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The economic war unleashed by the United States
against Cuba qualifies as an act of genocide
Speech by Felipe Pérez Roque, foreign minister of
the Republic of Cuba, under issue 18 of the General
Assembly agenda, titled “The necessity of ending the
economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed
by the United States of America against Cuba.”
November 8, 2006, New York
Madame President:
Ladies and gentlemen of the
Assembly:
For the 15th consecutive time,
Cuba is presenting to the General Assembly a
resolution entitled, “The necessity of ending the
economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed
by the United States of America against Cuba.”
We do so in defense of the rights
of the Cuban people, but also in defense of the
rights of the people of the United States and the
rights of the peoples that you all represent in this
Assembly.
The economic war unleashed by the
United States against Cuba, the longest and cruelest
ever known, qualifies as an act of genocide and
constitutes a flagrant violation of international
law and the Charter of the United Nations. Over the
last 48 years, the U.S. blockade has caused economic
damages to Cuba in excess of $86 billion. Seven out
of every 10 Cubans have since birth suffered and
resisted the effects of the blockade, which attempts
to break us through hunger and disease.
The blockade prevents Cuba from
trading with the United States and receiving tourism
from that country. It prohibits Cuba from utilizing
the dollar in its external transactions and
receiving credits or carrying out operations with
U.S. banks or their affiliates in other countries.
The blockade does not allow the
World Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank to
grant Cuba even a modest credit.
But more serious than all of that
is the fact that the U.S. blockade imposes its
criminal regulations on Cuba’s relations with the
rest of the countries that make up this General
Assembly.
We have seen, ladies and
gentleman, how the representative of the United
States government has repeated again here the same
fallacious arguments and the same lies that he has
uttered in this Assembly in previous years.
He lies when he says that the
embargo is a bilateral issue.
He lies when he says that Cuba
can trade and purchase in other countries what it is
prevented from buying in the United States.
He lies when he says that the
United States does not persecute the ships of other
countries that attempt to go to Cuba.
He tells this Assembly, moreover,
that Cuba is utilizing the blockade as a pretext.
I repeat to the distinguished
delegate what I already told him last year: if the
United States government believes that Cuba is using
the issue as a pretext, why doesn’t it take away
that pretext by lifting the blockade? Why doesn’t it
eliminate the blockade against Cuba if, in its
opinion, Cuba is using it as a pretext to justify
its supposed failure?
The blockade prohibits companies
in your countries from trading with Cuba, ladies and
gentleman, not just U.S. companies, but companies
from the countries that you represent in this
Assembly and that are subsidiaries of U.S.
companies. And ships with flags from your countries,
ladies and gentlemen, cannot enter U.S. ports if
they have previously transported goods to or from
Cuba. That is the Torricelli Law, signed by
President Bush Sr. in 1992.
The U.S. blockade also prohibits
companies in the rest of the world — those in your
countries, ladies and gentlemen — from exporting to
the United States products that contain Cuban raw
materials, and prevents those companies from
exporting to Cuba products or equipment that contain
more than 10% of U.S. components. That is the truth.
The blockade, ladies and
gentlemen, persecutes business owners from other
countries, not just from the United States, but
those of other countries, your compatriots, who are
trying to invest in Cuba. They are threatened with
being prohibited, them and their families, from
entering the United States, and even with being
taken to court in the United States. That is the
Helms-Burton Law of 1996.
I am not going to insist on
giving examples that prove what I have said. The
secretary general has presented a broad report, with
contributions from 96 countries and 20 international
agencies and organizations, which unequivocally
demonstrates the suffering and shortages that the
blockade imposes on the life and development of the
Cuban people.
It does seem important to us,
ladies and gentlemen, to inform the General Assembly
about the plan to re-conquer Cuba approved by
President Bush in May 2004 and updated in July 2006.
In it, he clearly admits what the U.S. government
would do in our country if at some point it was able
to put Cuba under its control.
According to the president of the
United States, the most important thing would be to
return all of the properties in Cuba to their former
owners. That would include, for example, snatching
away their land from hundreds of thousands of
farmers who are the owners of their land in Cuba,
individually or via cooperatives, to reestablish the
concentration of land ownership in a few hands. It
would also imply throwing out of their houses
millions of Cuban homeowners, to return those
buildings or that land to their former claimants.
President Bush described this as
an accelerated process, under the total control of
the United States, and for it he would create a
so-called Commission for the Restitution of Property
Rights.
Another structure would also be
created: the Permanent Committee of the U.S.
