• Behind the mask of a seeming relaxation economic warfare has intensified • Over 90% of the total volume of trade with U.S. subsiiaries corresponded to foodstuff and medicines when such operations were prohibited under the 1992 Torricelli Act

INTRODUCTION

Victim of one of the most inhuman State policies ever faced by a people, Cuba has been subject to a cruel and merciless economic warfare since the very triumph of the Revolution in 1959.

This warfare is being waged by the most powerful country of the earth: the United States of America, with the unaccomplished purpose of reimposing their neocolonial control on the country. In April 1960, after the decision of the Cuban people and government of carrying out an emancipating social Revolution that would put an end to several centuries of injustices and foreign domination, the State Department, issued an official document indicating the need to impose economic sanctions on Cuba to cause "hunger, desperation and the demise of the government"

None of the successive US administrations ever since and to date, have given up an inch on their purposes or spared any means to accomplish them. On the contrary, these have been developed, refined and enhanced. This policy is implemented through a complicated system of laws; all kinds of outrageous pressures on businessmen and governments of third countries; fanatical persecution of all kind of economic or scientific activity that Cuba carries out overseas to discourage it and stop it; as well as through a colossal campaign of disinformation on Cuba to distort the reality of the country and its people.

The idea is then to economically choke a whole nation and deprive it of its basic means of subsistence in order to break its unfaltering determination for independence. This policy has caused, and still causes, onerous impacts on the material, psychological and spiritual welfare of the Cuban people, limits its economic and social development and has forced successive generations of Cubans to live in constant hostility and tension. Six out of ten Cubans have been born and lived under these conditions imposed by this policy.

The US economic warfare against Cuba is also void of all legal foundation and, according to Item C of Article II of the Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of December 1948, it is considered an act of genocide and therefore a crime under international law.

THE U.S. GOVERNMENT WAS PROPERLY HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ILLEGAL ACTS AGAINST CUBA AND SENTENCED TO REPAIR AND COMPENSATE THE CUBAN PEOPLE $121 BILLION USD

That same year the Torricelli Act was passed to reinforce the extraterritorial range of the web of pieces of legislation and measures that make up the 40-year-old blockade against Cuba.

And four years later, in 1996, using the most vulgar pretexts, the US government passed one of the pieces of legislation most repudiated by the international community, because of its interfering and extraterritorial character, violating the most basic principles of the International Law: the Helms-Burton Act.

It is worthy however, to place these last pieces of legislation in an adequate historic context. The former, the Torricelli Act, was approved by the US government when our country started to successfully reorient its foreign trade to Western Europe, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean, after the tremendous impact of the collapse of the European socialist community and the Soviet Union on our international economic relations. In other words, this law was chiefly aimed at thwarting the recovery of the Cuban economy.

Then, in 1996, when it was thought that the Cuban economy had managed to endure the toughest effects of the disappearance of its historic economic and commercial partners, plus the strengthening of the blockade, and the first positive economic results started show up, the US administration enacted the Helms-Burton Act as the brand new milestone of its aggressive policy against Cuba. This naturally intrusive piece of legislation intends to dictate, in its Titles I and II, how the political, economic and social order of a sovereign neighboring State should be dealt with, and promotes subversion as a means to accomplish its purposes. In its Titles III and IV, it intends to internationalize the blockade by imposing standards and rulings on the international community on how to develop economic relations with the Cuban nation, and sanctions against citizens of third countries for doing business with Cuba.

The interfering character of this Law is the most categorical refutation to those who try to compare the blockade against Cuba with an "embargo", which only involves relations between two States. The Helms-Burton Act is also extraterritorial in all its components because it tries to shamelessly interfere in the destiny of a country outside the US borders, that is; not belonging to its territory (Titles I and II) at the same time that intends to impose the US legislation as a universal applicable standard (Titles III and IV) on the rest of the sovereign States of the planet.

