world to see. Clearly, the grip of the
bourgeois order has substantially decayed. A recent article published in People’s Dispatch, described
very well the disturbing nature of the current global world order saying: “In the midst of a pandemic, one would expect
that all countries would collaborate in every way to mitigate the spread of the virus and its impact on human society. One
would expect that a humanitarian crisis of this magnitude would provide the opportunity to suspend or end all inhumane
economic sanctions and political blockades against certain countries. We are dancing around the main point: is this not
the time for the imperialist bloc, led by the United States of America, to end the sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela,
and a series of other countries?”
Now more than ever, we need to solidify our action to end the sanctions and economic blockades against Cuba, Iran,
Venezuela and more. Further to this, now more than ever, the case for socialism has never been more apparent. States that practice socialism,
such as Cuba, have shown a principled commitment to people over profit, through their ongoing commitment to having public
resources and structures in place that are combating this health crisis.
Though disagreement still continues on how to characterize China’s state, there can be no doubt that China has chosen
people over profit. Where China marshalled state-owned enterprises and confiscated private capital to meet the
production needs of the pandemic, the United States’ coronavirus response has largely favoured the corporate
class at the cost of the general population’s well-being.
In fact, China’s state production and global cooperation is equipping the world with the tools to fight coronavirus, offering
a vision of a world without Western hegemony.
We, the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party, unequivocally denounce all hybrid warfare aimed at the people of Cuba,
Venezuela, Iran and all countries by the United States.
As the global Covid-19 pandemic deepens the crises of humanity, we call for the immediate lifting of all sanctions
imposed by the US (and at thirty other countries)!
We stand in solidarity with frontline workers worldwide - those working in the areas of medicine, sanitation, public and
domestic care, public administration, food production and distribution and all essential services - as they physically put
their lives on the line to fight this virus.
END SANCTIONS ON CUBA, VENEZUELA, IRAN AND OTHERS NOW!
Issued on 9 April 2020 by Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party