Government for the Economic Reconstruction of Cuba,
which would direct the process of imposing in Cuba
an extremely harsh program of neoliberal
belt-tightening, which would include the brutal
privatization of health and education services and
the elimination of social security and assistance.
Retirements and pensions would be abolished, and
retirees would be offered jobs in construction work,
in a so-called Cuban Retirees Corps.
President Bush admits that “it
won’t be easy” to implement this plan in Cuba. That
is why he is charging the State Department with
creating, “as an immediate priority,” a repressive
apparatus, that we imagine will be trained in the
brutal techniques of suffocation that Vice President
Cheney does not consider to be torture, to strangle
the unlimited resistance of the Cuban people. It is
even acknowledged that the list of Cubans who will
be persecuted, tortured and massacred “will be a
long one.”
They have even thought up a
Central Adoption Service for Children, to give away
to families in the United States and other countries
the children whose parents would die fighting or as
victims of repression.
This entire cynical and brutal
program to re-colonize a country, after destroying
and invading it, would be directed by an individual
who has already been appointed, and whose ridiculous
post – which reminds one of Paul Bremer – is that of
“Coordinator for Transition in Cuba.” This Caleb
McCarry is a gentleman whose only notable experience
is his close friendship with the Cuban-born
terrorists who are still planning and carrying out
from Miami, with total impunity, new plans for
murder and sabotage against Cuba. They are the same
groups that are asking President Bush to free the
terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, the mastermind
behind the explosion of a Cuban passenger plane,
while they subject to cruel and prolonged
imprisonment in the United States, since 1998, five
courageous Cuban anti-terrorist fighters.
Two years after its proclamation,
ladies and gentlemen, a large part of this plan has
been carried out.
Thus, new and greater
restrictions were imposed on family visits to Cuba
by Cubans resident in the United States.
People from the United States who
traveled to Cuba were viciously persecuted. In the
last two years, more than 800 people accused of
traveling to our country have been fined.
Additional restrictions were
placed on remittances to Cuba. Academic, cultural,
scientific and sports exchanges were practically
eliminated.
Since 2004, 85 companies have
been sanctioned for supposedly violating the
blockade against Cuba.
Ferocious persecution has
intensified against financial transactions and our
country’s trade. There are visible results of the
demented tracking on a global scale by the so-called
Cuban Asset Targeting Group of anything it perceives
as payments to or from Cuba.
Along with intensifying the
blockade, in May 2004 President Bush approved
another $59 million to pay for his scant and
pathetic mercenaries in Cuba, with the goal of
inventing a nonexistent internal opposition, and to
pay companies for propaganda and for illegal,
anti-Cuba radio and television broadcasts.
But it was all in vain. President
Bush realized he was running out of time, and could
not keep his promise to the Cuban extremist groups
in Florida. His problems at home and abroad are
growing and growing, and socialist Cuba has
continued and continues to exist, upright and
unwavering.
So, on July 10, 2006, President
Bush added new measures to his plan.
A significant particularity of
this new, 93-page monstrous creation is that it
contains a secret appendix, with actions against
Cuba that are not being made public, and they
explain that that is “for its effective
implementation” and “for national security reasons.”
Could they be new plans of assassination against
Cuban leaders, more terrorist acts or a military
aggression? From this podium, we demand today,
before the United Nations General Assembly, that
President George W. Bush publicly release the
contents of that document, which he has not had the
courage to reveal to date.
The plan includes, of course, the
allocation of more money. This time, it is $80
million in two years, and no less than $20 million
per year until the overthrow of the Cuban
Revolution. That is, forever.
Anti-Cuba radio and television
broadcasts are also increased, in open violation of
the norms of the International Telecommunications
Union.
In addition, renewed efforts are
being made to create a so-called “coalition” of
countries to support so-called “regime change” in
Cuba.
In Bush’s plan, one thing that
particularly stands out is the extraterritorial
application of the economic war against Cuba.
Thus, new mechanisms are
established to improve the machinery that implements
the regulations of the blockade, and new sanctions
are adopted. One that stands out, for its novelty,
is bringing violators to trial.
The authorization is announced,
by virtue of Title III of the Helms-Burton Law, to
bring lawsuits in U.S. courts against foreign
investors in Cuba, particularly those from countries
that support the continuation of the Cuban
Revolution.
A more rigorous implantation of
Title IV is also established, refusing entry to the
United States for those who invest in Cuba and their
families, but down particularly directing the
persecution against those who invest in oil
exploration and extraction; tourism; nickel; rum and
tobacco.
