On May 15, 2024 the US State Department announced that Cuba was NOT being included in its 2023 report of “countries that do not fully cooperate in the fight against terrorism.” The document was dutifully sent to the US Congress.
Cuba’s removal from this list initially appears as the U.S. government retreating from its aggressive policy of suffocating Cuba through its 64 year history of sanctions and blockade. However, the removal of Cuba from this other list does not result in any of the extraterritorial, brutal US sanctions being ended or for Cuba to exercise its sovereign rights and its own economic and political trajectory.
Even with this other report, Cuba still remains on the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list which includesdetermined by the Secretary of State to have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism”. The Cuba Si NY/NJ Coalition rejects taking Cuba off this minor list, while continuing its policy of economic strangulation through designating Cuba as a state harboring terrorism. This is nothing but a sleight-of-hand, a diversion. It does register mounting hemispheric and international pressure on the Biden Administration to actually change the hated US anti-Cuba policy.
The SSOT designation and the 64 year U.S. blockade continues to heavily affect the Cuban economy, costing Cuba billions, while suffocating the people of Cuba and preventing essential medical supplies, food, and technology from entering the country. Through the bipartisan blockade policy of asphyxiation – with shortages in gasoline, food, and medicines as well as chronic difficulties in electrical output from deteriorating grid -- Washington hopes to create the conditions for political destabilization and the advancing of “regime change” policies which have never really ended over more than six decades.
The designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism” from the U.S. has always been hypocritical and inaccurate. It does not reflect Cuba's actions toward other nations. In fact Cuban internationalism is legendary.
It has been and remains one of the main forces of solidarity, not terrorism, in the world today. Cuba has been a global example of medical internationalism and solidarity, providing free medical support for its own people. Abroad the Cuban government has sent doctors around the world, from Africa to Italy to China, where they have risked their lives and safety to take care of other citizens' health in times of crisis.
The blockade also affects Cubans receiving medical care in Cuba. Although Cuba has been able to make groundbreaking medical advances such as developing life-saving vaccines, namely their 5 Cuban made vaccines to treat COVID, and vaccines to treat lung cancer and diabetes, there is today -- because of bellicose, extraterritorial US policies many shortage medical supplies and inputs. For example, Cubans with heart conditions are dying because there are no heart pacemakers available. Comparatively, because of Cuba’s advanced medical system, which incentivizes care instead of profit, the lifting of the blockade would also mean Cuba is able to export life-saving vaccines to people of the United States who are currently suffering from the same illnesses.
It is willfully hypocritical for the US government to take Cuba off the one list while it continues to designate Cuba as a state sponsor terrorism on the other. The US government has no moral or legal standing to put Cuba on its bogus SSOT list when Cuba has been the recipient for decades of direct and indirect terror attacks from US-based and often trained terrorists.