Mr. President;
Excellencies, Permanent Representatives;
Delegates all;
During the last few months, President Donald Trump’s administration has started to escalate its aggression against Cuba through the implementation of non-conventional measures to prevent the arrival of fuel shipments to our country from different markets by resorting to sanctions and threats against vessels, shipping companies and insurance companies. Its purpose, besides damaging Cuba’s economy, is to harm the living standards of Cuban families.
In April this year the US government announced its decision to allow lawsuits to be filed before US courts against Cuban and foreign entities under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act.
The persecution of our banking and financial relations with the rest of the world has continued to intensify.
Remittances sent to Cuban citizens were restricted. The granting of visas was reduced. Consular services were limited. The agreement achieved between the baseball federations of both countries was cancelled. Individual travels by American citizens were barred. Cruise ships travels as well as direct flights to Cuban airports, except for Havana’s airport, were prohibited. The chartering of planes as well as the acquisition of technologies or equipment containing more than 10 per cent of US components was banned. Commercial promotion activities and cultural exchanges were interrupted.
The US government has aggressively intensified the extraterritorial implementation of its blockade policy against Cuba thus affecting third States, their companies and citizens.
It does not conceal its purpose of economically suffocating Cuba and increase the damages, scarcities and hardships suffered by our people.
The US government is likewise set out to sabotage Cuba’s international cooperation in the area of health. Several US politicians and officials have put up a slanderous campaign particularly to attack a program that is based on genuine conceptions about South-South cooperation, which have also earned the recognition of the international community.
Mr. President:
The blockade causes incalculable humanitarian damages. It is a flagrant, massive and systematic violation of human rights and qualifies as an act of genocide under Articles 2 (b) and (c) of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948. There is not a single Cuban family that has not endured its consequences.
A Cuban child suffering from severe heart failure can not have access to the most advanced pediatric circulatory assist device because it is manufactured by the United States; and although several orders have been placed on several occasions to buy it, no response has been received as yet from any of the companies that sell it.
As a result of the prohibitions imposed against Cuba, a person suffering from severe heart failure can not have access to ventricular assist devices, which make it possible for patients in critical conditions to continue living until they can undergo a heart transplant or, in other cases, even recover their cardiovascular function.
Because of the blockade, 16-year-old Bryan Gómez Santisteban and 19-year-old Leydis Posada Cañizares, who are currently going through a growth spurts period, have no access to endoprostheses –that is, internal prostheses- that are expandable. Instead, they have to use fixed prostheses, which require these children to undergo frequent surgeries to have them replaced. Expandable prostheses are manufactured by the American company Stryker.
The blockade also hinders the access to new cancer therapeutic drugs which are only manufactured by American pharmaceutical companies.
Mayra Lazus Roque, a 57-year-old patient who suffers from kidney cancer, has not been able to receive a treatment with “Sunitinib”, the optimal medication to treat this condition, for it is only manufactured by the US company Pfizer. Thanks to the therapy she has received, based on pharmaceuticals manufactured by Cuba’s biotech industry, she is now in a good health condition.
Forty nine-year-old Eduardo Hernández Hernández suffers from a metastatic melanoma. The optimal medication to treat this kind of cancer is Nivolumab, a pharmaceutical that is only manufactured by the American company Bristol Myers Squibb, to which we have no access. Therefore, this patient has had to be treated with other alternative therapies.
Year after year, the US delegation has expressed at this venue, with a high dose of cynicism, that its government supports the Cuban people. Could anyone believe such an assertion?
The US Government lies and distorts data about alleged licenses for the operations to sell medicines and foodstuffs to Cuba, which will very hardly materialize.
The US delegation should explain in this Assembly the conditions it imposes on Cuban purchases: Cuba has no access to credits, whether official or private; Cuba is required to pay in cash for the merchandise upon its arrival in port; the banks processing our transactions are subject to persecution; Cuban vessels can not be used in these operations. Who in the world can trade under such conditions?
The successful and effective Cuban social model has guaranteed and continues to guarantee equal opportunities, equity and social justice to all Cubans, despite hostility and coercion.
Mr. President:
The US government does not have the least moral authority to criticize Cuba or any other country when it comes to human rights. We reject the reiterated manipulation of human rights with political purposes as well as the double standards that characterize it.
The United States is a country where human rights are violated in a systematic –and many a time flagrant- way.