As a tool for persecuting Cuban
nickel sales to other markets – not the U.S. market,
but persecuting Cuban sales to companies located in
countries that you all represent here in this
Assembly –, the so-called inter-agency Cuban Nickel
Targeting Task Force was created.
The siege against exchange
between U.S. and Cuban churches is also being
improved, and it is prohibited to send humanitarian
donations to Cuban religious organizations.
But there is a new measure of the
blockade approved by President Bush that deserves
its own comment. In the document, it is established
that the United States will refuse all exports
related to medical equipment that can be used in
programs of healthcare for foreign patients.
That is to say, the United States
government, which has always done the unspeakable to
cause the failure of Cuba’s international medical
cooperation, is now acknowledging that its
persecution can go to the extent of trying to block
Cuba from internationally acquiring the necessary
equipment.
I repeat: the blockade has now
come to the point of prohibiting exchange between
churches in the United States and Cuban churches; to
prohibiting churches in the United States from
sending to humanitarian donations to friendly
churches in Cuba – wheelchairs, medications or
products for humanitarian use. President Bush’s
blockade against Cuba is event leading him to
declare war on U.S. and Cuban churches; it is even
attempting to blockade the mandate of God. And in
the second place, it is attempting to prevent Cuba
from buying medical equipment for international
medical cooperation programs.
Some history about this subject
is essential:
- Since 1962, the year that Cuban
doctors provided aid abroad for the first time, in
Algeria, almost 132,000 Cuban doctors, nurses and
health technicians have lent their services in 102
countries.
- Currently, 31,000 Cuban health
internationalists are lending their services in 69
countries. Twenty thousand of them are doctors. I
repeat: in 69 countries today, 31,000 Cuban health
internationalists are working in many of the
countries that some of you are representing here.
- Ladies and gentlemen: a medical
continent specializing in disasters and emergency
situations was founded on September 19, 2005,
precisely in the midst of the battering caused by
the combined effects of Hurricane Katrina and the
irresponsibility and insensitivity of their
government on two million poor and Black people in
the southern United States. The contingent has
10,000 duly trained and equipped members, and is
named after a young man from the United States,
Henry Reeve, who died in combat gloriously in 1873
in the fields of Cuba, with the rank of general of
our Liberation Army. At that time, more than 1,500
Cuban doctors were ready to go to the most affected
areas and save who knows how many lives, which were
lost due to President Bush’s refusal to receive
them.
- A total of 2,564 members of
that contingent worked for eight months in Pakistan
after the earthquake there. They set up 32 hospitals
that were later donated to that sister nation. They
attended to 1.8 million patients and saved 2,086
lives. Subsequently, another 135 Cuban doctors
brought help to Indonesia and set up two hospitals,
also donated; they attended 91,000 patients and
carried out 1,900 surgical operations.
- Cuban doctors had previously
worked after natural disasters in Peru in 1970;
Venezuela in 1999; Sri Lanka and Indonesia in 2004,
and in Guatemala in 2005, to cite a few examples.
If President Bush were to be
successful in his cynical plan, Cuba would be
prevented from providing to other peoples – those
than many of you represent here, ladies and
gentlemen – their modest and generous efforts in a
field in which nobody can deny our development and
experience.
- Since 2004, Cuba has carried
out Operation Miracle, by virtue of which almost
400,000 patients from 28 countries – without
including about 100,000 Cubans – have received
operations free of charge and have recovered their
sight.
While our country cannot pay all
of the pertinent costs, it is Cuban doctors,
technicians, technology and equipment that have
created the ability to provide surgery for one
million Latin Americans and Caribbeans annually.
If the U.S. offensive manages to
paralyze this effort, an equivalent number of people
who are victim to more than 20 ophthalmological
diseases would lose their sight. The U.S. government
knows it, but does not let that stop it from its
macabre project to strangle Cuba. This is only to
refer to those who receive care for their sight, and
not the hundreds of millions of people who benefit
from the comprehensive health programs of the Cuban
internationalist doctors.
Cuba not only provides health
services; it is currently training more than 46,000
young medical students from 82 Third World nations
in Cuba or in their own countries.
Madame President:
Ladies and Gentlemen of the
Assembly:
But Cuba will not surrender nor
will it falter in driving forward on these
humanistic plans, symbols of the fact that a world
of peace, justice and cooperation is possible.
Cuba’s commitment to the rights of every
dispossessed human being on the planet is stronger
than the hate of the executioners.
