Cuban Foreign Minister Presents Report on Impact of United States Blockade against Cuba

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, presented this Thursday the report on the impact of the blockade of the United States (USA) against Cuba in the last year, a document that denounces in a well-founded manner the resurgence of that hostile policy and aggressive, Cubadebate reports.

The Resolution entitled ?Necessity to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba? will be voted in May 2021, for the twenty-ninth time within the General Assembly of the United Nations; this time postponed due to the impact of COVID-19 on a global scale.

At a press conference, the Foreign Minister said that the US government has intensely intensified the blockade against Cuba, even in times of pandemic. He commented on how a donation of medical supplies sent by a Chinese company could not arrive in Cuban territory as a consequence. He also pointed out that Cuba’s effective confrontation with COVID-19 has been possible due to the strength of its health system.

He also referred to the measures against fuel supplies and the lies and slander that are increasing against the country.

“Whoever wins the elections in the United States will have to face the fact that the blockade harms Cubans, their families, violates human rights and makes travel, visas and family reunification difficult.”

Thousands of families suffer the implications of this policy on both sides. He mentioned the aggressive attack on remittances, the elimination or minimization of contacts and communication between them using ?spurious tools and actions?.

The head of Cuban diplomacy stated that the extraterritorial application of the blockade not only violates sovereignty, but also affects the interests of all the states of the planet, including the United States, a country that “suffers deep isolation and discredit?.

In the economic sphere, he stressed that, for the first time, the effects exceeded five billion dollars in one year, since only from April 2019 to March 2020, the blockade caused losses in the order of 5.570 million.

At current prices, the accumulated damages during almost six decades of application of this policy amount to 144 thousand 413.4 million dollars, while taking into account the depreciation of the dollar against the value of gold in the international market, the figure amounts to more than one trillion 98 thousand 8 million dollars.

Rodríguez Parrilla pointed out that in a practical way, the blockade means the denial to Cuba of access to medical equipment and supplies of US origin or, even, from third countries that have more than 10% of US components or technologies from that country, being the health area one of the most affected.

The Minister of Foreign Relations pointed out how difficult it was to measure the impact of the blockade on Cuban daily life, economy and society.

?The blockade in its nature and its extraordinary reinforcement in these two years is an expression of the historical inability of the government of the United States to recognize that Cuba is an independent nation, which according to international law has the right to fully exercise its sovereignty and their self-determination?.

The head of the Cuban diplomacy also pointed out that it constitutes a serious, flagrant and systematic violation of human rights and an impediment “to the development prospects of our country, to the satisfaction of the peremptory needs of our people.”

He assured that it has a harmful and real impact on the process of updating the Cuban economic model and constitutes the main obstacle to the advance, at some point, of bilateral relations between the United States and Cuba.

“It is an act of genocide typified in the 1948 Geneva Convention and lacks any political, moral or legal justification”, for this reason “it arouses universal rejection that is expressed in overwhelming votes of the United Nations General Assembly?.