New diplomatic success for Cuba due to blockade | At…

Thirty years ago, twenty-nine consecutive diplomatic victories for Cuba – with the only interruption in 2020 due to the pandemic – and everything, invariably, still happens in the same scenario: the United Nations. A space where the United States suffers one defeat after another due to its persistence in ignoring a resolution against the blockade of the island which, on February 3, 2022, will be six decades. Since 1992, Havana has presented its draft resolution against the unilateral and extraterritorial measure which is being rejected in the vast majority of countries. This 2021 was no exception. The vote gave: 184 votes in favor, two against – Israel accompanied the government of Joe Biden – and three abstentions. The biggest success for the Cubans was that Brazil – Jair Bolsonaro had accompanied Donald Trump in 2019 – this time abstained, as did Colombia and Ukraine, two countries which generally follow American policy.

The socialist government of Fidel Castro first, his brother Raúl later and now Miguel Díaz Canel, updates the United Nations General Assembly resolution 74/7. Its title is long and does not change. Because the stake deserves it: “The need to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America on Cuba. This time, he covered the effects of the period between April and December 2020. Aggravated by the virus that punishes the world and whose consequences the United States has accentuated with its hostile policy, deepened by Donald Trump and kept intact by its current president , Joe Biden.

Cruelty

In the document you are reading Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla before the 75th UN assembly, it is recalled that the intensification of the blockade in the current context “obliges our country to fight against the biggest pandemic in decades and against the longest and most comprehensive system of coercive measures Of the history. There is no justification for such cruelty. ”

The surgical precision with which Havana describes the monetary damage caused to its economy is summed up in a single number: In nearly six decades of blockade, losses reached $ 147,853 million. In the period contemplated by the resolution (April to December 2020), the derivations of US coercive policy amounted to $ 9,157 million. But when you consider the depreciation of the US currency against the value of gold on the international market, “the blockade caused quantifiable damage of over $ 1 trillion 377 million 998,000,” says the Cuban government.

The resolution that was passed at the UN describes facts that the Havana government denounces and expands every year to the United Nations. “It is not possible to count the anguish of a Cuban who cannot access a particular drug because an American entity has refused or has been prohibited from sending the supplies necessary for its production,” indicates the document. He also points to “the impossibility of materializing donations and purchases made abroad to deal with the pandemic because the companies involved in their transport have an American company as a shareholder and fear being subject to punitive measures”. So long is the American arm that Has hit the Cuban economy since John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s reign in Washington. The same president who argued, “Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

Exhibitions

In presentations by ambassadors to the United Nations, criticism of the US unilateral measure was almost unanimous and this sentiment was reflected in the vote. “India hopes that the blockade policy will be lifted,” asked its representative. Mexico was one of the toughest and also questioned “the decision to apply Title III of the Ley Helms-Burton, which undermined the sovereignty of the Cuban people and the national interests of third countries ”. China recalled that “it is necessary to end the blockade” and the representative of South Africa said that “the time has come to engage in a constructive dialogue and not to continue with isolation”. Venezuela called the blockade a “crime against humanity”.

Similar exhibitions have been repeated for three decades in the same place. This year is the 75th Assembly and nothing has changed in Washington’s unruffled policy – accompanied since the first vote by Israel, its staunch ally – and a very small group of small countries that have been refined since 1992.

Foreign Minister Rodríguez Parrilla stressed that in the historical context of the blockade to which his country is subject “Under Donald Trump’s government, 243 unilateral coercive measures were applied against Cuba; of them, 55 only in 2020 ”. The document presented by his government specifies that “this unilateral and politically motivated action increases the country’s difficulties in entering international trade”. An almost simple truth which today “constitutes an important obstacle to adequately face the economic and health consequences of the pandemic”.

Vaccines

Despite the negative consequences of the blockade – one of them is that Cuba cannot access medical technologies with more than 10% American components – a key announcement was made on the island on Monday 21. Abdala, the one of his five vaccines against Covid-19, he achieved an immunity rate against the virus of 92.28% after three doses. “Just two days earlier, another Cuban vaccine, Soberana 02, was 62% effective after two injections, and results from a third inoculation were still pending,” German news agency DW reported.

In August 2020, as Cuba prepared to announce the first of these vaccines against the virus, Google has censored the YouTube profiles of the media Granma, Mesa Redonda and Cubavisión Internacional. It was justified by “alleged violations of US export laws,” the Cuban foreign minister said.