The murder of civilians by US troops in different latitudes; the use of torture; the assassination of Afro-Americans by the police and of migrants by border patrols; the death of unaccompanied minors under migratory detention and the abusive and racially biased application of the death penalty, which is also applied against minors and mentally disabled persons deserve condemnation.
The impunity of the gun lobby is to blame for the increase in homicides, even among teenagers. During the first 8 months of 2019, there were around 250 multiple attacks with the use of firearms, which caused almost one thousand victims –around one fourth of them fatal. In 2018, 100 US citizens died and 274 had gunshot wounds on a daily basis.
In the United States, there are 2.3 million persons in prison, which accounts for one forth of the world’s inmate population; and 10.5 million detentions are made in a single year.
Every day, some 137 American citizens die from opioids overdose. Due to the lack of adequate medical treatment, 251 die of heart diseases and 231 die of cancer during the early stages of the disease. A total of 170 preventable amputations are performed on a daily basis associated to diabetes.
The police repression and surveillance against immigrants; the separation of families; the separation of more than 2 500 children from their parents and their indefinite detention; the deportation of 21 000 of them and the brutal measures threatening the children of illegal immigrants who were raised and educated in the United States are all abhorrent practices.
That government maintains inmates, for an indefinite period of time, in a legal limbo, without the right to a defense attorney, a trial or a due process at the Guantánamo Naval Base prison, which is illegally usurping our territory.
In the world’s richest country, forty million Americans live in poverty. Of them, 18.5 million live in extreme poverty. At the end of last year, 25.7 per cent of persons with disabilities lived in poverty. More than half a million US citizens are homeless.
At the close of 2018, there were 6.6 million unemployed in the United States.
A total of 28.5 million US citizens lack health insurance and after the implementation of the announced measures, millions of lowest income persons will be left without it.
Quality education is not available to the majorities. Half of adult persons are unable to read a book written for eighth graders. Equal opportunities in the United States are a pipe dream. Teenagers and youths protest in their own right because their government divests them of environmental rights.
Women earn approximately 85 per cent of the salary earned by men in the United States, and they will have to work 39 days more to catch up with them. Sexual harassment allegations are quite common.
The average wealth of white families is 7 times as much the wealth of Afro-descendant families. The infant mortality rate among Afro-American children below one year of age and mothers during childbirth is twice as much that of white children and mothers.
There is a differential racial pattern among the American inmate population and the duration of imprisonment sentences.
Corruption is rampant in the political system and the electoral model, and there is an ever-growing distance between government decisions and the will of the people. Powerful and exclusive minorities, particularly corporate groups, determine the nature and composition of the government, Congress, justice and law enforcement institutions.
The US is a party to only 30 per cent of the human rights instruments and does not recognize the right to life, peace, development, security, food or the rights of boys and girls.
The blockade also violates the human rights and civil liberties of American citizens, whose freedom to travel to Cuba, the only destination in the world that is forbidden to them, is unjustly and arbitrarily restricted.
Mr. President:
In the course of last year, the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury Department and other US agencies imposed fines on financial groups from third countries, such as the Italian Unicredit Group and the French Société Générale S.A. for violating the system of sanctions against Cuba. Tens of foreign banks were intimidated, so they limited or discontinued their financial relations with our country.
Natural and juridical persons are also victims of the blockade. A German citizen who works at the Cuban embassy in Berlin was notified by Amazon of the cancellation of her account due to the blockade regulations.
The illegal Helms-Burton Act guides the US aggressive behavior against Cuba. Its essence is the stark aspiration of violating Cuba’s right to free determination and independence. It also imposes the US legal authority on the commercial and financial relations of any country with Cuba and establishes the alleged supremacy of the US law and jurisdiction over third countries. The blockade as a whole is a serious violation of International Law, the UN Charter and the principles of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.
Not all governments comply with the illegal extraterritorial implementation of the restrictions imposed by the US legislation. In June, 2019, a trial judge of the Court at The Hague ruled in favor of the company PAM International, based in Curaçao, in a lawsuit it filed against the Dutch company EXACT Software Delft, which is currently a subsidiary of the US company KKR, for enforcing several US blockade provisions against Cuba. Under the aforementioned ruling, EXACT Software Delft was required to continue offering its services to PAM International for the supply of software to Cuban companies and organizations.
Examples like this evidence that there are antidote laws, established proceedings under the World Trade Organization and other ways and means to deal with the extraterritorial implementation of the US blockade against Cuba.
