2018, October 27.
The MSJ joins with the Regional and International Community to Demand that the US Ends the Illegal Blockade of Cuba.
On Wednesday October 31st, the United Nations General Assembly will be called upon to vote for the Resolution tabled by the Republic of Cuba entitled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”. This Resolution has now been tabled annually since 1992. On every occasion the Resolution has been passed. In the past decade, less than a handful of the 190+ member states of the UN have voted against the Resolution, principally the US itself and Israel. In 2016, given the restoration of diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba under the Presidency of Barrack Obama, both the US and Israel abstained. There were therefore no dissenting votes two years ago.
However, since the Presidency of Donald Trump, the US has reversed its position and last year (2017) the US and Israel again voted against while 191 states voted with Cuba in support of ending the blockade. In spite of this massive diplomatic isolation, the US continues with its imperialist policy of the blockade. Caricom member states have always maintained the principled position that the blockade is wrong and should be ended. Indeed, it was the then four, newly independent, Caricom states (Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados and Guyana) which in 1972 established diplomatic relations with Cuba – making them the first in this hemisphere apart from Mexico so to do. The MSJ is confident that all Caricom member states will again vote in support of Cuba’s Resolution.
It is important, however, for the people of the region to understand what the blockade has done to Cuba and its people. Firstly, the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba during the last years of the Obama administration did not result in the ending of the blockade. Apart from having Embassies established in their respective capitals that replaced the previous “Interests Sections”, President Obama did remove, by Presidential Order, certain restrictions on the travel by US citizens to Cuba as well as on US businesses. However, the main components of the blockade are embedded in US laws passed by the US Congress and, given that the Congress is Republican controlled, Obama could not get the blockade lifted.
Trump, in his strategy of ending all of Obama’s policies, has, by Presidential Order, reversed even the limited reforms instituted by President Obama. Thus, according to the Report prepared by Cuba in support of the UN Resolution:
“The government of the United States has imposed a serious setback to the bilateral relations with Cuba based on President Donald Trump’s signing of the “Presidential Memorandum for National Security about the Tightening of US Policy against Cuba” on 16 June 2017, thereby renewing, among its aims, the tightening of the blockade against the Island. In November of that same year the Departments of Commerce, the Treasury and State of the US issued new regulations and provisions to put into effect the aforementioned Memorandum.
The measures applied restricted even further the right of Americans to travel to Cuba and it imposed additional obstacles on the limited opportunities of the American business community in Cuba, by setting up a list of 179 Cuban entities with which American natural and juridical persons are prohibited from carrying out transactions.
The new sanctions against Cuba have caused a notable decrease in visits from the US and they have generated greater obstacles on Cuban companies’ economic and commercial relations with potential American and third country partners. These measures not only affect the Cuban State economy but they also affect the country’s private sector.
The strengthening of the extra-territorial application of the blockade has been another of the distinctive manifestations of the tightening of this policy, with marked effects on Cuba’s international financial and loan relations.
In recent months, the permanent persecution of Cuban financial transactions and bank and loan operations with Cuba has intensified on a world scale. This has caused severe harm to the country’s economy especially on the commercial activities of companies and national banks in their links with international banking”.
As Caribbean people we need to stand with our Cuban sisters and brothers in demanding that the US end the blockade now! It is illegal, contrary to all international laws and principles of international relations in that it violates the sovereignty of Cuba. The blockade has caused immeasurable economic losses to Cuba and caused pain to the Cuban people. The MSJ therefore once again adds our voice to the demand that “the United States of America ends the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed against Cuba”.
Movement for Social Justice
David Abdulah, Political Leader