Ladies and gentlemen:
Millions of Cubans right now are
watching to see what decision you will make. We ask
you today to respect Cuba’s right, which is also
respect for the rights of the peoples that you all
represent. We ask you to vote in favor of the
resolution “The Necessity of ending the economic,
commercial and financial blockade imposed by the
United States of America against Cuba.”
We do so with our heads held
high, optimistic and sure, with the hope of
repeating the verses of the poet of our generation,
because in Cuba, ladies and gentlemen,
Nobody is going to die, all of
life is our talisman, is our mantle.
Nobody is going to die, least of
all now, when the song of the homeland is our song.
And if they impose a war on us,
there are not enough U.S. soldiers to cover the
casualties that they would suffer in face of a
country that has resisted and has prepared for its
defense for more than 45 years.
Ladies and gentlemen:
This completes the speech that I
brought prepared to present our resolution. However,
an unprecedented event in this Assembly obliges me
to make some additional remarks. For the first time
since, in 1992, the Assembly began to consider the
issue of the blockade against Cuba, the United
States government is trying to sabotage – via an
amendment – this vote. After several weeks of
bringing brutal pressures to bear, the United States
realized that it could not turn back the
overwhelming support that this resolution attracts.
It then tried to get a large number of delegations
to abstain, and failed. Then, it threatened and
blackmailed them to withdraw, and failed again.
And finally, it decided to
boycott this vote, distract attention from the main
issue, which is its blockade against Cuba, a
flagrant violation of international law, and decreed
that the Australian delegation would present an
amendment drafted by Washington.
Here I have, ladies and
gentlemen, the talking points distributed by the
United Sates since Monday the 6th, asking for
support for an amendment that Australia did not make
its own until yesterday, the 7th, in the afternoon.
It is interesting that the U.S. delegation, in this
paper asks for support for an amendment that
Australia had not yet even decided to present. The
United States tried to get a European Union country
to present it and was not able to; it looked for
support from other countries, and failed again.
Finally, a very high-level phone call from
Washington to the Australian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs determined that Australia would lend itself
as a straw man for the U.S. amendment.
Ladies and gentlemen, is this
amendment really an expression of a genuine concern
for Australia? No. It is only proof of its abject
submission to the government of the United States.
But, in addition, Australia does
not have the moral authority to try to refer to the
human rights situation in Cuba.
The Australian government is an
accomplice of U.S. imperialism. It is a kind of
“junior imperialist,” always at the ready in the
Pacific to follow its mentors in Washington. It not
only collaborated with them and sent troops together
with the U.S. Army to the war in Vietnam, in which
four million Vietnamese people lost their lives, but
also enthusiastically participated, by sending more
than 2,000 troops, in the invasion of Iraq, a
pre-emptive and totally illegal war. There are still
1,300 Australian soldiers in Iraq despite the fact
that just 22% of the Australian population supports
that particular venture.
The Australian government, which
subjects the Aboriginal population of its country to
a veritable regime of apartheid, does not have the
moral authority to criticize Cuba. The Australian
government, which supports the U.S. torture center
in Guantánamo, and backed summary trials before
military courts of prisoners who are ill-treated and
tortured there, including Australian prisoners, does
not have the moral authority to criticize Cuba.
And less still, the United
States. We have all seen the horrendous images of
the prison at Abu Ghraib, the horrifying images of
Guantánamo. We know that they have organized and
still maintain clandestine prisons and secret
flights on which they transfer prisoners who have
been drugged and shackled. We have seen the footage
of the horror of Hurricane Katrina, when human
beings were condemned to die just because they were
Black and poor. After everything that we already
know, this Assembly cannot be deceived or
manipulated.
For this reason, on behalf of
Cuba, we ask you, honorable delegates, first to vote
in favor of the No Action Motion we will present to
counter Australia’s proposed amendment and then, to
vote in favor of Resolution L.10 presented by Cuba.
At this Assembly, the U.S.
delegate invoked in his speech the sacred name of
José Martí, the hero of Cuban independence. He
tarnishes this glorious name for the Cuban people.
Martí stated that the independence war in Cuba was
also being waged to stop the increasing force of the
United States over the Antilles. It offends our
delegation that the name of José Martí be mentioned
as a means of justifying the blockade.
But I will remind the Assembly,
and particularly the U.S. delegation, that José
Martí also said that “trenches of ideas are worth
more than trenches of stone,” and it is those
trenches of ideas that have made the noble, generous
and heroic people that I represent here, invincible.
Thank you very much. (Applause).
(Translated by Granma
International)
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