UN Says ‘US Blockade of Cuba Is a Crime that Has to End’

Children drawing at a community project in Cotorro, Havana, in 2014. The project includes arts and music opportunities for kids and a social service component for older and impaired adults. Photo by Leni Villagomez Reeves.
 

by Leni Villagomez Reeves
Co-Chair, Cuba and the Bolivarian Alliance Committee

November 2022

The UN says “the US Blockade of Cuba is a crime that has to end.”

You may say, “Wait a minute – the UN General Assembly vote on the blockade this year takes place on November 2 & 3, and the deadline for this issue of the WILPF eNews was October 21. How can you possibly know?”

Of course it will pass. The only question is: will any countries other than the US and Israel vote against this resolution?

Ever since the resolution was first introduced in 1992, UN member states have annually approved it by an overwhelming margin. In the most recent vote, 184 countries voted that the blockade must end, and two voted to maintain it; there were only three abstentions.

On November 3, 2022, there will again be a UN Vote in the General Assembly on the resolution “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba."

This resolution criticizes the United States for its economic embargo of Cuba, saying the embargo violates the UN Charter and international law, and calls for the embargo to be repealed.

For 30 years the US has been ignoring the almost unanimous vote of the UN General Assembly.

Of course the US will ignore the vote in spite of the fact that even its closest NATO allies recognize the blockade as a violation of international law, as unilateral economic coercive actions that amount to an act of war, effectively waging siege warfare against a country that represents no threat to the United States.

Siege Warfare against Cuba

I saw this child’s drawing, calling for a vote against the blockade, on a house in Havana in November 2017.

Apparently, the US has not given up on the desire to create shortages and suffering in an attempt to promote dissatisfaction in Cuba. It’s not actually an “embargo” because that would mean the US simply refuses to trade with Cuba. It’s a unilateral extra-territorial economic coercive measure whereby the US threatens and punishes enterprises in all countries it can reach, if they attempt to trade with Cuba. Some of the most egregious efforts are:

• Pressuring the Bank of Ireland to stop handling Cuba’s accounts at a time when Cuban medical volunteers were in West Africa fighting Ebola. It was many weeks before Cuba could figure out an alternative method of getting these funds to these volunteers, even for living expenses.
• As COVID began damaging and killing people worldwide, the US corporation Vyaire Medical purchased IMT Medical and Acutronic, makers of ventilators, then announced that they would cut all commercial links with Cuba, so that Cuba could no longer purchase ventilators.
• Again, at the start of the COVID Pandemic, Jack Ma, a Chinese entrepreneur and founder of Alibaba, sent a donation of masks, rapid diagnostic kits, and ventilators to 24 Latin American countries. The shipment to Cuba was blocked by the US, who threatened the shipping company with sanctions under the Helms-Burton Law, which establishes an economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba. The shipment never arrived.
• Most recently the cryptocurrency company Bittrex has been fined 29 million dollars for allowing bitcoin transactions in Cuba and other countries.

The United States carries out siege warfare against Cuba. The US pressures other governments, banking institutions and companies throughout the world, as well as pursuing obsessively any sources of hard currency transactions for Cuba. The intention is to cause an economic collapse. This is considered an act of war by international law.

‘To Bring about Hunger, Desperation, and Overthrow of Government’

Here is the infamous Mallory memo from April 6 1960, written by Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Lester Mallory. It states the original, unchanging, unvarnished reasons for the decision to blockade Cuba:

The only foreseeable means of alienating internal
support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on
economic dissatisfaction and hardship.

It follows that every possible means should be undertaken promptly
to weaken the economic life of Cuba.
If such a policy is adopted,
it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth
a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible
makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba,
to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation,
and overthrow of government,

When US government sources say that the welfare of the Cuban people is a concern and that their motivation is to protect human rights, no one believes this cynical and dishonest pretext.

What best illustrates the real motivations of the US government is its conduct during the COVID-19 pandemic. When the international community called for compassion and cooperation, the US decided to take advantage of the opportunity to strengthen the blockade, adding 243 additional measures by executive action, making it more difficult for Cuba to obtain medicines, medical equipment and supplies, and materials for the production of vaccines and medicines. The additional blockade measures put in place by Trump have been maintained by the Biden administration, in spite of campaign promises to the contrary.

Cuba Does Not Belong on the US List of State Sponsors of Terrorism

I photographed this cartoon which was painted on a wall in Santa Clara, Cuba, in 2010.

As Trump was leaving office, his regime placed Cuba on the US List of State Sponsors of Terrorism, which creates even greater difficulties for transactions and financing.

The pretexts for this? Assata Shakur, for one. Cuba supports the elected government of Venezuela. After the Havana peace talks between the Colombian government and rebels failed, they followed the international agreements regarding all negotiating parties, even the ELN. Assata Shakur was granted asylum in 1984 as a US political prisoner after COINTELPRO persecution and prosecution.

Rather than being evidence of “terrorism,” these are evidence of the ethical nature of Cuba. A more pragmatic, less idealistic state would have treated Shakur and the ELN representatives as bargaining chips, and it is greatly to Cuba’s credit that even under the extreme conditions created by the pandemic, natural disasters like Hurricane Ian, and the blockade, they have refused to make deals with their lives.