Just days ago, several newspapers and press agencies reported on the news that the Swiss private bank EFG International had agreed to pay the US Treasury Department the sum of 3.7 million USD as a penalty for the crime of allowing its branches to process transactions from Cuban financial institutions intended for the purchase of food, medicine or other essential products for the Caribbean island’s population. The news is another example of the US Government's attempt to try to cause, by all possible means, the greatest damage and impact on the daily life of the Cuban people, through the criminal economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed for more than 63 years.
Operations related to our country are the subject of constant scrutiny and persecution. This means that for many years US agencies, mainly the Treasury Department, have sought to interrupt, hinder, make more expensive, penalize and confiscate Cuban financial transactions.
As a consequence, dozens of banks around the world repeatedly refuse to carry out legitimate banking transactions, regardless of whether they are purchases to acquire food, medicines, raw materials, fuel, oxygen, parts and other goods essential to sustaining the economy and society.
Another of the most reprehensible actions due to its violative nature of international law and its cruelty was the impediment of the transfer of fuel to Cuba starting in 2019. That year alone, 53 vessels and 27 companies were penalized.
This is a different modality of the blockade, not previously applied, but which responds directly to the efforts to threaten, exercise coercion, instill fear and sanction anyone who is involved in the supply of this important item to the country, from shipping companies, to insurers, reinsurers, banks, people and governments.
The scope of this medieval-like persecution is appalling. It impacts the country's electrical situation, production, and transportation. Despite enormous efforts by the Cuban government and efforts that do not always have public visibility, but involve a multiplicity of organizations and actors, the reality is that fear of dealing with Cuba prevails.
While this is happening, spokespersons for the North American Administration, including its embassy in Havana, display the starkest cynicism asking that human rights be respected and the urgent needs and shortcomings of the population in Cuba be addressed.
It is the blockade that is precisely the greatest massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of all Cubans. Due to its declared purpose and the political, legal and administrative framework on which it is based, it qualifies as an act of genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948.
The US Government turns its back on the practically unanimous vote of the International Community that, for more than 30 years, has been expressing its total rejection in the General Assembly of the United Nations, of the atrocity of the US coercive measures with which it has shown to the Cuban people who have lived together for more than 60 years.
#BloqueoGenocida
EmbaCuba Antigua y Barbuda