Mr. President:
The accumulated damages as a result of the blockade after almost six decades of implementation amount to 922 billion 630 million dollars, taking into account the devaluation of the US dollar against the price of gold. At current prices, this policy has caused quantifiable damages amounting to more than 138 billion 843 million 400 thousand dollars.
All along these years, the blockade has been the essential impediment to the aspirations of wellbeing and prosperity of several generations of Cubans and continues to be the fundamental obstacle to the economic development of the country. It represents a hindrance for the updating of Cuba’s Economic and Social Development Model, the implementation of its National Plan by the year 2030, the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals.
The impact of the blockade, particularly the restrictions imposed on travels, affect with added strength the non-state sector of the Cuban economy.
With the revenues that Cuba has failed to receive from the exports of goods and services and the costs associated to the geographical reorientation of trade, which has forced us to maintain huge stocks, Cuba’s national GDP would have grown by around 10 per cent as an average annual rate, at current prices, during the last decade.
The annual damages caused by the blockade are tantamount to the volume of direct foreign investments required by the country’s economic development.
For almost six decades, Cuba has been victim to the most unjust, severe and longest-lasting system of sanctions ever applied against any country.
Despite all the difficulties and limitations that our people are facing, Cuba has been capable of counteracting the stated intention of the economic blockade, its overwhelming effect for six consecutive decades and its unquestionable impact on the country’s potential.
It’s been thanks to the effectiveness of Cuba’s socialist system and State, its patriotism and revolutionary ideas, solidarity and our people’s consensus and unity that, despite every limitation, Cuba has been able to overcome the serious challenges imposed against it.
Then the question arises as to whether some of the industrialized and technologically advanced countries would be capable of enduring such a prolonged and overwhelming onslaught, while ensuring a modest but sustained economic growth, preserving its development programs, advancing towards an economy based on services and knowledge and guaranteeing the enjoyment of all human rights by all citizens on an equal basis, as it is the case in Cuba.
Mr. President:
This Assembly has reaffirmed, on several occasions, its rejection against the implementation of unilateral coercive measures, for they are contrary to International Law and the UN Charter.
The US implements systems of coercive measures against more than twenty countries and specific unilateral measures against tens of nations, a trend that has strengthened under the current administration.
As was expressed by our historical leader, Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz at the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations, we should all lay claim to a world “without ruthless blockades that cause the death of men, women and children, young and old, like noiseless atom bombs.”
Mr. President:
The US government intends to exercise its imperialist domination in “Our America”. It once again invokes the old and aggressive Monroe Doctrine and the “Gunboat Diplomacy”. It redeploys its Fourth Fleet and increases the presence and power of its military bases in the region.
The definition of the blockade policy is best expressed in the infamous memorandum written by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory, which I quote: “…there is no effective political opposition… The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support [from the government] is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship… every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba… denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”
The US representative offends this Assembly with the interventionist and unacceptable language he uses to refer to the heroic people of Venezuela, its civic and military union and the Bolivarian and Chavista government headed by president Nicolás Maduro Moros, to whom we express our unchanging solidarity.
The US government resorts to false and slanderous arguments as pretexts to intensify its aggression. I reiterate that neither threats nor blackmails will ever extract the least political concession from us. Neither will we back down from our determination to achieve a civilized relation with the US government, based on mutual respect and the recognition of our profound differences.
As was pointed out by Army General Raúl Castro on April 10 last before the National Assembly of People’s Power, and I quote: “Despite its immense power, imperialism does not have the capacity to crush the dignity of a united people who are proud of their history and of the freedom they have attained after so much sacrifice.”
Cuba recognizes the ethical and political abyss that exists between the US government and its people and will do its best to develop the profound and broad relations that unite Cuba and the people of that country.
Mr. President:
Distinguished Permanent Representatives:
Esteemed delegates:
We recognize with profound gratitude all those who have expressed their rejection against the blockade imposed by the US government against our country and those who have always accompanied us in our ceaseless struggle to put an end to that policy.
As was expressed by the President of the Republic of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel to all Cubans on October 10 last, and I quote: “Intense and challenging days await us, but no one is going to take from us the confidence in the future which we owe our children in the Homeland our parents won by standing firm.”
On behalf of the heroic, self-sacrificing and fraternal people of Cuba, I ask you, once again, to vote in favor of the draft resolution contained in document A/74/L.6 “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”
Thank you, very much.