Moreover, illegal and disorderly emigration of Cubans to the United States through the well-known Cuban Adjustment Act is encouraged at the risk of their own lives and inconsistently with the migratory agreements signed between the two countries.

The United States also banned the sending of remittances, foodstuff and medicines to Cuba in 1994, as well as family-related travels between the two countries, with the overt purpose of hardening the blockade against Cuba and therefore, limiting the capacity of the Cuban government to raise hard currency", as deliberately stated by the US State Department. By virtue of this prohibition, Cuban émigrés in the United States constitute the only group with these limitations to travel to their origin country and send economic assistance to their relatives in Cuba.

Likewise, Section 211 of the 1999 Omnibus Law is still in force in an open violation of the legislation itself and the US pledges in matters of intellectual property and in contradiction with at least three of the articles of the TRIP´s Agreement (Trade-Related Aspects of the Rights of Intellectual Property) whereas it refers to the term "designated national" as the criterion for its application. As a result of this Section, an attempt is being made to whisk away the Cuban rum brand Havana Club from its legitimate owners and turning it over to US-based spurious claimants, damaging both the French company Pernod-Ricard and Cuba.

In the light of these circumstances, now that the executive power of the United States is in the hands of a new administration, it would be logical that the international community asked: What has really changed in the US policy of blockade against Cuba, after Resolution 55/20 of the General Assembly was adopted by an absolute majority of 167 votes?

THE NEW U.S. GOVERNMENT HAS CHOSEN ANTI-CUBAN RHETORIC AND COMMITMENT TO THE MIAMI-BASED ANNEXATIONIST MAFIA AS THE FOUNDATION OF ITS ACTIONS AGAINST CUBA

As a matter of fact, the belligerent policy against our country has been hardened since January 20, 2001, when the new US government has chosen the anti-Cuban rhetoric and the commitments with the Miami-based annexationist mafia as the foundation of its actions against Cuba. This Administration has cynically announced in public that not only would it maintain its blockade and attempts of isolation of independent and sovereign Cuba but would seek all means possible to make its actions more effective and comprehensive.

It is against this background that the 56th period of the General Assembly of UNO must consider this issue again, more than nine years after the approval of the first resolution condemning the US blockade against Cuba.

EASING vs. STRENGTHENING OF THE BLOCKADE

Aimed at neutralizing the efforts of an incipient movement of social forces opposed to the policy of blockade inside the United States, former President Clinton’s administration used all kinds of political means and media to promote the erroneous belief of an alleged "easing" of the blockade against Cuba with the idea of not only accomplishing the aforementioned purpose at the domestic level but also mobilizing the growing opposition of the international community to that policy.

Actually, behind the guise of a seeming "easing", the economic warfare against Cuba has been strengthened and the scope of measures and practical actions of the blockade, extended.

In this regard, it is necessary to know that when some initiatives3 –aimed at allowing the sale of medicines and foodstuff to Cuba between 1999 and 2000- started to shape up and gain consent in the US Congress, with the support of different social, religious and business sectors; very powerful and influential lobbying groups, represented by the Republican leadership and the Cuban-American congresspersons not only did they managed to prevent these initiatives from approval but they also added restrictions on the Legislative which actually resulted in a strengthened blockade.

The new restrictions consisted in:

• The maintenance of the complicated and red-tape process of license granting that to date, continues to obstruct the sale of medicines and foodstuff to Cuba.

• A prohibition for the President of the United States to endorse any governmental assistance to the sales of medicines and foodstuff to Cuba, at the same time that these restrictions were lifted for other countries which up to that moment could not import medicines and foodstuff;

• The prohibition for US private funding for the agricultural sales to Cuba, thus preventing any US national or entity from financing or providing credit for the sales of agriculture commodities or equipment to the island;

• The continuation of the prohibition to import commodities of Cuban origin, which have been stockpiled or transported from or through Cuba;

• The freezing of the limited categories, which previous to the license request, could then be used by some US nationals to travel to Cuba;