Cuba rejected this Thursday at the United Nations the application of coercive measures, describing as harmful their impact on the current conditions of an international economy in crisis and the unacceptable increase in their use.
When speaking before the General Assembly, Cuban Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Elio Rodríguez recalled that the use of these provisions affects efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals as well as national development plans.
Unilateral coercive measures prevent insertion into international markets on equal terms, in a fair and inclusive manner, he stressed.
The vice chancellor rejected the economic and commercial blockade imposed by Washington against his country, considered the most severe and prolonged system of unilateral coercive measures that has ever been applied against any nation.
It is, he said, a deliberate act of economic warfare with the purpose of preventing financial income from the country, destroying the government’s ability to meet the needs of the population, collapsing the economy and creating a situation of ungovernability.
The blockade is a massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of all Cubans, and calls for the almost unanimous repudiation of the international community, he stressed, recalling that 80 percent of the Cuban population was born under the effect of that policy.
Washington’s policy of suffocation has been further reinforced with the arbitrary inclusion of Cuba on the State Department’s unilateral list of alleged countries sponsoring terrorism, he warned.
“This is a designation without any basis, authority or international support, to try to justify and toughen the siege against Cuba with which the United States continues to punish the Cuban people.”
In the opinion of the Cuban representative, it is not enough to recognize that Cuba cooperates fully with the United States in the fight against this scourge, as the State Department admitted, but that the island must be removed without further delay from that spurious list.
Rodríguez spoke regarding the debate convened by the General Assembly for the end of extraterritorial unilateral coercive measures used as an instrument of political coercion, which he described as timely.
The complete, immediate and unconditional elimination of such measures constitutes a historic demand of the international community, reflected in resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly and the Human Rights Council, as well as in numerous declarations, he recalled.
The vice minister thanked the displays of international solidarity in the face of the North American siege while ensuring that the Caribbean nation will not give up its social justice system despite the limitations imposed.
“We will continue to be an absolutely independent and sovereign nation, master of its destiny. It is a conquest achieved with the sacrifice of several generations, which we will always defend,” he added.
