The Jamaica Solidarity Movement with Cuba, joins with the rest of progressive humanity, with the strongest condemnation of the latest decision by US secretary of state and arch-enemy of the Cuban people, Marco Rubio, to impose sanctions on countries that are the beneficiaries of Cuban International Medical Collaboration program. A program that has saved millions of lives across the world and provided the necessary under- girding of health systems, especially in the global south since its inception in 1960, when our sister country sent a team of doctors to Chile in the aftermath of an earthquake.
And I salute whole-heartedly, the Gleaner’s editorial comments of Monday March 3 titled ‘ ‘Leave Cuban Medics’ which states in part, ‘If Mr Rubio possesses a scintilla of decency, he should immediately rescind the policy whose hurt will be felt not only by Cuba but by poor people in Africa, Asia and the Americas, including several Caribbean countries, Jamaica among them. It will cost lives’…
It is this total disdain for the sanctity of life, that has under-pinned the conduct of the empire, whether it’s the Democrats or Republicans occupying the White House which accounts for their total complicity in the ongoing genocidal war being prosecuted by apartheid Israel led by war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. Where the funding, provision of the 2000lb bombs and other instruments of death, has resulted in 48, 450 deaths and 111,852 Palestinians injured since October 2023, 70% of which are women and children under 5 years of age are stamped, made in the USA.
Its not by chance that the first head of state that has visited Trump in his second term office that began on January 2025, was the International Criminal Court (ICC) fugitive, which is tantamount to an offence of ‘harboring a criminal’.
It is this same cavalier attitude towards human life, that the richest country in the world, USA with all the scientific and technical resources to boot, racked up the unenviable record as the country with the most COVID-19 deaths in the world, numbering in excess of 1 million as of mid-2023, with substantial numbers still suffering from long-term disabilities, as a result of a system that prioritize profits over people.
Contrast that with our sister country, Cuba, which inspite of 6 decades of attempted ‘strangulation’ brought on by an illegal, cruel and genocidal blockade, especially 243 sanctions leading up to and during COVID 19 pandemic, not only were they able to ‘weather the storm’ and create their own vaccines in defense of their citizens human right to life but extended their medical expertise through the work of the Henry Reeves Brigade(HRB), in 56 countries including Jamaica, to combat the pandemic and to save lives.
An exemplary chapter in our sister country’s enviable history of being their ‘brother’s keeper’ was written, that saw the HRB being among the nominees for the Nobel Peace prize in 2021.
The historic leader of the Cuban revolution, Fidel, was very emphatic as he laid out not only the philosophy but the practice, which guided the country’s revolution, “Doctors not bombs’ our doctors will go in the outermost and inhospitable places where they are needed in the darkest corners of the world’.
As we continue to stand and defend Cuba’s inalienable right to pursue its own path of development, its sovereignty and independence, lets extend our solidarity to our brothers and sisters in our Caribbean region, North and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe and especially those in the mainland USA, as together we are stronger in resisting the onslaught of the 21st century mimic-men of Hitler’s Third Reich.
We shall overcome.
6 March 2025