Taking Cuba off the list of countries sponsoring terrorism is one of the priorities on which the Solidarity Network in the United States is focusing today, said activist Calla Walsh.
This measure exacerbates the devastating effects of the economic blockade on the island, warned Walsh, co-president of the NNOC (National Network on Cuba) in declarations to Prensa Latina in this capital.
The unjust and illegal inclusion of Cuba in that unilateral list was ordered by former President Donald Trump days before the end of his term in January 2021 and he did it "to punish and strangle the Cuban people," she said.
Walsh stressed that, despite the serious effects of the measure, current President Joe Biden "has maintained it" when "Cuba is not a state sponsor of terrorism. Cuba has been a victim of the United States.
That is why "we are pressing to remove Cuba from the list", said the Network's co-president, who recalled that there is a campaign at this moment to collect more than one million signatures from people all over the world who oppose the blockade".
She pointed out, in particular, that within the United States there are people who "are traveling to Cuba and when they return after learning about the reality of the island they have decided to form new coalitions in their cities to organize against the blockade".
He commented that they have seen "precisely this year so many new organizations being formed in solidarity with Cuba".
For example, he noted, "in Philadelphia, a coalition against the blockade was created; in Michigan, a State committee to unite people to tell their elected officials to put an end to the sanctions on Cuba and also in Ohio, and other cities".
It is very clear that this blockade," Walsh said, "is not popular and the Biden administration's Cuba policy does not represent the interests of the American people or the Cuban people at all.
The NNOC co-president spoke to this news agency prior to an evening of Cuban cinema held last night in Washington DC to raise funds for the purchase of medicines to be sent to the largest of the Antilles.
Similar initiatives were scheduled in Miami (Florida), Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), Providence (Rhode Island), Charlottesville (Virginia), Nashville (Tennessee) and Austin (Texas).
Walsh emphasized how art and culture can be a tool of struggle; he also pondered that "these dozens of people came together in the capital, but hundreds have marched and protested here all year to put an end to this blockade".
The economic, commercial and financial siege of the United States against Cuba was made official in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy (February 3), but it is a policy that began much earlier, in the opinion of experts. Kennedy's order had its most immediate antecedent in the secret memorandum of Lester Mallory, Undersecretary of State during Dwight Eisenhower's administration (1953-1961).
Mallory advised in his memorandum of April 6, 1960 to deprive Cuba "of money and supplies, to reduce its financial resources and real wages, to provoke hunger, despair and the overthrow of the Government", a line that remains unchanged more than six decades later.
The Antillean nation was removed in 2015 from the list of state sponsors of terrorism during the last stage of Barack Obama's term (2009-2017), but Trump reinstated it as one of the last acts in office and in correspondence with the policy of maximum pressure he applied regarding Cuba.